Hi. I hope this weekend finds all of you well.
I've finally decided to put the cap guns aside for awhile and learn how to make some sparks. I sold some black rifles today and generated enough zlotskis to purchase a Pedersoli Frontier .45 in maple. I'm not a complete newbie to flintlocks. I've been paying attention to the shooters around me and have had my marksmanship discounted as being less than honorable for using a percussion rifle. All in good fun of course. It's payback time dammit! Lol. I've heard about 'tuning a lock' and am assuming it's got to do with flint size and placement. I'm going to be looking for fast ignition. Tips appreciated.
No, "tuning" a lock has to do with smoothing surfaces that rub, adjusting the sear and tumbler, and with the alignment of the jaw to the pan in the forward position.
For "fast" ignition in a Frontier, you want to check the position of the flash hole. It should be centered in the pan and level with the pan.
This is normally the case with the Frontier, so you should have no worries. The Frontier does have a touch hole liner, which does allow for correction, or replacement if it ever gets worn. Normally the touch hole liner is not removed.
The Frontier has some additional quirks.....
The lock is held on the rifle by a single lock bold, AND a small wood screw, the screw being forward of the frizzen spring. You need to be careful not to over tighten this wood screw when done cleaning the lock and replacing the lock into the stock, and avoid stripping out the wood.
The breech is not a simple one, and you will need to buy a .22 or .32 caliber pistol brush, to get down into the chamber that rests within the breech to prevent carbon buildup over time. Pipe cleaners will help as well
The front sight post is very thick, and should be replaced with a thin front sight post available from Track of The Wolf. I have always preferred thin silver. Otherwise the sight picture will be similar to trying to center a quarter on top of the end of a 2x4. IF you want the most accuracy that you can get, the front sight must be swapped out. This makes it much simpler for your eye to get a good sight picture on a target.
The ramrods tend to be junk; not straight grained. It's a quirk of a lot of factory guns and rifles. I'd suggest that you get an aftermarket ramrod, also available from Track of The Wolf, as the Pedersoli ramrod will fail, as it's a matter of time.
Sometimes the Pedersoli barrels have been rifled by machines with rather new cutters, and small burrs remain which will cut your patches, and you should be using patched round ball, btw in the rifle (imho). No worries, you just need to run a small piece of "green scrubbie" pad (as used to clean pots and pans; bought from the supermarket) up and down the inside of the barrel a few times to get the burrs out. It won't harm the barrel.
Unless you're going for boar, the 125 grain .440 round ball will be fine on deer. Highly accurate, very little recoil. The .440 all lead, patched round ball has been working quite well on deer for 250 years.
LD