Mark,
Welcome to ALR!
As Taylor mentioned, most of us are steeped in traditional flintlock art and craft. That being said, most of the folks here buy locks as purchased components. Some of us are skilled enough to take a set of castings from Flintlocks.com or The Rifle Shoppe and turn out a finished lock and a very, very few of us can build a lock from scratch as you are attempting. There are some extremely important details of lock geometry that separate a functioning flintlock from a non-functional piece of metalwork. We are talking about less than a 10% error in dimension and angle! Only a very few know the relations well enough to build from scratch. A lock can be built through trial and error but be prepared for lots of trials and errors before you have a lock that works well.
I would suggest buying a lock that has a good reputation for function, like the Chambers large Siler (
www.Flintlocks.com), and at least using those internals and the lock plate as a template for what you want to build. You can get a small Ketland lock from Chambers. You could make the lock you pictured from a Small Siler. I think that such a path would be a better route for a beginning builder.
I'm currently working on gun #18. On one I used a small Siler kit from Chambers, modified it to a 1750 form, and used it to build the pistol nobody here likes. That was a lot of work! I learned a lot in the process. I ended up with a pistol that is fun to shoot. But nothing breeds success as well as success! On subsequent guns I used Chambers locks that I modified to fit the gun I wanted to build.
Good luck! And remember, you are amongst friends!
JMC
John Cholin
