[Matchlock]

... in a private collection (but not mine).

Overall length 153 cm, barrel 117 cm, caliber 19 cm, weight overall 8 kilograms.

Wrought-iron round and staged barrel decorated with stylized snakes, lozenge ornament and trifoliate decoration in the shape of three dots, and struck twice with a mark, an unidentified shield. Rectangular back sight with aperture for inserting an interchangeable sheet of metal pierced for narrowing the shooter's sight and making him concentrate on the fore sight.

Note the small, round powder pan with its swiveling cover, the "lengthened" muzzle section characteristic of the 1520's to the 1530's and the limewood stock painted green. The tinder snap-lock with the horizontally acting push-button trigger has been introduced by the example of an even earlier detached mechanism here before.

Similiar barrels are quite common in museums in Thuriniga/East Germany, especially in the Waffenmuseum Suhl and the Schloss Heidecksburg in Rudolstadt. This, among other features, makes me believe that they were wrought by earliest Suhl workshops in the 1530's which had come over from Nuremberg where barrel smiths had faced encreasing unemployment since at least the early 1530's.

Michael