I ask the same question a while back and I got a private message and this is part of it. It shed some lite on the subject for me. :thumbsup:
Sometimes the biggest headache is the frizzen spring, because some of our lock makers believe that the spring must put resistance to the frizzen to help make sparks. They are wrong. A frizzen spring's ONLY job is to keep the frizzen closed when the muzzle is pointed to the ground. If your frizzen has to push down on the frizzen spring to open, you need to do some work. Most people are not comfortable reducing spring tensions, so this is what you do to fix this without altering the spring.
First, polish both the contact point on the frizzen spring, and the " cam " or " heel " of the frizzen that makes contact with the spring. If you think of the frizzen as a boot, the cam becomes the " heel of the boot". When the frizzen is close, the cam must rest on the frizzen spring at that contact point. It needs only a very small, narrow flat spot on the bottom of the cam to stay in position when the frizzen is closed to fire. Most of the cams have very wide flats. Use a file too file a rounded arc to the forward side of the cam, leaving the rear face of the cam straight and at right angles to the spring. Then, use a file or grinder, to polish a very slight depression in the spring, right behind the contact point where the cam rests. This creates a " pothole" that lets the cam swing free into air when it first begins to move when struck by the flint. With nothing dragging on the cam, the frizzen " pops " open before the spring can move up and put pressure on the cam again. A well tuned frizzen will produce a shower of sparks with NO frizzen Spring in the lock at all! In fact, the target shooters will often leave the frizzen spring out of their locks, since they can't prime their guns until they are ready to fire, and gravity keeps the frizzen closed when they align their sights to fire the lock and gun. A frizzen weighs less than 1/2 pound, and the tension on the frizzen spring only needs to be about 1.5 lbs at most. Most frizzen springs I examine run more than 12 lbs. Until I fix them. Now you know how to fix them, too.
You will get much greater life out of your flints with a properly tuned lock.
