OK, Karwalis, here's your answer. It's two fold. First if you bother to go back five or six years on this site about fifteen percent of the questions on the flintlock forum are about getting the Lymans to work, either ignition problems, no spark, or a set trigger that doesn't work. In the last forty years, I've helped get these, some early T C's, and even the CVA family flintlocks to function properly. Most of the spark problems were poorly hardened frizzens, both too soft or too hard, or weak springs, and architecture. The rest of the locks that were manufactured properly worked fine. Only a few needed a lock replacement due to availability of parts. Ignition problems were either too small of a tough hole, or poor cleaning of the patent breech, or the use of sub powder. The triggers were easy to fix by tuning, and polishing. My answer was relating to the cost of replacing the lock and trigger, by those that don't have the skill to take care of problems that shouldn't be on a new gun. I've owned a half dozen of these for short periods of time by way of trades, and passed them on. I will admit they are an accurate gun, when properly tuned. I've also owned a couple of TC's, before they came out with the fix, the fix at the time, was either the Lyman cock, or modifying the TC cock by bending in the forge. That said, I hate to see newbie's struggling with a new flintlock out of the box. Though the Lyman's fair better than some of the others out there. I will admit that I haven't owned one of these for more than a few days at a time in the last ten years, I generally tune them, then donate them to the Scout shooting programs, or Hunter Safety.
Bill
