Making locks by hand

[Acer Saccharum]

In the thread quoted below, David R is making a tumbler. The questions and answers that come up made me wonder how the industry of the 18th Century could produce locks in volume without automatic machinery, without Quality Control sciences we have today. It doesn't seem possible, yet.....

In talking about his tumbler project:

Made three links before I got the length just right.  from: http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=32148.0

That is the problem when you never made the lock before, and don't have patterns or drawings to go by. You sometimes (often) have to make parts over until they are right.

I recall seeing brass patterns of thin sheet, with holes in appropriate locations, for trying out the notches and throws of things. Then you can use the patterns for your next lock.

How did Birmingham and London makers have people in cottages make various parts and have them all come together in the main shop? Yes, fitting was required, as replaceable part engineering and science had not been developed yet. Filing gages? Patterns?

[WKevinD]

I have thought that the final assembly- drilling of the lockplate and tapping holes would have had to been done by someone with great patience and huge skills.
He probably had his favorite suppliers that made his life simpler as we have our favorite suppliers that make our work progress smoother.

[bob in the woods]

I have thought about this, myself.  I think that we have a modern example [ I'm trying to find out more about this ]
in the modern India trade in flintlock muskets etc.  These locks are supposedly hand forged, and;  the parts are not interchangeable.  I was told this by the " Discriminating General" when I tried to get a replacement part for a Bess lock.

[Bob Roller]

Drilling and tapping a through hole in anything is easy. Look at the tap,find a drill/tap chart and select the right drill for whatever tap you are using.Drill the holes,countersink them the depth of ONE thread on each side,put a few drops of tapping fluid on the tap or in the holes and DO IT.Blind holes are another thing entirely.

Bob Roller

[Acer Saccharum]

Bob, speaking of tapping blind holes, a plate would have to be thick enough to have good thread engagement with the screws. What did bottoming taps of the 18th Cent look like? Were they cutting taps, or thread forming taps?

German import lock ca 1780-90 example of blind sear and sear spring screws:


internals of same:

[knifemaker3]

That questions like this have to even be asked is why I always say we have lost more technology from the past then we can ever hope to keep or gain from the future.

The skills and craftsmanship of day gone by will never be replaced or imagined again unless we loose all the modern conveniences we enjoy today.  We have lost so much in my opinion.

Just look at what tradesmen were able to create back then with their limited tooling is something that keeps impressing me more everyday.  I look at modern day stuff being made on CNC equipment and it just doesn't impress me in the least.  Machinest today are nothing more than machine operators.  And that is all.  The true machinest are all retired or already dead.  And that saddens me to a great degree.

Oh well, my rant for the day.  

[Jerry V Lape]

Would a filing gauge and a jig be the same thing?  A well designed jig would do a lot to produce repeatable dimensions for the completed lock.  I have often wondered when Jim Everett Wilson would start turning up the antique jigs, filing patterns used to create locks.  Think about an apprentice being equipped with a couple files, a hardened jig and the raw material to fit to the jig.  Labor was inexpensive and the hours were long.  Even the CNC machine requires an appropriate jig to hold the piece.  I don't think we lost the skills - just morphed them into more precise and efficient forms. 

[WKevinD]

Were they cutting taps, or thread forming taps?

OK now I'm lost- thread forming taps?

The lock is beautiful, the delicate file work on the springs and sear are stellar!

Do you suppose the plate and internal were cast then finished or fully hand forged?  

[jerrywh]

 If a person does nothing but make flintlock hammers for 20 years it becomes very simple. Anything becomes easy if that is all you do. That is sort of the way it was. Patterns were supplied.
  Nicolas Boutet had over 20,000 workers working for him. I seriously doubt if he ever made a complete gun. Joseph Manton had about 250 men working for him at one time. This does not count the cottage industry workers on the outside. There were also forging dies that were probably made by the workers themselves. Seldom was a complete lock made by one man. In America very few gunsmiths ever made locks. The ratio was probably similar to today. It doesn't pay now and it didn't pay then.  Also it means that a person has to have a lot more tools. Tools were relatively more expensive then.
 A flintlock is a simple mechanism. Think about making a chronometer. Try making a jewelers saw blade #08. They had to have that to make items like clocks. We are very spoiled. They never watched Gunsmoke or American idle.
 

