I always found "cherry red" is a little missleading and difficult when the light is to bright or to dark. In Ferlach they told us they hardened in the past just on full moon, there was the superstition that springs would last longer. But it makes sense, back then it was the only possibility to harden in the same light conditions.
When I was an apprentice in the 1970s we would have heated the whole component on firebrick until bright red and then packed it in the carbon powder container completely covered. After an hour or more we would dig it out and clean all the compound off the part then probably repeat the process depending upon how hard it felt when cleaning it. We'd also clean the component before heating it to cherry red and then quenching it.
Thank you Chap!! I have this identical problem with a militia musket I picked up. I've been pondering picking up some fire bricks. Now that I've seen someone actually acconplish the hardening. I'll go ahead and get this project underway.
I have used similar hardening compound and found it needs to be the next colour change hotter than what I would call cherry red. More like yellow. I think the small torch makes it difficult. Thanks for the video
Love your deeper dives into home shop gun repairs and such. Along with the use of very basic tooling, you make it seem as though I could truely do many of these project myself. I am also looking forward to seeing more advanced projects utilizing the lathe.👍
The aim is indeed to get by with minimal tooling. The new workshop it much airier and better organized but I don’t actually have much more space than I did before.
I made a frizzen out of scrap steel. I hardened it by wrapping it up in leather scraps, sealing it inside a soup can, and then putting the sealed can in a campfire for an hour.
@@danielkaczynski9702 Yeah, it worked. Not well, mind you, but that's more to do with the fact that the rest of my lock was also made of kludgy scrap metal parts.
The original, and best way to harden an iron frizzen is to "pack carburise" it. Essentially you put in a pot filled with charcoal, with a sealed lid, and place it in a fire for several hours. The lack of oxygen results in a high concentration carbon monoxide within the jar, which fuses to the surface of the frizzen, effectively case-hardening it. The difference between this method and others, is that pack carburising creates a thicker "skin" of high-carbon steel (up to 1/16" deep"), resulting in a frizzen that will last a great many shots before it needs to be re-hardened.
Its called case hardening, you heat it to bright cherry red after you put the carbon on it. Then you heat it bright cherry red again then dunk it. Do it two three times. After you heat it to dull cherry red and cool it. That's called annealing and relieves stress so it don't crack.
Lovely work Sir Bloke.. ^~^ A dear friend how builds Flintlocks tells me that a trick to increase the protection to the lower Frizzen pivot and lower dog-leg is once clamped with a Bronze C-clamp for heat sync and handling, to encase that area and clamp with potters clay to help shield the lower steel from thermal heating. Also a inexpensive thermal temp gage is best since the temp window for this is so critical. ^_^
If at first you don't succeed.... beat on it, yell at it, blame the instructions, call for support, ignore the support, yell and blame some more (with possible beating), re-read the instructions, then do the job correctly. Nah, just beat on it till it breaks (blame it on poor manufacturing) try to return it, or it finally works. There... problem solved! Congrats on the subscriber milestone!
Just a note, reading through a manual on heat treatment from my father's library: heating the steel beyond approximately 1700° F can cause the steel to develop significant quantities of cementite. This can make the piece significantly more brittle and likely to break. Obviously judging a piece's temperature by its color is highly subjective, but essentially the product most of us will use is called Cherry Red for a reason. Dont overheat your piece and quench it immediately or you may ruin it.
@@thebotrchap If you've read of methods where a part is hardened in an oven with leather scraps, horn/hook shavings, or bloodmeal mixed with iron dust and potash, you're making the ferrocyanide complex in situ and using it in the same moment.
I have re-hardened original frizzens with a compound called Kasenite, this does not require to be heated as long. However I don't think it is available anymore as it is considered dangerous to use. I also brushed any residue of the compound off the frizzen with a wire brush prior to quenching, this ensured there was no barrier between the metal and the water.
@@thebotrchap "Kasenit." MSDS here: www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/#id=gjpw0063 In the old days powdered charcoal, chopped leather bits and all sorts of organic stuff was used for case hardening.
@@thebotrchap Potassium ferricyanide is still available for developing traditional wet plate photographs. Crush with sodium carbonate (Washing soda), charcoal and a little molasses as a binder, and you have an excellent hardening compound.
It's a ferrocyanide compound, sodium in this case. Use it around anything acidic and the result will be somewhere between a faint smell of almonds on one extreme, to an extremely long nap... permanent, for that matter.
Great video! Thank you for sharing and showing how it is done. Hardening a frizzen is one thing that I have yet to do. I have an original duelling pistol made by Patrick which I need perform a similar process for. However, for a first go and as it's an original, I think I might bottle it and ask an experienced muzzle loading gunsmith to do this one. I will use a repro for my first attempt...the thought of cracking an original frizzen is rather terrifying! :-)
It's a lot of fun going old school with a flintlock. I've had a .50 Leman Trade Gun for 18 years. A big advantage is when you visit an outdoor range, after two or three shots the place tends to empty out because of the smoke. 😉Another advantage, depending upon where you are, is the extended hunting seasons for muzzleloading firearms.
Cherry red differs wildly in different light. The point at which you can temper is when a magnet stops sticking. Don't use a rare earth, they stop being magnetic forever when hot, use ferrite.
