wwh,

When was your article written? Any chance it could just be a typo? Or maybe someone found the term frizzen used in a source written in another language and transferred it to English? It doesn't make sense that frizzen isn't listed at all on Onelook or in the OED--but still appears in that article. I suspect one of these three: 1. a misspelling 2. a borrowed term from a foreign language 3. jargon picked up from a non-standard source...

And, if none of those, it would be interesting to know what's going on here.

It's fun being puzzled,
WW