[Acer Saccharum]

American idle.
 

I like your typo very much!



I agree if you do the same thing for 20 yrs, you get real good at it.

[Dave B]

I was lucky enough to have in my carving class years ago Ryan McNabb. He's one of our own here and maybe he can post pic's of the forging dies he has for making lock parts. the tumbler, cock, sear and such. It would give you a consistent starting point for the part but yet would still have to be hand fit each time. He just happened to have in his possession at the time of our class a set of these dies he had been able to make for fabrication of lock parts in the manor of the 18 c. Very cool stuff.

[Bob Roller]

I would think the taps would be cutting taps and maybe a fine thread. Modern scope mounts use a 6x48 and the few times I put a barrel rib under a barrel I made special 6x48's for the job.Small diameter taps are easily broken and the finer the thread,the less torque it would take to accomplish the job.
There is a very vague memory I have of seeing thread FORMING taps but I think they were used in making  Acme thread nuts out of bronze in an old and long defunct machine shop here. I do remember that the tap had steps and maybe the first two steps were forming and the last one might have been a finisher,cutter. None of the people that worked in that shop are alive today so I'll never know.

Bob Roller

[mountainman70]

American idle.
 

I like your typo very much!

Ditto here from the mountain.I been calling it that since they began.Dave F

I agree if you do the same thing for 20 yrs, you get real good at it.

[smart dog]

Hi Tom,
Your question is great and I ask myself similar questions all the time.  I think I am as interested in the business of the gun trades as much as I am in building 16th-19th century guns.  The answers to your inquiry probably depended greatly on who and where the lock was made.  As I know you are aware, the gun trades in Europe were extremely specialized and division of labor was the norm.  There were lock forgers, lock filers, and lock polishers, each a separate trade.  The gunmaker subcontracted with them to produce his (or her - yes there were some women gunmakers at least in Britain) guns.  I am sure the level of skill in each trade was phenomenal.  The use of skill, jigs, templates, and gauges probably made up for lack of precision machinery.  Think of the organizational and logistic headaches that must have existed within British (or any country's) Ordnance Ministry when making thousands of muskets, bayonets, swords etc, that had to fit a standard.  DeWitt Bailey provides wonderful details of that process in his many books on British military firearms.  Then consider how the rural Pennsylvania gunmaker did it when he could not get the imported lock.  Many of those locally forged locks made during the years when imports were scarce look to me to be well made.  What a wonderful and rich history and story.

dave       

[davec2]

Burnt,

Thread forming taps actually swage the material in the hole to form the thread...they do not cut metal.  The thread is stronger (in some work hardening materials) and the production rate is faster.  The tap hole is larger than one you would drill for a cutting tap.  These are also known as "chipless" taps as they do not produce swarf.

Here is a link :

http://www.mcmaster.com/#thread-forming-taps/=tlygv0

[Acer Saccharum]

Back to the question of tools, which Jerry brought up, who made the saw blades, punches, chisels, thread forming plates, taps and files? Were there tool shops where files were their mainstay? I have to believe so. Diderot's encyclopaedia describes many trades, but does not get too esoteric.

The lathe is one of the oldest tools going. I can imagine that a handy lathe man would quickly be setting his lathe up to mill.

Just in file cutting alone there are so many tooth forms, file shapes, sizes (not to mention hardening skills) that it boggles the mind. Could a large gunshop make all the required tools? If they are tool-making they are falling behind on their product.

