I'm putting a lock together for a Queen Anne Musket now.
The 'kit' from TRS.
All through the building process of this musket the metal parts(castings) have been less than favorable to my liking. I've had to peen some edges to lengthen them so they match contours on opposite sides, straighten bends, and sometimes just plain add metal where it isn't there.
All do-able.
Wood the same. Generous inletting.
The entire thing is actually a restoration of sorts more than a 'build' in my mind.
Matching in pieces of wood where missing, metal where missing or doesn't fit,,etc
Good thing I did that as a living for so long.
Then there's the lock..
Now the lop-sided parts , bent, missing metal pieces take on a whole new problem.
By the time you square up a piece in the lathe or on the Mill, you start to really change dimensions.
It's coming along though.
One thing I'd suggest if using one of these castings kits is to wait to purchase specific drill and reamer sizes untill you are absolutely sure of the finalsizes of specific holes and thread sizes.
I went with simply drilling the plate hole for the tumbler axle and then scrapping the final fit instead of getting a reamer.
The small axle that fits the bridle on the far end,,I turned that clean on the casting of the tumbler first. Measured that dia and drilled the bridal a bit smaller that that turned size.
Then returned to the tumbler and lathe turned/shaved the tumbler axle down to barely slip fit the bridle.
Now the Tumbler has a tight fit on both turning points ,,plate and bridle, and I can lap them in easily.
I originally lathe turned the tumbler sides flat and left a bearing ring on each side as Dphariss shows below.
The bridle I squared up the outside flat area and soft soldered it to a piece of steel to hold on to it.
Then in the mill I flush cut the inside bearing surface and the 'feet' that stand against the lock plate when screwed in place.
Simple caliper measurement of the thickness of the bearing thickness off the tumbler just turned gives you the distance you need for the bridle betw the feet (lockplate) and that bearing surface (outside bearing ring on the tumbler).
Some hand fitting is usually needed when final assembly is done.
Of course the back side of the lock plate has to be flat as well.
This one wasn't of course. I straightened it as best I could with hammer and straight edge. Likely good enough for most mechanisms. But the casting had dips and waves in it. So I clamped that in the mill and after several attemps at leveling a wavy crooked piece, I selected the best position I could get and barely skim milled the back surface level and got what I needed.
The hammer was bent outward from just above the square hole for the tumbler shaft.
Heat red (the O/A torch to the rescue) and back in order.
The as-cast 4 sided flats were way off center from the spindle shaft of the tumbler. I turned that setion of the shaft off the same dia as the bearing section when I trimmed that up in the lathe.
Slow hand file work to fit a 4 sides, tapered flats to the hammer which had 4 already cast somewhat tapered flats in place. Took me 5 hrs just to fit the hammer to the tumbler shaft, inclu D&T for the screw.
Other things like fitting the separate pan and fitting the frizzen also needed extra help due to the out of shape, crooked castings. I made and used a small dia bushing through the frizzen that the frizzen screw shoulders against . This so the frizzin pivots on the slightly larger dia bushing than the #8 screw it slides over. Plus the shoulder of the bushing that the screw tights down on from the outside is just that and not the frizzen itself.
