The easiest, and most convenient way to put an edge on a flint, is to mount the flint in the Cock, and then do the following: cradle the unloaded gun in your left arm( RH shooter), and use your left Thumb to lift the frizzen UP using the skin on the outside of your thumb nail. Make sure your thumb is forward of the face of the frizzen. Now, manually cock the hammer back to release it, and hold the trigger back with your RH index finger. Lift the frizzen up until the edge of the flint will contact the lower end of the "L-Shaped" Frizzen, at the heel, which is at the bottom of the face, or back side of the frizzen. Hold the frizzen in that position and cock the frizzen to full cock. Release the trigger so that the tumbler is engaged by the sear. Now, check again that your thumb is out of the way, and pull the trigger. The hammer and flint will fall forward and strike that heel of the frizzen, chipping off a NEW edge the width of the frizzen, and will knock off long spawls from the UNDERSIDE of the flint edge, giving you a new, Sharp, flint edge. Lower the frizzen after cocking the hammer back to half cock, and check the distance between the front edge of the flint, and the face of the frizzen when its closed. It should be about 1/16"-1/8" of a gap, and no more. Go ahead and test fire the flint to see if you are getting sparks.
You want the face to be hard and smooth. The flint should be scraping thin pieces of steel from the smooth face of the frizzen, rather than gouging the steel out of the frizzen. You will know that the flint is gouging when you begin to see a line across the width of the frizzen where it first impacts, that begins to form a RUT. That is no good, as it will begin to eat the edge of your flint, and prevent a sharp flint from scraping steel. If you have gouging, check how the flint is mounted in the jaws. Then use a protractor to check the Angle of Impact. It should be 60 degrees, using the POI as the center point on your protractor, the baseline being a line along the bottom side of your flint to the centerpoint, and the upper axis being a line from the center point to the top rearward most point of the frizzen. If you didn't notice before, the frizzen is slightly curved so that the top of the frizzen is about 10 degrees to the rear of vertical.
Flints widths. Yes, make them, or buy them the width of your frizzen. Yes, you can use smaller ones, but why not maximize your opportunity to get sparks from the frizzen by having the entire width of the frizzen scraped by the edge of the frizzen.
No, do make "teeth" on your flint's edge. All that does is destroy expensive flint, and reduce the number of shots you will get from the remaining flint.
If your flint strikes the frizzen at a 60 degree angle, it takes advantage of the normal fracture lines for silicate rocks, and will " Self-knapp" with each firing. That gives you a new, sharp edge for the next shot, with no bits of metal clogging the edge.
"Teeth" simply leave areas for bits of steel to remain on the flint's edge, and those will prevent the flint from cutting good steel on the next few firings, until you reach a point that the flint is not cutting steel any more. Your shooting will be ruined because your mind will be constantly worrying if the next time you pull the trigger you will get sparks. Instead of concentrating on your sight picture, and your front sight, you will be thinking about that flint, and whether it will spark. That is No way to shoot a gun. I have seen some shooters become so disgusted with their flintlocks, that they sold them and abandoned shooting flintlocks altogether. All that was really needed was a properly tuned lock, and an education on how to keep it shooting reliably. :thumbsup:
