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Old 17th January 2014, 03:21 PM   #2
Matchlock
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Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: Bavaria, Germany - the center of 15th and 16th century gunmaking
Posts: 4,310
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Thank you so much for being waiting that patiently!

That post meant 20 hrs work within a day and a half, and of course I could not manage doing all the necessary editing within the narrow time limit provided by the webmaster.


Now let's go on with the attachments, in order to enable you to grasp see what I intended to show.


- overwiew of the row of earliest wrought-iron barrels in my collection, from the left:

- Aljubarrota barrel, ca. 1360-70:
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...on+hand+cannon
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...ht=aljubarrota

- octagonal barrel with alternatingly broad and narrow flats, retaining one of its originally two iron bands for fixing the barrel to the stock, with some small nails still preserved; excavated from brickearth in the Hürtgenwald woods, Eifel, West Germany, in the 1960's, the second iron retaining band and the stock were left in the ground!
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...nd+cannon+1400

- foreground:
two small handcannon barrels, the left hexagonal, the other octagonal, ca. 1400

- background:
two more, one octagonal, the other round and with three rings for reinforcement, ca. 1400

- heavy, round barrel of hand cannon, early 15th c., found together with two iron balls (all retained), the massive barrel walls interestingly burst and deformed both left and right to the muzzle

- exact copy of the so-called Tannenberg gun in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg, a lightweight bronze barrel finely wrought, filed and in two stages, octagonal with shifted flats at about 40 percent of its length, bell-mouthed muzzle. This direct comparison with barrels of ca. 1400 makes it perfectly clear that the Tannenberg barrel cannot be 'pre-1399' but should be dated correctly ca. 1440-50!
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...ght=tannenberg

- two extremely rare, long and heavy octagonal wrought-iron barrels with hollowed predecessors of pans around the big touch holes, for attaching a priming mass - see explanation to my my barrel dated 1481 above; certainly from multi-barreled gun arrangements (see following attachment); ca. 1470-90:
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...t-iron+barrels

- a singular and important small handgun, ca. mid-15th c., the octagonal barrel retaining its original limewood stock fixed by two iron bands (now loose) showing remains of red lead minium paint, in the rear center of the stock a movable iron ring for attachment to a wall; most interestingly, that gun was ignited with an igniting iron or a linstock directly into a hollowed touch hole in the center of a deep hole within the surrounding limewood!

- an extremely rare small alcove cannon (German: Nischengeschütz) retaining its original oaken block stock and fixed to it by an iron ring that is secured to the underside with two big female screws; the round barrel a shortened and re-used iron tiller barrel, ca. 1440, tapering towards the rear end; the shortened tiller pierces the stock and is secured by a third female screw:
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=18049

- the Aljubarrota barrel revisited: details of the wound band-iron structure, the touch hole and the small arrowhead mark in front of it

- the little round handcannon of ca. 1400 with reinforcing rings
Attached Images
            

Last edited by Matchlock; 17th January 2014 at 07:15 PM.
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