To The Rescue, JUST IN TIME! I was thinking how nice mine would look color Case Hardened? I have a recipe and small parts would be a nice start? next camp fire.
Kasenite is used for case hardening. It contributes carbon to the surface thru migration and then thru heating, converts it to carbide. Tempering reverses some of the carbide increasing ductility. The frisson may be best made from 8620 steel which is then case hardened. Bone casing was done in the day and can be done. It leaves a blue/brown color. I am not sure that the sparks are due to hardened metal. The hardening improves wear. But you may need to make adjustments to the flint itself. The second approach looked much better. It would be nice to know if flint on metal depends on a hardened metal chemically. BTW Nice Myford lathe in the back ground.
I wonder why the directions went with cherry red and not to non-magnetic... For hardening knives and tools, we use magnets to determine when the metal has gotten hot enough to harden... although we use oil quenches, and steel that doesn't need carbon to be added so maybe results vary? I dont know enough about what kind of steel the frizzen is made out of, nor how hard it needs to get to speak from authority. We just use the file method to ensure our steel hardened- a file will skate of hard steel.
The skating file is still a good tell. I also don’t know enough about metallurgy to get into the chemistry. Some frizzens are also constructed with a hardened strip brazed on the strike surface or even dovetailed in the case of some miquelet locks I’ve seen.
In my (fairly limited) experience of case hardening mild steel with a similar compound, a 2 minute soak is fine. Tempering shouldn't be necessary because the bulk metal doesn't harden, and tempering to "blue" really softens the case. Try some scrap mild steel, test with a file before and after tempering to blue to see what I mean :) Tool steel does need tempering because it hardens all the way through, and becomes brittle - but then again, it doesn't need the case hardening compound👍
The longer you toast it the deeper the case...up to about 15 minutes... beyond that it's a law of diminishing returns. That flint needs knapping, do you have a tool for that?
@@thebotrchap Easy to make... a bit of 1/4" (6mm) brass rod with a tiny lip, or reduced portion, turned on the end... about .5mm (1/32") deep and wide. With the lock at half cock, engage the tool with the edge of the flint and tap it with something ... I use the ball on my ball starter...and it will chip off tiny spalls from the flint.... progress across the width of the flint and VOILA! a flint that works like a new one....sometimes better. Takes less than a minute, and gives a flint a new lease of life,,,they can be hard to find these days, and not cheap... :-)
Good video chap, I have the same problem on one of my flintlocks, smooth bore fowler. Good to know there is a fix out there. Also your Baker reproduction, is it a rifled repro, or a smooth bore.
Thank you Chap very interesting. I wonder why not to use a harder steel or alloy in the first place? I am guessing historical accuracy? Also I think your 100k milestone (congrats!) may be having an effect on the advert algorithm - I think there were 4 or 5 ads in those 13 minutes!
I have been told by a reputable black powder gunsmith that a lot of the repros do use inferior steel, and on those locks you'll have to go through this process more often.
Hi i noticed the position of your flint , have you tried it the other way . I.e. upside down . It appears to be almost close to 90 degrees to your frizzen ? Do you ever get the frizzen bouncing back after pulling the trigger ? The angle looks a bit too sharp from the camera angle and i can see the frizzen is excessively worn in the strike area. If you try your flint upside down and even with a piece of leather under the rear , you can change the angle so its not so direct and it may help you and reduce the wear on the frizzen as well as create a longer point of contact producing more spark . Without closer inspection i can’t be sure , just trying to help as many have helped myself . Cheers 😁👍🏻
It just occurred to me that modern shooters probably, over the years, actually put MORE wear and tear on their flintlocks that most troops did. They would have used them for training, and in battle, for a couple of years. But not decades of uses in reenactments, at the range, etc.
@@ralphwatten2426 "Jolly well brothers of the coast! Let us keep that iron dry and sparky for there is plenty of loot and plunder waiting for us - and naked mermaids, suffering from lonelyness and aphrodities" (whisper) I bet they'll never find out that in reality I am a landlocked peasant who's feet have never been above anything else than dry soil....
When heating the metal the way to determine of the metal is hat enough. Find a long magnet once the magnet is no longer pulling to the metal is hot enough. I prefer quenching in oil.
Hey, my small flintlock action I purchased from them (casting kit) turned out great and I hardened mine but its spark production is variable. I was going to use Kasenit on it but was wondering if there is any upside to using a case hardening compound?
Did you still temper the frizzen, after the hardening, as you did in your previous method? I have recently purchased a 1766 Flintlock Charleville musket and will probably have to have this done, at some point.....same with my pistol
I would have tried the magnet trick for gauging the right temperature during hardening. Also quenching in a bucket of used motor oil will do the trick. Glad you got it to work in the end.
