How Long Do You Expect A Frizzen To Last ?

We have had a lot of discussion on how long a flint will last or how many shots one should expect to get from a flint.
My question is how many shots should I expect from a well hardened frizzen face before it needs to either be re hardened or re faced ?
I do a lot of in house practice with my firearms and use a wooden "flint" when dry firing my flintlocks to keep the wear down .

I’ve never worn one out

How Long Do You Expect A Frizzen To Last ?

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I think that nobody can answer you exactly. If you have a good frizzen in good steel and pretty hardened at the beginning, it will serve a long time and if you are talking about something like Pedersoli (also Ardesa, Tradition, etc.) that will be different: the Pedersoli frizzen is good for an indeterminate time but not very long, this time is never long as with a frizzen of the old generation: machinery (micro-fusion) is not as good as the forge...

Some will out live you others will have to be rehardened. How long depends on if was case hardened and how deep the case was. I have also drawn back frizzens because they were too hard. Would only spark if the flint was new. Bottom line if it ain't broke don't worry

I have a Pedersoli Mortimer that was made In 1989. That frizzen has 1000s of shots on it. Still sparks as good as the day it was made.

Just curious.... does anyone know someone who will rework a frizzen for those of us who don't have a forge (or blacksmith skills)?

I have a Japanese made flintlock pistol and the frizzen needed hardening before it would spark. At the time I got it hardened the gunsmith used a can of some kind of carbon powder, I forget the name at the moment, to harden its face. Anyway the case hardening was thin and I only got about 25 or so shots out of it. But it could be the flints I was using too.

This was before the internet existed when you used the Dixie Gun Works catalogue as your reference for the most part. Public libraries had little to nothing on the subjects of flintlocks etc.

I have since gotten a new frizzen that I need to fit to it and harden. But I just haven’t done it yet. I am a lot more knowledgeable about it now. The Japanese frizzen is made from a high chrome steel alloy and is not really of a type of steel that is good for spark making.

earlwb said:

I have a Japanese made flintlock pistol and the frizzen needed hardening before it would spark. At the time I got it hardened the gunsmith used a can of some kind of carbon powder, I forget the name at the moment,

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I found the Burlington chert flints cause more rapid surface wear to frizzen faces than do the French or English flints. There are rifles over 200 years old that are still sparking well.

I'd expect the frizzens on my rifle & smoothbores to be in good order when my grandkids are in the old folks home...if I had any grandkids, that is.

I'd expect the frizzens on my rifle & smoothbores to be in good order when my grandkids are in the old folks home...if I had any grandkids, that is.

Tom A Hawk said:

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Yes, that is the stuff. Thanks not enough coffee here in the morning yet.

Tom A Hawk said:

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Yes, that is the stuff. Thanks not enough coffee here in the morning yet.

Apologies. Darn thing double posted on me.

The Japanese at the time only shipped non- functional guns. So usually they do something to make them not able to be fired. In this case a frizzen that doesn’t work. They actually have a large mini-industry of making accurate non-functional replicas of all kinds of guns for their local consumption.

waksupi said:

I found the Burlington chert flints cause more rapid surface wear to frizzen faces than do the French or English flints. There are rifles over 200 years old that are still sparking well.

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Yeah I was thinking that might be one problem I had too. Way back in 1978 I was able to visit Dixie Gun Works and I went a bit crazy buying stuff. But at the time they only had some American Flints and no British or Euro flints. So I got some of those.

I expect a frizzen on my flintlocks to outlive me. They've been fired a lot - mostly three of them burned cases of powder - but all do their duty.

You don't really need a forge or much in the way of blacksmithing skills to use Kaseknit. You DO need a large hot fire that you can keep going for several hours and some kind of crucible to put the frizzen and the Kaseknit in. If you know somebody who has a furnace that burns coal, that makes a good heat source... cast iron wood stove will work too.

Probably easier to learn the rudiments of 'smithing, get a cheap Amazon forge and forge a spring steel frizzen. Expect a high scrap ratio until you get the hang of things. You might be able to fashion one out of an old leaf spring.

I've got an old T/C Renegade flinter. So far have not noticed any issues. Don't really expect any during what remains of my life.

I've had to reface many imported frizzens with a piece of good high carbon steel from a band saw blade. Once installed they will last a LONG time, in fact have never worn one out.

Olde Goat said:

Just curious.... does anyone know someone who will rework a frizzen for those of us who don't have a forge (or blacksmith skills)?

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The gunsmith at The Log Cabin in Lodi OH does this work.

I have a Roller lock on a .44 longrifle from the 70s, the previous owner said the rifle had at least 50K shots on it from competitive shooting by the previous two owners, the frizzen was getting pretty thin but still sparked like a roman candle. I sent the lock back to Mr. Roller for a new frizzen, he ground the old frizzen down to take the gouges out of it, sent me a new frizzen and said to shoot the old one until it flew down range which it did in another year or so.

Bottom line; frizzens are hard to wear out, it took 50 years of shooting to wear mine out, the lock was made in 72.

I started as a match shooter and rifle builder in the 70's. I couldn't begin to estimate how many thousands of rounds I have fired. During that time the only time I have ever had to harden a frizzen was when I used a Siler lock kit to build a rifle. On the pages I follow there seems to be a continuous stream of how can I reharden my frizzen which leads me to 2 conclusions.
1 There must be a lot of what can only be called junk that is being sold To people who think they are getting a bargain, you get what you pay for.
2 People really need an experienced shooter as a mentor. A recent post on one of the pages I follow showed this very clearly. The shooter had just got his first flintlock and taken it out to shoot for the first time. Said he had fired around 50 shots. When he started he was getting lots of spark. As he continued to shoot he got less and less spark until now he is getting no spark. so now he was going to have to reharden his frizzen. Duhhhhhhhhhh