About sharpening your flint( Knapping). With the gun empty, and the flint mounted properly in the jaws of your cock, cradle the gun in your left arm. Use the outside of your Left Thumb to lift the frizzen up off the pan, while you manually lower the cock until the flint's edge is touching the Heel of the flint. ( Heel-- If you view the L-shaped Frizzen like a human foot, the heel is at the bottom of the face, where the vertical and horizontal parts meet.)
Hold the cock open at that height, making sure that your thumb is far enough back from the face of the flint that you won't cut the thumb with the flint. Then, cock the hammer back to full cock, and trip the trigger. This will cause a small thin flake or " spawl" to be broken off the edge of the flint ACROSS the entire width of the flint. In the process, it will " square " the edge of the flint to the face of the frizzen, and sharpen the edge, because that spawl will come off the bottom side of the edge.
Make sure the cock screw remains tight, and you are ready to shoot. You don't need a separate " Flint Knapping hammer", to keep your gunflints sharp in your gun. Knapping hammers are best reserved for working with larger chunks of flints, to produce Gunflints, arrow points, spear points, knives, etc.