Interesting. That compound doesn't seem to work especially well. I've made knives of mild steel before and case hardened them the old fashioned way: put the piece of steel in a can or pipe filled with seed hulls and bone meal, seal it up (with a hole in it) and leave it in the hottest part of a fireplace for a few hours, then quench it in oil. The knives keep an edge with years of sharpening. I wonder if that would work for a frizzen? Its certainly smaller and easier to deal with than a knife. For the technical reasoning, seed hulls and bone meal mix produce a constant stream of carbon monoxide when heated, carbon monoxide being what actually penetrates the steel. The time the steel is left hot is more or less proportional to the thickness of carbon penetration and consequent thickness of case hardening. Quenching in oil, though oil has a lower specific heat than water, avoids the Leidenfrost effect which actually keeps the steel from cooling as quickly in water. Using a gas torch supplies the steel with a lot of hot oxygen (they universally run lean, hence no smoke) and that hot oxygen actually strips carbon out of the steel. Eh, take what I said with a grain of salt. There may be something to case hardening knives that doesn't translate to frizzens.
The reason your frizzen didn't fully snap open was because your flint was way too far forward in the jaws of the hammer. Just before you did the test firing I wanted to scream, "The flint's too far forward! Fix it!"
may want to case harden the sear too as repros tend to be soft. The frizzen should not be able to be hardened being low carbon, the case hardening leaves a hard exterior over a softer interior for resilience. You can throw the frizzen into the case hardening, wont hurt getting it covered in it. All ready for Waterloo now!!
Try shaping a piece of 1/32 gauge plate to fit to size and form of frizzen, harden and temper. then fix to frizzen with JB weld. Job done #, no risk of damage to frizzen. When shaping leave a tag on top end to hold when hardening and tempering to be ground of after J B weld sets
I imagine back in the days this kind of guns where made they where hardening it by rubbing the hot red metal from the forge with a bull's horn, just like for swords
While your second method certainly worked well and I have done a similar procedure myself, I think the reason your first attempt wasn't a success was that you tempered it back too much. The way I temper my frizzen (after doing the similar technique as the second attempt) is to keep a wet paper towel on the striking face of the frizzen while tempering the bottom to a dark straw color and as soon as it reaches that color I submerged the whole frizzen in water.
@@BlokeontheRange it's funny I ran across this video of yours today, I watched another video about case hardenening a while back and it popped up in my suggestions tonight. If you haven't seen any of his videos, there is a Aussie clock maker/machinist that as a side note to one of his series about ancient tool technology is case hardening. His channel name is Clickspring and if you get a chance, look up his Antikythera fragments #3 video. He shows how to do case hardening using scrap leather as a carbon source mixed with salt and flour to make a paste, apply to the mild steel/iron item entirely in a mud pack and set aside to dry. Once dry, make a pocket from clay to hold and completely seal air out from the metal/carbon pack and heat to bright red and allow to soak in that heat for 20 to 80 minutes. Once soaked in the heat, take from the furnace or forge and quench in brine water to produce case hardened steel from mild steel or iron.
I need to do this for my Brown Bess (also have to figure out why it hangs up on half cock if I don’t yank the trigger as hard as I can) If it did crack, would you just have a new frizzen sent to you or would you need to send your whole lock to the smith to have it fitted?
In this case I would have volunteered to send the lock since they are bespoke gunsmiths. I do have a frizzen coming from The Rifle Shoppe for another defarbing project on a San Marco replica French 1777, that’s going to be a “fitting from scratch” job. For your half-cock problem you could try a new mainspring to make the tumbler turn faster, it worked for me on a Snider with the same issue. Another solution would be to add a radius to the external tip of the half-cock notch to help the sear ride over it.
Chap, once I've seen a video on Myth Busters where they hardened a hammer. They put in the hammer after heating in used engine oil as far as I remember because there was so much carbon in it. Can anyone here with background comment on it? Not sure if im speaking bullocks or not :-/
I'm no expert either but oil has a much higher boiling temperature than water so it can cool down an object a lot faster, it can absorb a lot more heat. If you poor water on a hot piece of metal it just turns to steam at 100 degrees C and steam is a good insulator. But always consult the manual before choosing a quenching liquid!
So, a lot of time, at least in knife, tool, and knife shaped object making, we use oil to quench instead of water. Partially this can be to add last second carbon, but more often it is to get a specific max hardness, with various formulas of quench oil. But also, oil can be pre-heated to much higher temp than water. With 4140 steel for example, a shop favorite is to use peanut oil preheated to 250 to 265 degrees, and quench when the work piece is non-magnetic. By using oil, and heated oil we get fewer (but absolutely not zero) cracks and failures in hardening. Also, for the type of hardness we are shooting for, we don't need or especially want a water quench. Water quenches can get steel harder, and a deeper hard than oil can, but can be, especially in hands of a newbie, an easier way to crack, warp or otherwise destroy a piece. It's important to note that even with an oil quench, tools and knifes still get brittle hard, and except for very rare and odd use cases ( I can't think of any but I'm sure there exists one somewhere) still need to be tempered- losing some hardness but also becoming much less brittle
The Carbon absorption stops at 780 degrees Celcius for all practical purpouses (carbon absorption rate drops of below practical use) which is more or less instant when quenching in oil or water. Absorbtion on carburization is in order of 4 hours/1mm at 850 C (66-67HRc hardness to depth of 1mm) on mild steel. Oil is SLOWER than water and can be heated (allowing even slower cooling), this means the stresses are reduced-->thougher steel with fewer cracks, the steel as quenched is only marginally softer so tempering is still advisable on most parts.
