[Alex Johnson]

A lot of competition shooters simply take the frizzen spring out during matches. The purpose of the spring is to keep the pan closed, but it does so at a slight cost in lock time. The English were fond of putting rollers either on the foot of the frizzen or on the frizzen spring, while this made sense, it has been proven lately that it does little to enhance performance, rather it tends to slow it down to a degree. A few years ago (maybe more recently) there was an article in Muzzleblasts where they were testing the effects of touch hole sizes. Light sensors were placed both at the pan and at the muzzle to record time intervals between the flash of the powder in the pan and the flash at the muzzle. There were some interesting results and very useful ones if you build your own guns.