Pedersoli Northwest Gun

[James Kelly]

This spring I bought a Pedersoli Northwest gun from Cherry's to get back into muzzleloading. Kinda like Mr. Van Winkle it had been about 1/4 century since I shot anything loaded from the front end. Anyway, it is a nice gun, walnut stock, reasonably authentic. Lock just great, I could get a good reliable five shots before needing to knapp or change the flint. Hmmm. Used to shoot flint from about 1960 to mid-'80's, don't recall having this problem.
I like to think I Know It All, but occasionally  reality & my associates indicate otherwise. One thing I definitely do not know is how to make a #@!$%&$ flintlock spark when it is not so inclined. Got advice such as use a lead flint cap rather than leather, for a firmer grip, use finer priming, &c. Yeah, maybe helped some but still got 5 shots/flints.
Being a metallurgist I had to monkey with the frizzen, seemed too hard to me so I gently drew the temper 375F for 5 minutes or so in Wife's Oven, checking by the straw temper color I hadn't gone too hot. Might have helped, might have been my imagination.
Then I read Lt. Col. Bomford's 1823 Regulations for Proof and Inspection of Small Arms.   He made the point that the relative strength of hammer (frizzen) spring and mainspring affected the amount of fire, and whether the sparks "fall fairly into the pan".
Didn't like that Pedersoli hammer (frizzen these days) spring anyhoo. Bought a $5.50 Dixie US Musket Spring, No. TP0804 and installed it. These springs have an unfinished tit so they can be made to fit a variety of locks. Mr. Van Winkle had to get over his old philosophy of measure once, cut three or four times, nevertheless in spite of incipient senility I got the thing on. It really is too large for the lock & too strong for the mainspring, no I'm not going to replace mainspring as well.
But the gun seems to spark better, I snapped it maybe five times without priming. Then went out back, snapped it a couple more times, then primed with FFFg & got another 5 ignitions (one failure, priming covered with flat layer of fouling from pan cover--my bad). This in a light Michigan snowfall.  
When the weather gets better I will see how it actually works on the range.
So has anyone had similar flint life problems, how did you solve them and do you know of another frizzen spring that might be fit to a Pedersoli "Lott" lock?

[BEAVERMAN]

One of the problems on Pedersolli rock locks is the frizzen spring is to strong, several people I know have had that problem, the way a local builder and smith has remedied it is to lay the spring on a file and stroke it on both sides, reducing the width of the spring, thus reducing some of the tension on the frizzen, everyone who has had their lock talked to by Skillman this way has been very happy with the locks performance, hope this helps, Beav

[Pichou]

The early LOTT locks had problems with springs breaking.  So like they kinda beefed them up a bit... a bit too much.  Like Beaverman says they all need to be in balance, so a little lock tuning is in order.

[James Kelly]

Thanksk, Mr. Beaverman. I happen to have a Pedersoli frizzen spring I'm not not planning to use, next trip to workshop I'll do some filing.

[pathfinder]

I had the same problem with my Pedersoli Brown Bess. It dawned on me that when reading old text on the mystery's of shooting the firelock, what we call the frizzen spring was referred to as the "feather spring". So, a little time in the shop and I had a spring that was light as a feather on the hammer. just a little more tension on the hammer than needed to keep it closed when held up-side down. NEVER had a problem after that.