Myford ML7. Great little big lathe when space is an issue. Plenty of accessories and parts are still being made for them and an active user community out there on the net.
I wonder why the first part wasn't deleted because the second hardening technique is the only one that will actually work. If you want to READ about all this and more, I invite you to www.geojohn.org/BlackPowder/Musketoon/ShootingTheFlintlock.html By the way, a normal frizzen is made out of mild, low carbon steel that is not heat treatable. This is why the striking surface must be "carburetted" (carbon added with heat and 'Cherry Red' compound) by the process of "case hardening." When mild steel is case hardened, only the very thin outside layer gets hard (and capable of sparking) while the rest of the metal remains soft and tough and so, not being made brittle, it can't crack. The first part of the video is incorrect, it is not necessary to anneal the tail part of the frizzen after hardening, this only risks the hardened face losing temper. Polishing to mirror smoothness is a terrible waste of time.
The first part was shown because I was following the instructions as provided with the compound. As you say, it doesn’t work, so it’s important that people know that it doesn’t work.
@@BlokeontheRange I could see historically. But our current knowledge of metallurgy let’s us have a hard steel that’s also very tough. I’d be curious on the actual hardness of the through thickness once this is done. Maybe I’ll have to find one and test it lol.
Thankfully the smoke heads to the workshop had been removed. Micro adjustment relocation tool close to vice..... . The God of Engineering is an old god who demands sacrifice commonly in salty sexual swear words and when the task is truly difficult, the blood of the Engineer asking for his favour. It is his law and our code.
@@mikehoare6093 They still do but special order only. They have proved so popular that they took it off their website to keep the orders down to a manageable level. I talked with Peter last year to ask if they still made them.
I always found "cherry red" is a little missleading and difficult when the light is to bright or to dark.
In Ferlach they told us they hardened in the past just on full moon, there was the superstition that springs would last longer. But it makes sense, back then it was the only possibility to harden in the same light conditions.
That is a very interesting point.
Kasinet is better
7:14 RIP spider 😢
Saw that moment. Just the moment the chap moved his arm down, the spider was baked. Let's mourn for the dead soul.
I saw it too! "hey chap what ya doin'?"...."oh god why?!!!"
uff spider
When I was an apprentice in the 1970s we would have heated the whole component on firebrick until bright red and then packed it in the carbon powder container completely covered. After an hour or more we would dig it out and clean all the compound off the part then probably repeat the process depending upon how hard it felt when cleaning it. We'd also clean the component before heating it to cherry red and then quenching it.
That’s how I was taught as an apprentice in the 1980’s!
Me too. Airtight box, old style.
Thank you Chap!! I have this identical problem with a militia musket I picked up. I've been pondering picking up some fire bricks. Now that I've seen someone actually acconplish the hardening. I'll go ahead and get this project underway.
Good info. My original Brown Bess' frizzen is going to need this treatment after sitting in a cave in Nepal for the better part of two centuries.
A tidy workshop is the sign of a dirty mind!
No Frenchmen were harmed in the filming of this episode.
Richard Sharpe is not pleased.
Always a pleasure to watch a Bloke video.
I have used similar hardening compound and found it needs to be the next colour change hotter than what I would call cherry red. More like yellow. I think the small torch makes it difficult. Thanks for the video
Love your deeper dives into home shop gun repairs and such. Along with the use of very basic tooling, you make it seem as though I could truely do many of these project myself. I am also looking forward to seeing more advanced projects utilizing the lathe.👍
The aim is indeed to get by with minimal tooling. The new workshop it much airier and better organized but I don’t actually have much more space than I did before.
I made a frizzen out of scrap steel. I hardened it by wrapping it up in leather scraps, sealing it inside a soup can, and then putting the sealed can in a campfire for an hour.
I’ve seen that method yes
But did it work?
@@danielkaczynski9702 Yeah, it worked. Not well, mind you, but that's more to do with the fact that the rest of my lock was also made of kludgy scrap metal parts.
This would work. Also with bone scraps. The important thing with carbon case hardening is that it is animal carbon, rather than plant-based.
VERY interesting! Good job, I never would have guessed that a frizzen would need to be rehardened.
When hardening small steel parts, its always worth it to stack up some bricks around it. Gets the parts much hotter faster.
I will 2nd this. What I was shown to do ages ago.
I need to get some proper foamy refractive bricks to hollow out and build a mini forge.
The original, and best way to harden an iron frizzen is to "pack carburise" it. Essentially you put in a pot filled with charcoal, with a sealed lid, and place it in a fire for several hours. The lack of oxygen results in a high concentration carbon monoxide within the jar, which fuses to the surface of the frizzen, effectively case-hardening it. The difference between this method and others, is that pack carburising creates a thicker "skin" of high-carbon steel (up to 1/16" deep"), resulting in a frizzen that will last a great many shots before it needs to be re-hardened.
Its called case hardening, you heat it to bright cherry red after you put the carbon on it. Then you heat it bright cherry red again then dunk it. Do it two three times. After you heat it to dull cherry red and cool it. That's called annealing and relieves stress so it don't crack.
So close to 100K subs. Hope you get there soon. Cheers, b.
This vid only came out 4 hours ago, how the hell did you comment this 2 days ago
Wow, this video was released after they reached 100k subs, but you saw the video before it. How??
