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Getting a Repro Flintlock Tinder Lighter
 to Work
All the steps I did to turn my Tinder Lighter into a well functioning device.

By John Fuhring

What, no video???  No, you are going to have to read and think.,
but there is detail here that will teach you more than any video can.
I hope you find this essay interesting and enjoyable.
This essay is presented to you free of charge and without any annoying commercials.  




It seems that these flint lighters were pretty common in the 18th Century.
Many originals are still around and this one of mine is a
"spitting image" of an original made by Henry Nock back then.
The more I experiment with this little thing, the more
I understand why they were so popular in those
households wealthy enough to afford them.

Foreword
    I've always been interested in obsolete and otherwise "trailing edge" technologies.  For a while now I've wondered how our 18th Century ancestors made fire since now and again the home fire place would go out and would need to be relit.  Before the early 1900s matches were quite dangerous and expensive, but gentlemen smokers of the mid to late 1800s would buy small quantities of them from "match girls" for lighting their cigars.  Note: the early matches contained white phosphorus and were poisonous, causing terrible bone disease to those who trafficked in them or otherwise carried them and used them frequently.  The match girls on street corners were especially at risk, but the early matches were convenient in a world that consumed prodigious amounts of tobacco.

     Before chemical matches, people would have to make fire from flint and steel, leave a candle burning all the time or hope the embers won't go out when the fireplace wasn't burning.  Flint and steel actually works very well and one can have a nice fire going rather quickly, however the process usually creates a large ball of burning tinder that is dangerous and quite unwieldy if one simply wants to light a candle, light their tobacco pipe or their cigar.  A much nicer method for making a small fire is to adapt the traditional hand held flint and steel to a flintlock mechanism.  By simply pulling a trigger, one can create a glowing bed of "char cloth" and then use a small ball of sulfur on the end of a wooden stick (called a "spunk") to get a flame.  The sulfur spunk is lit by simply touching it to the glowing char cloth.  Of course, a small amount of tinder can be placed on top of the glowing char cloth and blown into a flame too if you don't have or want to use sulfur spunks.
Introduction
      The following story is how I took a new made, but non-functional flintlock lighter and made it into a device that is a highly convenient flint and steel lighter that actually works.  My lighter is an exact copy of an 18th Century device made by  Henry Nock, but without the fancy engraving ususlly found decorating those devices.  I was able to make my lighter work as well as an original by doing a little gunsmithing and micro-blacksmithing, tasks that I absolutely love doing anyway.  It certainly helps that I have all the simple tools for flintlock gunsmithing and the basic supplies for case hardening soft iron parts
Making my lighter work
     When the little lighter arrived, I was pleased with its look and the fact that everything in the lock worked, how well everything fit and with how well the castings were done.  I did not expect the little lighter to actually work, so I was actually looking forward to working on it since I love this kind of gunsmithing.  For many people, simply having a conversation piece that looks so interesting is enough, but for me, the thing had to work as well as an original or it was simply a fake.  In this case and with my experience and equipment, this promised to be a very entertaining project.

     I began the task of remanufacturing my lighter by hardening the frizzen so that it would throw plenty of good, hot sparks. When I tried the flint against the frizzen to get some sparks, I discovered that the case hardening of the frizzen was inadaquate.  To give the iron parts a very pleasing look, they were "color case hardened" but the hardening of the iron was for looks only and was too thin and soft to actually produce sparks. 

     I've hardened flintlock frizzens many times and am pretty good at it, if I say so myself.  I removed the pivot screw that holds the frizzen to the lock and also the screw that holds the frizzen springs to the top of the pan cover.  I took the frizen and I hardened the daylights out of the surface where the flint strikes (the part of the frizzen often called "the hammer").  The object of this process is to cause carbon to migrate into the soft iron of the striking surface and by doing so, turn the striking surface into very hard high carbon steel.  Very hard high carbon steel will spark when struck by flint, something soft iron will not do.  
Technical details of the process of the case hardening of soft iron parts
      To make a hard, high carbon steel surface, the iron surface has to be heated to a bright red hot, almost white hot and while it is so hot, a special hardening compound is scooped on to it.  The hardening compound contains a carbon rich chemical and its carbon will migrate into the iron to "carburete" (or add carbon to) the surface of the iron when the iron is red hot.  After a sufficient time has gone by, to allow the carbon to migrate into the iron, the red hot part is quickly plunged into cold water to create a very, very hard steel surface that will throw sparks when struck by a flint.

   For those interested in the details, this is how I do it.  I take my two large propane torches and arrange them so their flames cross and with a long steel tong, I hold the part in the flames with the surface I want to harden facing up.  In just a few seconds the iron starts to heat and soon turns bright red hot.  Before or while the part is so hot, I scoop Brunell's hardening powder on to the surface of the part.  I have used other products that actually work better, but are no longer available because they contain cynide, but I have found that Brunell's works very well.  I continue to hold the part in the flames and keep the part red hot while the hardening compound melts and forms a glassy surface.  While it is heating, the compound seems to disappear, so I scoop small amounts of hardener on the piece to keep the surface covered with compound.  I keep the piece red hot for a couple of minutes or more until I'm sure the compound's carbon has had a chance to migrate into the iron and form a carbon-iron alloy (steel).  

