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.

7:14 RIP 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.

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.

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

Couple of quick notes, there’s no need to worry about the part cracking from the quench, or point in tempering the screw hole. The frizzen is some flavor of low carbon steel, and not being hardenable there’s no need to temper it, or much of a chance of it cracking in the quench. Also even at its best case hardening is extremely shallow, a better solution is to forge weld a high carbon steel face to an iron or mild steel body, resulting in a hardened face and a ductile, tough body. Obviously that’s not an option in this case but another way that this repair can be achieved, and in the past was, is to rivet a thin piece of high carbon steel to the face of the frizzen, counter bore the holes slightly on the face side so that after upsetting the rivet you can file the face smooth and still have plenty of material to hold the repair in place. Water quenching alloys like 1095 would work well, and being significantly thicker than the case hardening, would last much longer.

A tidy workshop is the sign of a dirty mind!

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.👍

No Frenchmen were harmed in the filming of this episode. Richard Sharpe is not pleased.

When hardening small steel parts, its always worth it to stack up some bricks around it. Gets the parts much hotter faster.

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.

Always a pleasure to watch a Bloke video.

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. ^_^

So close to 100K subs. Hope you get there soon. Cheers, b.

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.

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! :-)

Potassium ferrocyanide (Gelbes blutlaugensaltz) is what gunsmiths use for hardening where Kasenit is unavailable.

Fascinating,thanks for sharing this process

Your video was very interesting and a great teaching method for future storage in my mind. Thanks Bloke on the Range. 🤗

Great channel !😎

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.

Awesome. Great work.

I suppose youtube had to place an ad at exactly the right point at least once? Congrats! Success!

Brilliant!

Very cool! I have never seen this done before.

I just picked up a new fancy modern percussion cap rifle in the off chance those pesky red coats come back

I love the new shop.

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 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.

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!

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.

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.

Very instructional. I think you may need to polish the hole in the frizzen so it moves to the full extent of rotation.

nice video! thanks

@10:25 : granted, but what sauce do i use, and which wine goes best with roast frizzon?

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👍

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.

I'm pleased to see that its not only me drink tea from a bucket 😂😂

Thanks for the video.

good video

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.

nice vid.

7:14 poor fly! 🦟🔥

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.

Hmmm, very interesting that the chap called it 'a very short video', only to find out it is 13 minutes long :)

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.

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?

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.

kassenite, done the same bringing a replacement frizzen on a bunderbuss into life

You could perhaps, in a very controlled environment manage to tin solder a hardened steel face to a mild steel body without over softening the steel face but think about this, case hardened frizzens were traditionally water quenched and not tempered to produce as hard a surface as possible for proper sparking and less wear.

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.

Did you build your Baker or purchase it? Smooth or rifled bore?

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

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.

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.

as the good old pirates used to say: "take care of your frizzen or you might end up in prison"

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?

This was Great instruction !

Did a spider just get cooked at 7:15?

Didn't know this was a thing. Cool.

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.

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.

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!

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

Why quench in water and not oil? I thought water quenching makes things brittle?

R.I.P bug @ 7:15

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.

Wooo! New video!

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!!

U should watch clicksprings video and accient hardening techniques and his handmade files for the antikythera mechanism

Good video. So, when will we see you guys doing a "mad minute" with your flintlock?

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?

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 😁👍🏻

RIP that spider at 7:15

Au contraire, votre visage n'est pas horrible!

Do you know what this means?..... Baker showdown time!

I love how everyone is just talking about the spider 7:14

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 :-/

And by the way Sherry red is only about 800 Degrees. I think you'd be better off with an orange heat

Why not use a file to check if the steel is hardened enough?

In the final two tests, is it that the hammer (frizzen) failed to snap open fully, or was it actually rebounding?

Unfortunately case hardening does not go very deep at all.

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.

what is that lathe behind you at 8:07, that size is ideal!

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

And in finer quality firearms , a tool steel face of significant thickness would be forge welded to the face and eliminate this problem entirely.

Is there a reason they aren’t just through hardened?

Марен ле Буржуа мог продумать не гладкую сторону огнива ,а зубчатую для 100% высекание искры....наверно это изнашеволо бы кремень быстрее...

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.

Fe+O2=Fe3O4

Just buy a new frizzen. Easy.

Hey bloke, I think you lost a little weight, congratulations!

ye olde rifle shoppe ?

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.

That's dumb. Braze on a piece of saw blade.