A couple mortars for comments

[Rick]

Michael, is it that the Igniting Irons were kept red hot during actions ?
That being the case; no wonder ones with their original tips are rare .

The red-hot bulbous head of your serpent example would have stored more heat longer in the tip than the heavily eroded first example you show .

[Matchlock]

Exactly, Rick,

That's what I noted earlier in a similar thread:

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...ight=linstocks

They were kept resting in a bowl filled with glowing coal to retain their red heat.

The bulbous, pear-shaped form on igniting irons which could hold the heat longer does not seem to have turned up before the 16th century (images attachted). But even those bulbous heads were equiped with tapering pricks (Zündstachel) for small touch holes which have also mostly fallen off, due to a permanent change of exposure to red heat and rust.


The photo with the big cannon was taken in the 15th c. armory of the Fortress Oberhaus in Passau, Lower Bavaria, where three of my finest hackbut barrels came from, one of them dated 1481, which makes it the earliest dated small firearm known:

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...highlight=1481

The Passau hackbut barrels can be seen on the wall to the right of the cannon. The outside of the fortress walls is dated 1499.

The barrel of the cannon is dated 1726 and left to the piece two igniting irons can be seen on their long hafts, alongside with two scourers (Rohrwischer).


Best,
Michael

[Matchlock]

As to such rarissimae as matchcord:

The largest number of matchcord bundles ever deaccessioned from an armory was at Anderson Galleries in New York in 1927, when the complete 15th-17th c. contents of the Fortress of Hohenwerfen near Salzburg/Austria, the former armory of Prince Eugene, were sold at aution. Some of these were purchased by American museums like the Higgis Armory in Worcester, Massachusetts (images attached at bottom).

The Christie's bundle posted above (and reattached) was deaccessioned by the Higgins.

The Higgins comment that the relatively large diameter of that matchcord seems to denote use with linkstocks only can be denied on the grounds of some thirty original matchlock muskets from ca. 1656 -1720 in my collection: all of their serpentine jaws can be opened wide enough by the means of the wignut to receive (and clamp tight) any average matchcord.

As to my own thirty years of intense research, and as I mentioned above, only the earliest 15th to early-16th c. types of matchcord did not fit the very delicate serpentines of that period; therefore these arquebuses were lit by small pieces of smoldering tinder and should, as I have pointed out often before, be called tinderlocks instead of matchlocks. These pieces of tinder had to be lit before each shot with the thick slow match kept smoldering all the time.


The largest number of big bundles of early matchcord (22!) is housed in the famous Churburg Armory in South Tyrol, and in the armory of the Veste Coburg, Franconia (eight, photos attached). The eight Coburg bundles of snowwhite (all other samples are either yellowish or brownish!) slow match measure about 35-40 meters each.



The eperts of the leading auction houses in the world have attended my collection, and they all agree that the largest amount of matchcord in any private hands is assembled in mine.


Best,
Michael

[Matchlock]

Originally Posted by Rick

Michael, is it that the Igniting Irons were kept red hot during actions ?
That being the case; no wonder ones with their original tips are rare.

Hi Rick,

As I stated formerly in another thread, igniting irons had to be kept resting in a bowl with glowing coal on a fire all the time during action - and that right next to the cannon and the powder barrels!!!

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...ight=linstocks

Attached please find the most exact period representation known to me, from Jean Mansel's illuminated Late-Gothic manuscript La fleur des histoires, France, 1453-63, Geneva Library, Ms fr. 64, fol 196r.

I posted these scans earlier; they also depict the earliest form of an igniting iron, sharply angled and still without the reinforced bulbous head and only featuring a long, thin prick; this type was first represented in Konrad Kyeser's 1405 manuscript Bellifortis (two attachments below), and the only known surviving sample is preserved in my collection, in excavated condition but retaining a portion of its original haft (the one on top in the last attachment).

Best,
Michael

[Matchlock]

For a comprehensive treatise on matchcord used with guns and linstocks, please see

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...402#post140402


m

[fernando]

How things change, with extreme velocity, reason of nowadays modern technology .
This is a firecracker (or fireworks) used multi "mortar" case , left in a garden after a religious celebration.
Wrought iron superceeded by cardbord .

.

[Matchlock]

You Portuguese guys sure have all the luck - growing mortars in the garden!

m