Three thumbs up for L&R Lock Company!

[Brutus]

I had a caplock (traditional'ish) muzzleloader break it's mainspring with wonderous timing during the last week of deer hunting season. Only one American company came to mind IIRC, American Shooter had an episode on the NMLRA match held annualy at Friendship Indiana. L&R had a repair booth there. Email communications were swiftly answered and prompt service followed.
Quoted approximately 70ish for the lock repair with a spare mainspring in the package and shipping included. Now I wait for it to arrive amongst the Xmas mail rush. Sent down to this South Carolina company on the 28th November. Said to be in the return mail on the 7th December all GTG.

I know this can cause us grief for some of us BP rifle shooters.

Thought I'd share some good info amongst us Canadian front stuffers.

 

[Brutus]

Well, I just checked my emails, on the 28th of November the broken lock was put in the mail to L&R down in SC. Today 18 December, I received the lock back repaired of course and with a spare mainspring, and $69 dollars total cost. I'm freaking really impressed with this American comapny!

I was a bit worried about it becoming lost in the Xmas mail...................no worries now.

 

[Gunrarr]

Thanks for the heads up on where to get good service and parts for black powder rifles.

 

[Brutus]

Thanks for the heads up on where to get good service and parts for black powder rifles.

No problem friend. And I must add the one time I did call them they were honest and super polite and very informative on the phone.

Emails were promptly replied to by the next working day as well!

 

[NorthCoastBigBore]

Yup nice to hear positive accounts - thanks!

 

[Ol' Flinter]

Well there are 2 sides to every coin and I guess I have seen the other side too often. A few years ago I built rifles using L&R locks and had good results. Two years ago I built 2 rifles using their American Heritage lock in both flint and percussion. The percussion, at the start would not fire a cap about 20% of the time and no amount of polishing and friction reduction work (about 12 hours worth) seemed to resolve the issue beyond about 90% reliability. I had also noticed that the mainspring seemed soft. Concurrently, the flint lock wouldn't spark worth a hoot, regardless of anything I could do to improve it. The mainspring on this one seemed good so I swapped it into the percussion lock and that resolved the misfire problem so I have fired probably a thousand shots without a misfire. Regardless that there was no warranty in place, I sent the flint lock to L&R for overhaul and to their credit they replaced the mainspring, tumbler and frizzen so that now it works well. Regardless, I had more than a year of aggravation and twenty -odd dollars mailing costs to resolve the issues that never should have happened.
There also some design issues with at least some of their models and I would specifically mention the tumbler design that results in the sear arm (dog) resting at different locations whether the lock is in the hammer-down, half-#### or full-#### position. The issue here is that in order for the trigger to allow enough clearance for the half-#### position to fully engage, there has to be an excessive amount of free play in the trigger when at full-####. No issue with double-sett triggers but a pain with a simple single trigger. I have a rifle with that problem now. I can reshape the tumbler to resolve the issue but shouldn't have to do that.
As a result, I am now a fan of Davis and Jim Chambers locks that spark like crazy and don't seem to have the design or QA/QC problems I have had with the L&R's. Just my 2 cents worth but three thumbles DOWN from me.