[Philip]

Bravo, I think you've come up with a potentially workable solution to that stuck brush: cut the bristles with the sharpened edge of a metal tube! The copper wires aren't very thick, after all. How about filing the end of the tube into saw teeth, get them as sharp as you can. It'll be a variation on the "crown-saw" that locksmiths use to bore holes in doors to install doorknob kits (or what surgeons use to drill holes in our heads to get at the gray matter inside, haha!). Lemme know how it works!

Now, I don't recommend using C-clamps to compress those V-shaped springs. The clamps are just too unstable on such surfaces, the main- and frizzen springs are pretty powerful. I suggest that you buy a mainspring vise, available through suppliers of gunsmith tools and those firms selling supplies to shooters of black-powder replica firearms. These handy and inexpensive devices are articulated to fit just about any size of flint or percussion mainsprings and frizzen springs (they will do also on wheellocks, but won't work on the huge external mainsprings of Spanish or Near Eastern "miquelet" locks due to their size and the way they're mounted, but the average collector has little need to disassemble those locks). The small sear spring can be restrained with a pair of needle nosed pliers. Just pinch the spring enough (use tape on the plier jaws) to relieve pressure as you back the screw out just enough to allow the spring to rotate free, then release and continue unscrewing.