Thanks for showing the first attempt. Also, good job editing. You didn't cut out too much and I didn't need to skip forward.
Your video was very interesting and a great teaching method for future storage in my mind. Thanks Bloke on the Range. 🤗
Lovely work Sir Bloke.. ^~^ A dear friend how builds Flintlocks tells me that a trick to increase the protection to the lower Frizzen pivot and lower dog-leg is once clamped with a Bronze C-clamp for heat sync and handling, to encase that area and clamp with potters clay to help shield the lower steel from thermal heating. Also a inexpensive thermal temp gage is best since the temp window for this is so critical. ^_^
If at first you don't succeed.... beat on it, yell at it, blame the instructions, call for support, ignore the support, yell and blame some more (with possible beating), re-read the instructions, then do the job correctly. Nah, just beat on it till it breaks (blame it on poor manufacturing) try to return it, or it finally works. There... problem solved! Congrats on the subscriber milestone!
Just a note, reading through a manual on heat treatment from my father's library: heating the steel beyond approximately 1700° F can cause the steel to develop significant quantities of cementite.
This can make the piece significantly more brittle and likely to break. Obviously judging a piece's temperature by its color is highly subjective, but essentially the product most of us will use is called Cherry Red for a reason. Dont overheat your piece and quench it immediately or you may ruin it.
Potassium ferrocyanide (Gelbes blutlaugensaltz) is what gunsmiths use for hardening where Kasenit is unavailable.
Good to know!
@@thebotrchap If you've read of methods where a part is hardened in an oven with leather scraps, horn/hook shavings, or bloodmeal mixed with iron dust and potash, you're making the ferrocyanide complex in situ and using it in the same moment.
I have re-hardened original frizzens with a compound called Kasenite, this does not require to be heated as long. However I don't think it is available anymore as it is considered dangerous to use. I also brushed any residue of the compound off the frizzen with a wire brush prior to quenching, this ensured there was no barrier between the metal and the water.
Kasenite appears to have been the gold standard but yeah sadly now gone. TOW claim that this is the successor product.
@@thebotrchap "Kasenit." MSDS here: www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/#id=gjpw0063
In the old days powdered charcoal, chopped leather bits and all sorts of organic stuff was used for case hardening.
@@thebotrchap Potassium ferricyanide is still available for developing traditional wet plate photographs. Crush with sodium carbonate (Washing soda), charcoal and a little molasses as a binder, and you have an excellent hardening compound.
It's a ferrocyanide compound, sodium in this case. Use it around anything acidic and the result will be somewhere between a faint smell of almonds on one extreme, to an extremely long nap... permanent, for that matter.
@@mfree80286 Definitely best done in a well ventilated area, that's for sure.
I suppose youtube had to place an ad at exactly the right point at least once? Congrats! Success!
I love the new shop.
Great video! Thank you for sharing and showing how it is done. Hardening a frizzen is one thing that I have yet to do. I have an original duelling pistol made by Patrick which I need perform a similar process for. However, for a first go and as it's an original, I think I might bottle it and ask an experienced muzzle loading gunsmith to do this one. I will use a repro for my first attempt...the thought of cracking an original frizzen is rather terrifying! :-)
Fascinating,thanks for sharing this process
@10:25 : granted, but what sauce do i use, and which wine goes best with roast frizzon?
@sman7290 you could make bone charcoal as well
my guess, Pepper spray gravy and a glass of hoppe's
The mad scientist at work.
Great channel !😎
I'm pleased to see that its not only me drink tea from a bucket 😂😂
kassenite, done the same bringing a replacement frizzen on a bunderbuss into life
Fantastic video. Thank you. Cheers
I was thinking about getting a flintlock. Since I live in the Appalachian mountains of America, I might go with a Kentucky rifle.
DO IT! It’s a whole other aspect of shooting.
Check out Jim Kibler rifles. His Southern Mountain type would probably fit the bill nicely.
It's a lot of fun going old school with a flintlock. I've had a .50 Leman Trade Gun for 18 years. A big advantage is when you visit an outdoor range, after two or three shots the place tends to empty out because of the smoke. 😉Another advantage, depending upon where you are, is the extended hunting seasons for muzzleloading firearms.
Cherry red differs wildly in different light. The point at which you can temper is when a magnet stops sticking. Don't use a rare earth, they stop being magnetic forever when hot, use ferrite.
I just picked up a new fancy modern percussion cap rifle in the off chance those pesky red coats come back
Very instructional. I think you may need to polish the hole in the frizzen so it moves to the full extent of rotation.
To The Rescue, JUST IN TIME!
I was thinking how nice mine would look color Case Hardened? I have a recipe and small parts would be a nice start? next camp fire.
Kasenite is used for case hardening. It contributes carbon to the surface thru migration and then thru heating, converts it to carbide. Tempering reverses some of the carbide increasing ductility. The frisson may be best made from 8620 steel which is then case hardened. Bone casing was done in the day and can be done. It leaves a blue/brown color. I am not sure that the sparks are due to hardened metal. The hardening improves wear. But you may need to make adjustments to the flint itself.
The second approach looked much better. It would be nice to know if flint on metal depends on a hardened metal chemically.
