[Raf]

The issue is that the Monks gun in the Rüstkammer museum Dresden frequently described and illustrated doesn’t actually work. Experimenters have confirmed that despite any amount pushing or pulling of the handle this doesn’t create enough friction to raise a spark .So why did someone go to the trouble of making such a mechanism if it was fundamentally flawed ? Is there something missing from our understanding of how it works and I think I may have found the answer.

In any friction operated firearm kinetic energy has to be stored such as in a spring and then quickly released to generate the friction needed to create a spark. The trouble is the monks gun relies entirely on human effort so how is the stored energy first created and then released ?

In the Rüstkammer gun the end of the serpentine wraps round a pin to the left of the lock plate and it is assumed bears on the bottom of the lock plate to elevate the serpentine when the adjustment screw is turned. An important detail missing from diagrammatic representations. In the drawing below this spring is shaped so as to press down on the end of the friction bar trapping the bar against the base of the lock plate. In the proposed sequence of operations the thing is primed and the tension screw adjusted to bring the pyrites into contact with friction bar and also control the pressure of this secondary spring on the friction bar. Pulling very hard on the operating handle eventually overcomes the downward pressure of this spring on the friction bar which is then released moving rapidly rearward hopefully having achieving a speed sufficient for ignition to occur. The adjusting screw determines when sufficient pulling effort has been generated and the point at which the friction bar is automatically released . The action is the same as pulling a cork out of a bottle . Muscular energy is created and stored in the effort of trying to pull the cork and this energy is quickly released as the cork leaves the bottle.

Irrespective of whether or not this is the way the Rüstkammer gun was designed to work it does show how a simple friction bar mechanism could be made to work relying on human energy alone . Despite the stylistic evidence of the barrel , which suggests a date 1520/30 I very much doubt this was when it was made The general feel of the thing doesn’t seem consistent with the early sixteenth century and in this form was impractical as a hand held firearm. My conclusion is that the Rüstkammer gun is a historisistic re creation to illustrate the principal of an early friction bar ignition system which by tradition was associated with the mythical monk , Bertoldt Swartz to whom is attributed the art of shooting with guns. Hence the generic name Monks gun.

It is possible to imagine how such a device might have been applied to a 15 th century hand cannon with a wooden tiller. The thing fired by pulling hard on a lanyard attach to the friction bar . Equally the friction wheel and cord operated firelighting device as illustrated in the Loffeholtz manuscripts might have been experimented with . In practice either system probably proved more trouble than it was worth but did encourage the idea that friction ignition firing systems could be applied to firearms . The friction wheel system proved more capable of automation hence the development of wheelock and the rest as they say is history.