How thick ? Re sole a frizzen

[Tim Ault]

Sometime this summer I'm going to resole a Dixie lock  and I was reading a lot on the process , I understand how but one thing in the reading that wasn't clear was how thick should the new steel be? I am planning on using a piece of handsaw blade as I was experimenting with different things I already had to use . Heated and quenched it and sparks real well on a old rock that has lots of quartz in it figure it do as well with flint .  The saw blade is .035 thick would that be thick enough to get me a few more years of shooting

Tim

[BOB HILL]

I've used old handsaw before with good results.     Bob

[Bob Roller]

Sometime this summer I'm going to resole a Dixie lock  and I was reading a lot on the process , I understand how but one thing in the reading that wasn't clear was how thick should the new steel be? I am planning on using a piece of handsaw blade as I was experimenting with different things I already had to use . Heated and quenched it and sparks real well on a old rock that has lots of quartz in it figure it do as well with flint .  The saw blade is .035 thick would that be thick enough to get me a few more years of shooting

Tim

The life span of the resole would be directly proportionate to the times it was fired.
No real way to tell.

Bob Roller

[Longknife]

Grind away as much as you can of the old surface, mount the frizen in the lock and measure the clearance between the frizzen and the fence, keep it under this measurement.....035 is plenty ....Ed

[L. Akers]

I soled a frizzen with a piece of cross-cut hand saw blade in 1985.  It's still going strong after I don't know how many thousands of shots.  I used 50-50 lead/tin solder to attach the sole.  The blade used is .035 thick.

[Tim Ault]

Grind away as much as you can of the old surface, mount the frizen in the lock and measure the clearance between the frizzen and the fence, keep it under this measurement.....035 is plenty ....Ed

   Thanks all just didn't want to use something too thin  ,  Longknife what are you referring to when you say "fence "

Tim

[Long John]

Tim

I've done a bunch of guns, mostly Bess's for re-enactors.  I use .032" thick 1095 spring stock I pick up at Dixons.  They all have worked fine.

I grind the frizzen face as smooth as I can get it.  I then flux it and tin it with tin/silver plumbing solder.  Next I shape and bend the sole material to fit while in the annealed state.  I usually shape it with a long "handle" extending off from where the top of the frizzen would be and file a little notch just at the top of the frizzen.   I heat the sole up to red-orange color in a MAPP gas torch and quench in diesel fuel.  This makes it brittle hard.  Sand the convex side of the sole nice a bright clean with emery paper.  Apply flux and clamp it to the frizzen where you want it.  Heat the frizzen, not the sole, until the solder melts, no more.  Once cool break off the handle and grind the spot where it was smooth.  Half hour job!

Best Regards,

JMC
John Cholin

[rich pierce]

That sounds like the fastest and easiest approach. Going to try it on a stubborn frizzen.

[Hungry Horse]

One of the most important things to remember when refacing  a frizzen, is that flintlocks are all about geometry. If the frizzen is made thicker by the added metal, the geometry will suffer. My first frizzen repair made good sparks, but the lock time was slowed down by the thick frizzen face, and the sparks went everywhere but where I wanted them. Live and learn.

  Hungry Horse

[Longknife]

Grind away as much as you can of the old surface, mount the frizen in the lock and measure the clearance between the frizzen and the fence, keep it under this measurement.....035 is plenty ....Ed

   Thanks all just didn't want to use something too thin  ,  Longknife what are you referring to when you say "fence "

Tim

Tim, the "flash fence" is the raised ridge between the pan and the hammer, sometimes a part of the pan and sometimes a part of the lock plate. it keeps some of the flash out of your face.

[rich pierce]

Hungry Horse, your experience shows how challenging it is to make a flintlock that works.  Very small changes make it work or fail.  It's really quite an achievement as a machine.

[Hungry Horse]

Rich;

 geometry plays a part in a percussion lock as well, but not to the degree it does in a flintlock. Almost anybody can build a percussion lock that works. It may not work well, or for a long time, but for the here and now it works. I have seen modern kit guns with flintlocks that don't work at all. There geometry was so bad it would be easier to build a flintlock from scratch, than it would be to repair the kit lock.
 I usually grind the frizzen face down and replace it with a piece of an old cross cut saw blade.

    Hungry Horse
 

[Long John]

Friends,

You are right in that if you are injudicious in the grinding phase you can alter lock geometry.  What ever grinding smooth one does should be done evenly over the face of the worn frizzen so that the radius of curvature and the implied center of the radius does not change.  Those are the primary factors that control lock geometry.  The objective of the grinding is to obtain a smooth surface that provides a uniform surface for the solder bond.   Grinding down one area on the frizzen face more than some others will alter that geometry.   Adding a 0.032" layer of steel to the surface of the frizzen doesn't change the "lock geometry" any more than using a flint that is .032" shorter.  I know lot's of guys that shoot a flint until its edge needs refreshing, knap the edge a little, shoot some more and repeat the process multiple times until all they have is a runty-little stump of a flint.

What I outlined above works for me.

Best Regards,

JMC
John Cholin

[Tim Ault]

Grind away as much as you can of the old surface, mount the frizen in the lock and measure the clearance between the frizzen and the fence, keep it under this measurement.....035 is plenty ....Ed

   Thanks all just didn't want to use something too thin  ,  Longknife what are you referring to when you say "fence "

Tim

  Understood  thank you again   , Tim

Tim, the "flash fence" is the raised ridge between the pan and the hammer, sometimes a part of the pan and sometimes a part of the lock plate. it keeps some of the flash out of your face.