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Old 25th December 2013, 06:00 PM   #17
Matchlock
(deceased)
 
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Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: Bavaria, Germany - the center of 15th and 16th century gunmaking
Posts: 4,310
Default A Good Nuremberg Hackbut, ca. 1540, in the Army Museum Stockholm

Although the snap tinderlock and swiveling pan cover are missing, the finely preserved lime wood or pear wood full stock will convey a good impression of what such pieces would look like when complete.
The second, the blackened fir wood (!) stock heavily wormed, dry rotten and probably not to be saved, the lock mechanism also missing, I photographed in the famous Oberhausmuseum Passau, Lower Bavaria, a bit over 100 km east of where I live.
Regarding the stock, I must add that I offered them to consolidate and conserve it right at my first visit there some 35 years ago. They did not show the least interest though I warned them that it would dissolve before their very eyes. When I got there again a few years later, they had soaked it in crude linseed oil thru and thru, resulting in severe wood losses. That was a final treatment, nothing can be done about it any more. All it is now is a sticky, almost amorphous mass. I would have given that stock hundreds of injections of a hot watery solution of bone glue for days and weeks, and the surface would have been unharmed and unchanged. Museums ...


Anyway, you remember I hold some fine Nuremberg hagbut/haquebut/hackbut barrels coming from that museum during WW II in my collection.


Also attached find a snap tinderlock, Nuremberg, ca. 1540, made by Hans Koler (the hourglass mark should be attributed to him), of exactly the type missing from the Stockholm and Passau pieces. The wing nut is missing from the serpentine. That lock is preserved in the Bavarian Army Museum Ingolstadt, 30 km from my home; it belongs to an arquebus of ca. 1540, the barrel marked by Hans Mörl, who shared a workshop with Hans Koler in 1537. The museum staff do not realize (or even believe) that the mechanism belongs to the gun ...



Best,
Michael
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Last edited by Matchlock; 26th December 2013 at 02:57 PM.
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