Any Spring Makers Out There

Loyer

Loyer

CGN Regular
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Location
SW Ontario
Do any of the members have experience revitalizing old, worn metal springs?

I have a very old musket and the small spring to counter the frizzen has sprung and is non-operational.

No cracks.

Can the spring be removed, heated to orange hot and re-bent to open it ? Then can the spring be brought to cherry red and oil quenched and work as a spring should ?

This works with new material but my spring is 300 years old.

 
I think you'll find under a good bit of magnification that the spring is cracked through already. My guess.

There are guys on here who can make you another, don't mess with it. Measure the point to point gap it should have and keep looking for someone to make a new one. They'll need the old one in as good a shape as possible to work from.
 
Give Track of the Wolf a call and see if they have a close replacement - that looks pitted and as mentioned probably cracked, so 'fixing' it probably not going to happen.
 
I make 5 or 10 (mostly) flat springs each year although not commercially. I think the odds of repairing the original spring is slight and the odds of finding an appropriate replacement spring difficult or require reworking to get the correct shape and proportions.

I make my springs from drill rod, that I heat red hot and forge to approximate proportions then grind and file to shape. I anneal the material in wood ash before working on it. To temper the springs, I heat them red hot then quench in water and draw the temper in molten lead. I heat the lead to 720 F to 740 F using a high temperature thermometer and almost never have one break. Alternate to the high temperature thermometer is to float a thin bright piece of iron / steel on top of the lead and heat the lead until the steel goes from dark blue to grey, then pull the plug and quench the spring for 2 or 3 minutes. By using a thermometer you do not have to pull the plug on the lead pot because you can see if the temperature is going too high. I use drill rod because the results are very repeatable and I have had problems working with alternate materials.

Almost forgot --- I have an inexpensive laser heat gun that measures surface temperatures ---- it works well at room temperature but reads quite a bit low when measuring surface temperature of the lead

cheers mooncoon
 
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