BTW Nice Myford lathe in the back ground.
I wonder why the directions went with cherry red and not to non-magnetic...
For hardening knives and tools, we use magnets to determine when the metal has gotten hot enough to harden... although we use oil quenches, and steel that doesn't need carbon to be added so maybe results vary?
I dont know enough about what kind of steel the frizzen is made out of, nor how hard it needs to get to speak from authority.
We just use the file method to ensure our steel hardened- a file will skate of hard steel.
The skating file is still a good tell. I also don’t know enough about metallurgy to get into the chemistry. Some frizzens are also constructed with a hardened strip brazed on the strike surface or even dovetailed in the case of some miquelet locks I’ve seen.
Probably because reliable magnets wasn't as commonly availiable even to blacksmiths when the instructions were originally written down.
Very cool! I have never seen this done before.
In my (fairly limited) experience of case hardening mild steel with a similar compound, a 2 minute soak is fine. Tempering shouldn't be necessary because the bulk metal doesn't harden, and tempering to "blue" really softens the case. Try some scrap mild steel, test with a file before and after tempering to blue to see what I mean :) Tool steel does need tempering because it hardens all the way through, and becomes brittle - but then again, it doesn't need the case hardening compound👍
The longer you toast it the deeper the case...up to about 15 minutes... beyond that it's a law of diminishing returns. That flint needs knapping, do you have a tool for that?
Not yet
@@thebotrchap Easy to make... a bit of 1/4" (6mm) brass rod with a tiny lip, or reduced portion, turned on the end... about .5mm (1/32") deep and wide. With the lock at half cock, engage the tool with the edge of the flint and tap it with something ... I use the ball on my ball starter...and it will chip off tiny spalls from the flint.... progress across the width of the flint and VOILA! a flint that works like a new one....sometimes better. Takes less than a minute, and gives a flint a new lease of life,,,they can be hard to find these days, and not cheap... :-)
Good video chap, I have the same problem on one of my flintlocks, smooth bore fowler. Good to know there is a fix out there. Also your Baker reproduction, is it a rifled repro, or a smooth bore.
Rifled repro with correct number of grooves and twist.
Thank you Chap very interesting. I wonder why not to use a harder steel or alloy in the first place? I am guessing historical accuracy? Also I think your 100k milestone (congrats!) may be having an effect on the advert algorithm - I think there were 4 or 5 ads in those 13 minutes!
4-5 😳 yeesh
The steel needs to be hard on the front for sparks, but tough on the back to support the front. If it were hard all through it would just snap.
I have been told by a reputable black powder gunsmith that a lot of the repros do use inferior steel, and on those locks you'll have to go through this process more often.
@@bbainter7880 I can believe that
Hi i noticed the position of your flint , have you tried it the other way . I.e. upside down . It appears to be almost close to 90 degrees to your frizzen ?
Do you ever get the frizzen bouncing back after pulling the trigger ?
The angle looks a bit too sharp from the camera angle
and i can see the frizzen is excessively worn in the strike area.
If you try your flint upside down and even with a piece of leather under the rear , you can change the angle so its not so direct and it may help you and reduce the wear on the frizzen as well as create a longer point of contact producing more spark .
Without closer inspection i can’t be sure , just trying to help as
many have helped myself .
Cheers 😁👍🏻
Good video. So, when will we see you guys doing a "mad minute" with your flintlock?
It just occurred to me that modern shooters probably, over the years, actually put MORE wear and tear on their flintlocks that most troops did. They would have used them for training, and in battle, for a couple of years. But not decades of uses in reenactments, at the range, etc.
Great job thank you
Thanks for the video.
And by the way Sherry red is only about 800 Degrees. I think you'd be better off with an orange heat
Looks like that did the trick. It may not be relevant per se, but the frizzen springs on repros seem very weak compared to the originals.
as the good old pirates used to say: "take care of your frizzen or you might end up in prison"
Argh Captain, wise words, wise words they are. Argh!
Get yer hands off me booty
Sorry..
@@ralphwatten2426
"Jolly well brothers of the coast! Let us keep that iron dry and sparky for there is plenty of loot and plunder waiting for us - and naked mermaids, suffering from lonelyness and aphrodities"
(whisper) I bet they'll never find out that in reality I am a landlocked peasant who's feet have never been above anything else than dry soil....
@@JosipRadnik1 Aye, all that is true buccaneer except I fear the mermaids have turned into manatees.
Brilliant!
nice video! thanks
When heating the metal the way to determine of the metal is hat enough. Find a long magnet once the magnet is no longer pulling to the metal is hot enough. I prefer quenching in oil.
good video
Hey, my small flintlock action I purchased from them (casting kit) turned out great and I hardened mine but its spark production is variable. I was going to use Kasenit on it but was wondering if there is any upside to using a case hardening compound?
RIP that spider at 7:15
Hmmm, very interesting that the chap called it 'a very short video', only to find out it is 13 minutes long :)
Half the length of the ones I’ve done lately 😉
Did you still temper the frizzen, after the hardening, as you did in your previous method? I have recently purchased a 1766 Flintlock Charleville musket and will probably have to have this done, at some point.....same with my pistol
I would have tried the magnet trick for gauging the right temperature during hardening. Also quenching in a bucket of used motor oil will do the trick. Glad you got it to work in the end.
