About some folks shoeing a frizzen. What materials do you use? And how do you go about it?
SM
SM
Thanks DaveHi,
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
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