You may want to try to change the leather holding your flint in the hammer jaws. It may be worn thin and you have almost a flint on steel.
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Change the leather out. You might want to try smashing a lead roundball thin and using that also to wrap. I had that happen to two flints out of a batch of 100 flints and it kind of surprised me. Also are you using the 3/4 or the 5/8th width. The ones that broke on me were 3/4 and technically I think the T/C lock is made for the 5/8th.
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"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, a total wreck, screaming Yahoo, with a big smile on your face."
If your frizzen is too soft, you will note that the flint is taking gouges off the face of the frizzen. Now frizzens will slightly scratch and shine, but when they go soft they will really mark deeper. Depending on the age of the frizzen, they can take a lot of abuse before they go bad. My Lyman has well over a thousand hits on it and is still hard.
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"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, a total wreck, screaming Yahoo, with a big smile on your face."
Grouse,
If your frizzen is bad, you will have little or no spark. Lyman has always made a great frizzen. TC frizzens, on the other hand, are highly variable. My old (pre QLA) Hawken is on its 4th frizzen. The first three TC frizzens lasted less than 100 shots each. I would send one back and they would replace it. The results were always the same. Finally, I installed a Lyman frizzen (it takes a bit of fitting) and never looked back. The frizzen on our equally old TC Pa Hunter is the original, and has never had a problem. The frizzen on our Lyman Deerstalker has also been trouble free.
As for the broken flints, I would try what is recommended above. I will say that in 35+ years, I do not recall ever breaking a frizzen in the lock when fired. I have broken a few while knapping, however.
Last edited by keyshunter; 12-27-2009 at 03:29 AM.
As the others have pointed out, your problem is probably the frizzen or the leather holding the flint. If you have checked out all of these things and it still breaks flints, check your touch hole liner. If the hole has enlarged due to heat and pressure over the years, it may be blowing too much pressure on to your flint when fired. I have seen this happen.
The spring was a little loose and changed the frizzen. No broken flints now.
my 2 cents.you just got a few bad flints.i had 2 break on me, they were flints from missouri ,white flints.they spark like crazy and are cheaper than fuller flints.
my frizzen is hard and i use lead in jaws.but that was first bad flints in awhile but i seen flints break and most of time it was flint or way it was held in jaws with the top of flint not level as some flints are made.
Flints breaking????????