     Finally I take a steel brush and while the part is still red hot, I brush off as much melted compound I can (this stuff is red hot and can catch things on fire - like your pants or your workshop, so be careful).  I bring the part back up to red heat and then I plunge the piece into cold water.  When the piece hits the cold water, any remaining glassy compound sort of "explodes" off the part with a loud crackeling sound and there is a loud of hiss of steam as the iron hits the water. When the high carbon steel layer of the part is suddenly cooled this way (called "quenching"), it forms an extremely hard steel surface.  Of course, the soft iron of the rest of the part is not affected and does not become hard and brittle, but the thin surface that has been transformed into high carbon steel is so hard, an ordinary file will not scrape it. The steel surface is extremely hard, but not quite as hard as flint so that when a flint vioently strikes it, tiny bits of its very hard, carbon rich surface are scraped off and being scraped off so violently from such a hard surface, the tiny particles of steel are very, very hot and will burn in air as sparks.  Those hot sparks of burning steel will start char cloth or gunpowder  burning in turn.
Continuing the story
     After I had hardened the frizzen as described, the lighter created sparks but it needed some more gunsmithing before it would spark well enough to be a practical lighter.  I noticed that the frizzen didn't open very smoothly and had a kind of scraping feel to it.  I took a close look at the undersides of the springs and noticed that they were pretty rough so I polished them smooth, put them back in and noticed a big improvement and especially after I put a tiny drop of oil on each of the friction surfaces.  There was still one thing more that needed done to get good sparks.

Frizzen springs.
Polishing the undersides made opening and closing the pan much smoother.

     After the frizzen was operating properly and the pan was opening all the way, I tackled the problem with the front edge of the flint not going down low enough.  In order for a flintlock to throw good sparks and for those sparks to make it down to the pan properly, the edge of the flint must be able to scrape steel off the heel of the frizzen where the hottest and most abundant sparks come from.  To do this, the flint must end up slightly below the bottom of the pan when the cock is all the way down and this wasn't doing it.  To get the fiint down where it should be and allow it to scrape off the hottest sparks, I filed metal off the little projection that stops the cock's travel.  The flint was made to stick out of the cock's jaws far enough (with this lock, the pan can't be closed on half cock), I got the flint's edge below the bottom of the frizzen's heel.

To get good, hot sparks, the edge of the flint must be below the heel of the frizzen.
notice the enlarged screwdriver slot.

The bottom of the little projection was filed down a little to allow the edge of the flint to be lower.
     As mentioned, the flint must stick out a long way and that prevents the pan from closing on half-cock.  This is a design flaw caused by the frizzen's angle being raked back too far and would be a real problem in a firearm.  In this use, as a fire starter, I am amazed they even bothered to make a half cock sear in the bottom of the cock because half cock serves no function at all and it is never used.  Since there is really no way to change the rake angle and since it really doesn't matter anyway, I don't worry about it.

     After hardening the frizzen's face and making the friction surface of the pan springs smooth and adjusting the bottom travel of the cock, I enlarged the screwdriver slot in the cock's jaw screw so I could use a ordinary screwdriver without an extra narrow blade and then I hardened the top of the screw so using a screwdriver wouldn't "bung" up the top of the screw.  I then put in a flint, adjusted the length so the edge rested below the heel of the frizzen, cocked the lock and pulled the trigger.  I was rewarded with a fine shower of sparks.
Conclusions
     After I had the entire mechanism working smoothly and sparking well, I made up a bunch of char cloth by putting cotton rags in an Altoids steel box and heating it on my stove until all the flaming stopped..  I filled the pan about half way up with char cloth, cocked the lighter, closed the lid and pulled the trigger.  The shower of sparks immediately set the char cloth glowing in several spots and the whole process worked much, much better and quicker than any fire making I ever done using flint and steel in the ordinary way.   To extinguish the char cloth and save it for next time, I simply closed the pan and when I checked it later, the smoldering char cloth had indeed gone out and was ready for the next light.

     My next step is to make up sulfur "spunk" matches or perhaps simply use safety kitchen matches and pretend they are sulfur spunks, ha, ha.  Of course, a small bit of tinder can be placed on top and blown into a flame as I mentioned at the beginning.

     Do I like my little lighter?  Yes, I like it as a historical decoration and conversation piece on the mantle of my fireplace and I like the fact that it really works and will give a person some idea of what it was like to live in the 18th Century when life was "nasty, brutal and short," but at least they had fire.  

I rounded off the sharp wooden edges and "antiqued" the wood a bit and now my lighter even
more closely resembles an original 18th Century lighter and works as well as they did.
By the way, I've noticed that nearly all original lighters had the sides of the lock engraved
with fancy designs and sometimes with the makers name.  My lighter is plain.
THE END


  

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