[davec2]

Tom, Dave,

This goes back a long way.  Imagine yourself as some poor slob of a Roman blacksmith when Gluteus Maximus walks into the shop and tells you that he and his cohorts are off to Londinium in three weeks and he orders 100,000 gladius swords, an equivalent number of pilum (long, iron pointed javelin), and 75,000 scuta (shields).  Think of the logistics even for items that have no moving parts...how much iron, how much charcoal, how many apprentices with hammers (who do I get to make the hammers ?), how many anvils ?  The list goes on and on.  The equipage required to put 10,000 to 50,000 men in the field from ancient times to modern times is staggering.  Even with the beginning of modern industrialization during the American Civil War, it is hard to imagine producing millions of weapons, ordinance, ammunition, ships, cannon, etc., etc., in the quantities they were produced in the four years of the war.  Seems like you would have every man, woman, and child making things.  Might have been nice if they were all so busy no one had time to go kill one another.

[Mark Elliott]

Back to the question of tools, which Jerry brought up, who made the saw blades, punches, chisels, thread forming plates, taps and files? Were there tool shops where files were their mainstay? I have to believe so. Diderot's encyclopaedia describes many trades, but does not get too esoteric.

The lathe is one of the oldest tools going. I can imagine that a handy lathe man would quickly be setting his lathe up to mill.

Just in file cutting alone there are so many tooth forms, file shapes, sizes (not to mention hardening skills) that it boggles the mind. Could a large gunshop make all the required tools? If they are tool-making they are falling behind on their product.

Tom,

In the 18th century, there were pretty comprehensive tool catalogs from English manufacturers.   You could get more stuff then than you could get now, at least in terms or hand tools.    I can't imagine that the 18th or 19th century gunsmith made anymore of their tools than we do today.   They would just go down to the local importer (assuming they lived somewhere like Philadelphia) and buy what they needed or order it from the manufacturer for the shipment after next.    If they lived outside Philadelphia, well they would just have to order from the importer and have it shipped by wagon over the Great Wagon Road.   Most early American gunsmiths lived and worked on the Great Wagon Road from Philly.   It ran all the way to Yadkin Valley, NC and there were roads off of it into the various wildernesses.   They even purchases their locks and mounts the same way.   There are advertisements in the early newspapers for all of these items.  

I believe, that in the larger gun shops, even in America, people were very specialized in what they did.   I think that no matter what they were making, in the large cities of Europe and America in the 18th and 19th centuries,  the average worker did the same thing from dawn to dusk six days a week no matter how mind or finger numbing that may be.   I am pretty sure I do the work of dozens of individuals from the 18 century.  From my point of view, it is a luxury we can afford because mostly our work is considered fine art and not commodity production work as it was at the time.  

I think we should appreciate the freedom from the body breaking, mind numbing labor of centuries past.   Machines do all that work now, even in China.     Just a hundred years ago,  people worked a lot harder, physically, in much more dangerous situations than we do now.    I remember my grandfathers stories of his apprenticeship as a machinist in the 1920's.    He apprenticed at the Richmond Locomotive Works.   Just appreciate what it was like to build steam locomotives with 19th century technology.    My grandfather almost lost his sight in a foundry accident at the locomotive works.   He was very lucky.    People were maimed an killed in these environments all the time.    I always remember what my grandfather said the blacksmith would tell him when he was apprenticing in the blacksmith shop of the locomotive works; "hit it if it kills you, Boy."   I think that should say it all, because,  I don't believe that blacksmith was really kidding.    

Consider for a moment that  locomotives were assembled with many thousands of rivets.   These forged wrought iron rivets were heated in small portable coal forges and then tossed  yellow hot (had to be that hot for wrought - how would you like hot iron coming at you all day long?) to the guy that would place the red hot rivet and hold it in place while a guy on the other side with an air hammer (my grandfather said the noise in the boiler shop was literally deafening - they would jam cotton waste in their ears to try to attenuate some of the noise)  would put the head on the other side of the rivet and tighten it down.    They would do this one right after another because they had hundreds more to do that day.   After these guys finished putting the boiler together, then some other guys would dump bags full of asbestos insulation into the boiler without ANY protective equipment.    These guys were always white with the asbestos.    My grandfather said it was everywhere they went.  