I’ve only got fresh motor oil.
@@thebotrchap You could ask your local garage for a pint or two.
@@trig I might just do that when I get the winter tyres put on the car.
ua-cam.com/video/ST3yf-H51Hg/v-deo.html
This Old Tony on surface hardening. Very funny and factual.
Did you build your Baker or purchase it? Smooth or rifled bore?
Didn't know this was a thing.
Cool.
Interesting. That compound doesn't seem to work especially well. I've made knives of mild steel before and case hardened them the old fashioned way: put the piece of steel in a can or pipe filled with seed hulls and bone meal, seal it up (with a hole in it) and leave it in the hottest part of a fireplace for a few hours, then quench it in oil. The knives keep an edge with years of sharpening. I wonder if that would work for a frizzen? Its certainly smaller and easier to deal with than a knife.
For the technical reasoning, seed hulls and bone meal mix produce a constant stream of carbon monoxide when heated, carbon monoxide being what actually penetrates the steel. The time the steel is left hot is more or less proportional to the thickness of carbon penetration and consequent thickness of case hardening. Quenching in oil, though oil has a lower specific heat than water, avoids the Leidenfrost effect which actually keeps the steel from cooling as quickly in water. Using a gas torch supplies the steel with a lot of hot oxygen (they universally run lean, hence no smoke) and that hot oxygen actually strips carbon out of the steel.
Eh, take what I said with a grain of salt. There may be something to case hardening knives that doesn't translate to frizzens.
Yeah to be honest I am still a little disappointed
Do you know what this means?..... Baker showdown time!
Still need to test it on the range
7:14 poor fly! 🦟🔥
nice vid.
In the final two tests, is it that the hammer (frizzen) failed to snap open fully, or was it actually rebounding?
Didn’t fully snap open
The reason your frizzen didn't fully snap open was because your flint was way too far forward in the jaws of the hammer. Just before you did the test firing I wanted to scream, "The flint's too far forward! Fix it!"
may want to case harden the sear too as repros tend to be soft. The frizzen should not be able to be hardened being low carbon, the case hardening leaves a hard exterior over a softer interior for resilience. You can throw the frizzen into the case hardening, wont hurt getting it covered in it. All ready for Waterloo now!!
Did a spider just get cooked at 7:15?
It might just have escaped. We have a LOT of spiders, luckily none are poisonous and if they get too big the cats eat them 😊
@@thebotrchap but are they venomous?
@@pacman10182 Only to flies
@@thebotrchap Well, atleast now the missus can't complain that you never cook dinner
@@Willindor He knows how to cook spiders :)
Wooo! New video!
Try shaping a piece of 1/32 gauge plate to fit to size and form of frizzen, harden and temper. then fix to frizzen with JB weld. Job done #, no risk of damage to frizzen. When shaping leave a tag on top end to hold when hardening and tempering to be ground of after J B weld sets
Now there's an idea!
I love how everyone is just talking about the spider 7:14
I'm not talking about the spider. Not even mentioning the spider.
You can buy replacements parts from the rifle shoppe. However I don’t know how parts compatibility are(seems fine?) and they take a while to ship.
I can get replacement parts for the gunsmith who made it in the UK far quicker 😉
U should watch clicksprings video and accient hardening techniques and his handmade files for the antikythera mechanism
Why not use a file to check if the steel is hardened enough?
This was Great instruction !
I imagine back in the days this kind of guns where made they where hardening it by rubbing the hot red metal from the forge with a bull's horn, just like for swords
While your second method certainly worked well and I have done a similar procedure myself, I think the reason your first attempt wasn't a success was that you tempered it back too much. The way I temper my frizzen (after doing the similar technique as the second attempt) is to keep a wet paper towel on the striking face of the frizzen while tempering the bottom to a dark straw color and as soon as it reaches that color I submerged the whole frizzen in water.
It’s certainly possible. Good idea to keep the strike face cool 👍
@@BlokeontheRange it's funny I ran across this video of yours today, I watched another video about case hardenening a while back and it popped up in my suggestions tonight. If you haven't seen any of his videos, there is a Aussie clock maker/machinist that as a side note to one of his series about ancient tool technology is case hardening. His channel name is Clickspring and if you get a chance, look up his Antikythera fragments #3 video. He shows how to do case hardening using scrap leather as a carbon source mixed with salt and flour to make a paste, apply to the mild steel/iron item entirely in a mud pack and set aside to dry. Once dry, make a pocket from clay to hold and completely seal air out from the metal/carbon pack and heat to bright red and allow to soak in that heat for 20 to 80 minutes. Once soaked in the heat, take from the furnace or forge and quench in brine water to produce case hardened steel from mild steel or iron.
R.I.P bug @ 7:15
I need to do this for my Brown Bess (also have to figure out why it hangs up on half cock if I don’t yank the trigger as hard as I can)
If it did crack, would you just have a new frizzen sent to you or would you need to send your whole lock to the smith to have it fitted?
In this case I would have volunteered to send the lock since they are bespoke gunsmiths. I do have a frizzen coming from The Rifle Shoppe for another defarbing project on a San Marco replica French 1777, that’s going to be a “fitting from scratch” job.
