Hi Fernando,
No teaching here, just a comment.
I am glad to finally have found a very good and doubtlessly geniune piece which resembles much your cannon or handgun barrel. This I photographed at the Firearms Museum in Suhl, Thuringia, which had acquired it directly from the ruined tower of a nearby castle.
It is highly important for retaining its original oakwood full stock. The recoil absorbing ring hook drawn over the barrel at the same time fixes the latter to the stock. The piece is preserved in original 'untouched' condition overall, the bore is about 20 mm and much the same size as yours. The stock is drilled thru in two places. We know from other handguns, e.g. two pieces preserved at the Royal Armouries Leeds and a third at the Vienna Armory, all of which I posted in earlier threads, that the rear hole in the buttstock was for suspension of these guns in the armory, comparable to the stirrup of a Gothic crossbow. The forward hole may have served to receive an iron axis to adjust the piece vertically.
The overall length is estimated to be 60-70 cm, the length of the barrel ca. 10 cm.
On a formal basis marked by the hook drawn over the barrel, and by comparison to my earliest complete handgun made in about 1400-10 and modernized by adding a hook and firing mechanism during its working of ca. 1430-40 - posted here earlier - I should suggest a date of ca. 1430-50 both for the Suhl gun and your barrel. That was the period when hooks first appeared, and as I showed before, all of the earliest known hooks were not fire welded to the underside of the barrel but drawn over it.
Again, congratulations to your cannon barrel, Fernando.
I am afraid I cannot really explain for the groove in the bottom of your barrel though; you may be right in guessing that it sort of marked the way of the red hot igniting iron down into the touchhole.
Best wishes,
Michael
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