  

[David R. Pennington]

If I have a grasp, 18th. cent. labor was cheap in England as opposed to America, why most of originals have imported locks. I suppose the war shut down a lot of imports a for a while. I also suppose logistics was a big deal. Hard for us to imagine placing an order for tools or materials and waiting months for it to cross the Atlantic and another week or two for it to make it down the wagon road. I might be tempted to go ahead and try making my own?
This is why building flintlocks is so fascinating to me. So much to learn and explore!

[Captchee]

 I think very few living today can relate  to what was probably actually done. Its not so much because the materials and tools were  so different , but more that we live in such a disposable society  where if you need something or something breaks , you just toss it and go buy another .
 I can remember my grandfather  until his death in 1986 , logging , year around with a team of horses .  He simply refused to use a chain saw  and when the subject came up , he would say that for the cost of running , packing and maintaining the saw , he would need another team just for the saw . In his last years he did use a modern saw  and it nearly took his leg , but he simply would not stop
 When I was small , his mill was even  water driven . I don’t know what it was called but there was  a big granite stone wheel  that was used as a type of centrifugal weight, when   it cracked he converted the mill  to  running off  the belt drive on an old Case tractor .
 About the only time he went to town was to deliver lumber or  if there was simply no other way , buy a part .  Which also  brings up I think another difference from today to back then .
They new how to make things work . In other words just because something broke , it didn’t mean an end  to production .
It meant more work until such time as a item could be either fixed or replaced .
Literally for a lot of these older folks , you could go to them and say ; I need to do this X.
 In a few minutes  of spitting chew  and scratching  their  head with the end of a lead pencil, they could tell you how  to do it and what was needed . Might not be the best way , but it would work .
 They could think on the run as well . .  Not far from me is one of the last   large gold dredges  here in our area .  Its owned by the park service and you can walk through it .  Seeing how that ,,, Ship  works , is simply amazing . Literally ropes and pulleys every where.  Its not hard to imagine someone saying ; Run a rope to there . Put a pulley there . Go up there , then over there and back to here .
 There are ropes as large as a mans  leg , running right across the floor . Open belts and pulleys everywhere . To work inside that  dredge , meant you had to be constantly thinking about not only what you were doing , but what was going on around you  . One laps in judgment and  you became gear lube or belt dressing .

 I also think for tooling  in the large Mills , the probably had a Tool shop  where the folks inside , did nothing but replace and repair tools . These folks knew the cost  of  a dime and it had very little to do with monetary value . I don’t believe the would toss money away  unless there was just no other way   

[WadePatton]

...I think very few living today can relate  to what was probably actually done. Its not so much because the materials and tools were  so different , but more that we live in such a disposable society  where if you need something or something breaks , you just toss it and go buy another ...
 

I probably have a "throw back" gene because i don't "throw away".  I waste a lot of time fixing things that could more easily be replaced in many cases, but the sickness gives me satisfaction in fixing-and discovering how things are put together to do whatever it is they do.  I certainly waste time losing stuff in the piles of things that i'm "gonna fix", but haven't gotten 'round to.

I could build a lock, but it ain't going to be an efficient use of time--until i've made a bunch and streamlined my processes.  Wouldn't touch the current pricing-but would be fully ready.  Back then as now, how close one is (time) to a viable replacement part (and urgency) has everything to do with what gets fixed.

Anyone who has worked around farm equipment knows that you often buy a replacement part to get back into the field ASAP but KEEP the old part for "spares" and/or fixing the whole assembly later, but that you don't have time for such during your current operations.

[jerrywh]

 Capchee
Where is that gold dredge? I want to go see it.

[kaintuck]

Tom, look at that spring on your old lock......finished angled sides!
Marc n tomtom

[Acer Saccharum]

Angled or bevel spring edges are very common in antique locks. A lot of decorative filing occurs all over these machines, from the sophisticated cocks, pans and plates, to the bridles and springs. Very harmonius look to many of these old locks, be they English, French, German. The Dutch have aesthetics all their own, it needs to grow on you.

[Bob Roller]

I file an angle on all my mainsprings and sear springs as well.It's a finishing touch.
Lynton McKenzie told me years ago it was done to locate hard spots in the spring
if there were any.With today's spring material,that isn't likely.

Bob Roller