For your half-cock problem you could try a new mainspring to make the tumbler turn faster, it worked for me on a Snider with the same issue. Another solution would be to add a radius to the external tip of the half-cock notch to help the sear ride over it.
Chap, once I've seen a video on Myth Busters where they hardened a hammer. They put in the hammer after heating in used engine oil as far as I remember because there was so much carbon in it.
Can anyone here with background comment on it? Not sure if im speaking bullocks or not :-/
I'm no expert either but oil has a much higher boiling temperature than water so it can cool down an object a lot faster, it can absorb a lot more heat. If you poor water on a hot piece of metal it just turns to steam at 100 degrees C and steam is a good insulator. But always consult the manual before choosing a quenching liquid!
So, a lot of time, at least in knife, tool, and knife shaped object making, we use oil to quench instead of water.
Partially this can be to add last second carbon, but more often it is to get a specific max hardness, with various formulas of quench oil.
But also, oil can be pre-heated to much higher temp than water.
With 4140 steel for example, a shop favorite is to use peanut oil preheated to 250 to 265 degrees, and quench when the work piece is non-magnetic.
By using oil, and heated oil we get fewer (but absolutely not zero) cracks and failures in hardening. Also, for the type of hardness we are shooting for, we don't need or especially want a water quench.
Water quenches can get steel harder, and a deeper hard than oil can, but can be, especially in hands of a newbie, an easier way to crack, warp or otherwise destroy a piece.
It's important to note that even with an oil quench, tools and knifes still get brittle hard, and except for very rare and odd use cases ( I can't think of any but I'm sure there exists one somewhere) still need to be tempered- losing some hardness but also becoming much less brittle
@@ghostinthebox thanks for the insight!
The Carbon absorption stops at 780 degrees Celcius for all practical purpouses (carbon absorption rate drops of below practical use) which is more or less instant when quenching in oil or water.
Absorbtion on carburization is in order of 4 hours/1mm at 850 C (66-67HRc hardness to depth of 1mm) on mild steel.
Oil is SLOWER than water and can be heated (allowing even slower cooling), this means the stresses are reduced-->thougher steel with fewer cracks, the steel as quenched is only marginally softer so tempering is still advisable on most parts.
what is that lathe behind you at 8:07, that size is ideal!
Myford ML7. Great little big lathe when space is an issue. Plenty of accessories and parts are still being made for them and an active user community out there on the net.
Au contraire, votre visage n'est pas horrible!
Unfortunately case hardening does not go very deep at all.
I wonder why the first part wasn't deleted because the second hardening technique is the only one that will actually work. If you want to READ about all this and more, I invite you to www.geojohn.org/BlackPowder/Musketoon/ShootingTheFlintlock.html By the way, a normal frizzen is made out of mild, low carbon steel that is not heat treatable. This is why the striking surface must be "carburetted" (carbon added with heat and 'Cherry Red' compound) by the process of "case hardening." When mild steel is case hardened, only the very thin outside layer gets hard (and capable of sparking) while the rest of the metal remains soft and tough and so, not being made brittle, it can't crack. The first part of the video is incorrect, it is not necessary to anneal the tail part of the frizzen after hardening, this only risks the hardened face losing temper. Polishing to mirror smoothness is a terrible waste of time.
The first part was shown because I was following the instructions as provided with the compound. As you say, it doesn’t work, so it’s important that people know that it doesn’t work.
Is there a reason they aren’t just through hardened?
I’m guessing that initially they didn’t have the metallurgical skill to do it and only hardened the essential surface.
Also you ideally need something tougher (more ductile) backing up the hard surface or the whole frizzen will be brittle and risk breaking off.
@@BlokeontheRange I could see historically. But our current knowledge of metallurgy let’s us have a hard steel that’s also very tough. I’d be curious on the actual hardness of the through thickness once this is done. Maybe I’ll have to find one and test it lol.
Hey bloke, I think you lost a little weight, congratulations!
Bloke? Who he?
Thankfully the smoke heads to the workshop had been removed.
Micro adjustment relocation tool close to vice..... .
The God of Engineering is an old god who demands sacrifice commonly in salty sexual swear words and when the task is truly difficult, the blood of the Engineer asking for his favour.
It is his law and our code.
Fe+O2=Fe3O4
ye olde rifle shoppe ?
Ye olde Peter Dyson of ye olde Englande
@@thebotrchap, Dyson made baker rifle replicas ?
@@mikehoare6093 They still do but special order only. They have proved so popular that they took it off their website to keep the orders down to a manageable level. I talked with Peter last year to ask if they still made them.
@@thebotrchap I see, it´s quite an endeavor to get hold of a baker rifle replica, that deserves to be called - replica !
@@mikehoare6093 Well I guess since it’s a faithful British made Baker perhaps I should call it a “new production Baker”.
www.peterdyson.co.uk
Just buy a new frizzen. Easy.
Марен ле Буржуа мог продумать не гладкую сторону огнива ,а зубчатую для 100% высекание искры....наверно это изнашеволо бы кремень быстрее...
That's dumb. Braze on a piece of saw blade.
Awesome. Great work.