Poorly Assembled Brown Bess Lock

[rich pierce]

Big wheel keep on turning!

 

[Sam squanch]

Proud Mary keep on burning……Leonard Nimoy version…….

 

[FlinterNick]

Big wheel keep on turning!

Indian Locks are just very difficult to work on and their owner’s don’t want to pay for the workmanship.

 

[FlinterNick]

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Hi Ya

Youre doing everything correctly here !

And great job on the screw the only thing i do differently in this situation with Indian Locks is I make sure that screws are counter sunk to the tumbler by leaving a small chamfer on the shaft beneath the head of the screw, this keeps the parts from slipping, I’ll see if I can find an example, but lately I’ve been turning away Indian made locks, i just have too many rifle shoppe kits too assemble.

Indian made locks are full of inconsistent geometric issues, all starting with the shape of the flintcock and location of the bridle.

Personally If I were an Indian made dealer I woudln’t assemble these locks, I’d send them to the USA to be assembled with templates, their quality control would increase, a prices would increase slightly.

One thing i forgot to add in regards to Indian Locks is the hardening process.

If you’re not aware of it, the steel they use isn’t any kind of standard carbon steel.

They often use recycled steels from carbon steel and stainless. Indian is known as the steel recycling capital of the world and they don’t separate steel types when they melt them down into stock.

so you what you end up with is carbon steels mixed with improper amounts of iron, chromium, nickel, carbon and manganese and hardening those parts can be complicated.

What i do for the frizzens is i heat them to around 1600 and quench them in a hot water brine (almost boiling) of potassium nitrate or tree stump remover, this gets the hard enough. Same with springs and internal parts.

I polish the plates up to 220 and then shot peen them in a large tumbler, this gives a kind of case hardened surface, not like real case hardening but it’s adequate.