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Hi,
There are different ways to do it. Putting a sole on a frizzen has several advantages. It adds mass to the frizzen, which is often a good thing and the sole can be hardened optimally without compromising that feature when tempering the frizzen after hardening. A sole can be attached with steel rivets, which was often done in the past. However, the frizzen must be annealed to drill it. The method I use is easy and I consider it the best option by far. You don't need to anneal the frizzen just lleave it as it is. Make a frizzen face or sole from annealed high carbon steel. Grind it to shape and fit it to the curve of the frizzen face. Then harden it by bringing it to bright red and quenching in oil. Drop it in the quench on its edge which should reduce any warping. I often give the sole a little more curve than needed, which gets straightened a little during quench. Clean up both sides of the sole and the frizzen face and tin the face with plumber's solder or low temp silver bearing solder. Flux the insdie face of the sole, lay it on the frizzen face held horizontal and heat the frizzen from underneath until the solder flow and the sole settles into place. Then let cool and clean up. I make the sole a little over sized and grind off the excess after soldering. One word of warning: make sure that added thickness of the sole will clear the fence on the pan. That is a problem for some locks like Silers. You can thin the sole on the bottom to fit, file back the fence, or end the sole above the fence. One nice thing with this method is that the frizzen is not altered in any way and if the sole doesn't work for you, just heat and remove it, and clean up the frizzen. You are back to square one.

dave
 
Hi,
There are different ways to do it. Putting a sole on a frizzen has several advantages. It adds mass to the frizzen, which is often a good thing and the sole can be hardened optimally without compromising that feature when tempering the frizzen after hardening. A sole can be attached with steel rivets, which was often done in the past. However, the frizzen must be annealed to drill it. The method I use is easy and I consider it the best option by far. You don't need to anneal the frizzen just lleave it as it is. Make a frizzen face or sole from annealed high carbon steel. Grind it to shape and fit it to the curve of the frizzen face. Then harden it by bringing it to bright red and quenching in oil. Drop it in the quench on its edge which should reduce any warping. I often give the sole a little more curve than needed, which gets straightened a little during quench. Clean up both sides of the sole and the frizzen face and tin the face with plumber's solder or low temp silver bearing solder. Flux the insdie face of the sole, lay it on the frizzen face held horizontal and heat the frizzen from underneath until the solder flow and the sole settles into place. Then let cool and clean up. I make the sole a little over sized and grind off the excess after soldering. One word of warning: make sure that added thickness of the sole will clear the fence on the pan. That is a problem for some locks like Silers. You can thin the sole on the bottom to fit, file back the fence, or end the sole above the fence. One nice thing with this method is that the frizzen is not altered in any way and if the sole doesn't work for you, just heat and remove it, and clean up the frizzen. You are back to square one.

dave
Thanks Dave
 
Dave,

Your way is best I'm sure, but a mate back in the UK, who shoots national and International with his "Besses, uses "Araldite" epoxy to hold the facing on.
He found that old wood saws make nice thin faces, and seem to last forever, (or nearly so!)

Best regards,
R.
 
Any heat will soften the facing. When any solder melts it is hot enough to remove hardness of the facing.
Any good lock today uses tool steel hard all the way through. Case hardened iron is long gone.
 
45 Man,

Low temp solder will not remove the temper. Trust Dave on this if not me. Dave knows of what he speaks.

Case hardened iron is also not long gone, and when working on antique arms it is more or less All we are dealing with.

Best,
R.
 
Thanks Dave, Did it now and it came out perfect. Hacksaw blade heated cherry red. Then quenched in oil. Heated back to a cherry red and then dipped in cherry red.( I liked the old kasenit better)
Back up to red and then in the oil again. Soft soldered it on cleaned it up and it sparks like mad.
Was on an old Lyman frizzen. Thanks to everyone for the input.

Sm
 
Great! It really is pretty easy and the heating for soldering does little to affect the hardening. Richard, the epoxy sounds like a neat idea and sure would simplify the process. I will stick with solder only because it fills in the seam between the frizzen and sole and when you grind the edges flush the seam almost disappears except if you brown or blue the frizzen, which I never do.

dave
 
Here's a 1833 Manton carbine lock that had steel applied to the frizzen when it was new. Unfortunately, most of the carbines were dismantled and the parts sold off. Mike
3266612_1.jpg
 
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