Dating Earliest Barrels: the Importance of the Position of the Touch Hole

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Further attachments to two more haquebuts introduced in post #13.


A heavy tiller haquebut (German: ganzer Haken), lot 453, overall length 126.5 cm, barrel length 40 cm, weight ca. 12 kg, ca. 1480-90, for an Alpine region like Austria.
The hexagonal wrought-iron barrel struck with various magic symbols (three dots, a cross and X symbol) and a primitive numbering above the breech; short, heavily swamped muzzle section with one edge turned upwards to act as a foresight, accentuated by a small frieze roped decoratively (German: Schnürlbandfries). Short, stepped hook. Relatively small touch hole at rear end of barrel, with spaciously hollowed, surrounding trough for a priming mass, and low rear fire shield, the oak wood tiller buttstock of early Landsknecht type, incised with a long horizontal, V-shaped forerunner of a rear sight immediately in front of the rear barrel section, and branded with an indistinct armorial shield, maybe an arsenal mark of Vienna.
Three long tiller haquebuts still preserved in the Vienna arsenal (Heeresgeschichtliches Museum Wien) bear the same branded symbol (see two attachments), their stocks heavily leached, the wrought-iron barrels retaining traces of their original red lead minium coating.

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Three more images of lot 453.


And another heavy tiller haquebut (German: ganzer Haken), lot 454, overall length 153 cm, the longest of the group of four at Hermann Historica's, barrel length 42.5 cm, weight ca. 10-12 kg, ca. 1460-70, maybe even somewhat earlier.
The wrought-iron octagonal barrel with long, segmented rear socket for the long, rounded oaken tiller stock which, just like the barrel, retained traces of original green paint! The rear end of the stock was shaped for easier handling. At the rear of the top barrel flat there was a round touch hole surrounded by a hollowed pan for the priming mass, and with a raised fire shield to the rear; the top flat punched over all its length with magic symbols: the inscription of the Holy Cross: INRI (Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum), various cryptic symbols, scales and X-shaped symbols. Slightly swamped muzzle, small stepped hook.
Of that group of four haquebuts, this one retained most of its original undistorted coloring and patina. If it had not been for the most 'modern' criterion, the roped muzzle frieze, I would have dated the barrel to the mid-15th c.

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Two more images of lot 454.

m

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An important and extremely rare, small, wrought-iron handgonne barrel for throwing incendiary arrows or stone balls (German: Steinbüchse), ca. 1360-80.

Of octagonal section throughout, large conical touch hole, the muzzle widened and with heavily swamped section. It would have originally been fastened to a long stock with two iron bands.
The rear end is still rounded, denoting its close proximity to the Loshult gun!
Length 20 cm, bore 25 mm at muzzle.

Sold Hermann Historica, Munich, 7 April 2008.


Best,
m

[Matchlock]

Further attachments to post #1:


The top attachments show the haquebut barrels in the Fortress Oberhaus, Passau, Lower Bavaria. The original red lead minium paint can be seen on many pieces underneath a 17th/18th c. layer of black arsenal coating!


A heavy and stout, round, wrought-iron Nuremberg-made haquebut barrel, ca. 1490-1500, originally coming from one of the Tyrolean arsenals of Maximilian I; author's collection, deaccesssioned from the Fortress Oberhaus, Passau, in WW II.

Originally, this was a socketed tiller haquebut and looked like the ones in numerous watercolor illustrations by Bartholomäus Freysleben (1490-1500) and Jörg Kölderer (1507) in their illuminated arsenal inventories made for King Maximilian I.

All Passau barrels belonging to this group, and those still preserved in the Oberhaus-Museum, were altered in ca. 1520-25, during the Peasant Wars, by shortening the socket and using part of it to form both a rear sight and a rear barrel loop for a transversal pin fixing the barrel to a full stock. A second pin went through the pierced hook.

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Let's proceed with attachments to post #1:



There is only one single haquebut from that Maximilian series known to have retained its original socket and octagonal tiller stock; as I stated before, it is kept in the reserve collection of the Gäubodenmuseum Straubing, Lower Bavaria, some 50 km east of where I live; for easier comparison, I repeated its attachment here.

The other images show my haquebuts and close-ups of that Maximilian piece.


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[Matchlock]

More attachments to post #1:



Another group of five haquebuts, of similar shape but varying in size - among them two average haquebuts (German: ganze Haken), weighing about 8 and 12 kg respectively, and two huge and heavy wall guns weighing ca. 20 kg (German: Doppelhaken) - , was discovered standing upright on a board on the wall of a long and narrow bricked-up room (!) in the Castle of Kronburg, near Memmingen, Bavaria, after WW II when the castle had to be restored. They all retained their original ash wood full stocks, the buttstocks shaped exactly like the ones illustrated in the Ingenieurkunst- u. Wunderbuch, ca. 1520, Weimar, cod. 328, fol. 213r, and by Erhard Schön, Nürnberg, 1535 (scans attached). The barrels do not have rear sights but there are bead foresights on the muzzle section.

What is most remarkable about those five guns is the fact that the barrels have retained their original sockets, even with remains of their original tiller stocks in those sockets, and thus they were fully stocked in ash in the early 1520's!

Those haquebuts were, together with books and other arms from Schloss Kronburg, sold at auction with Venator KG, Cologne, 30-31 October 1953, lots 8-12. Each of them was estimated at 250 DM but they went way below that limit. A copy of that sales catalog is in my library.
I have succeeded in tracing back the present whereabouts of four of them. The two shortest of them were bought in 1953 by a Berlin collector, Herr Paul, and after his death I acquired one of them in 2001:
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...uebut+kronburg

Meanwhile, the two huge samples are in the collection of a friend of mine in Austria, while the fourth haquebut, the smallest of them all, is in a German private collection. One was at sale with Hermann Historica's, Munich, 20. May 2010, lot 1010, the other came through a German dealer in 2009.

All of them are preserved in fine, 'untouched' and heavily patinated condition, with all the edges of the wood still very crisp, and the barrels retaining much of their original red lead minium coat of paint.
The sample in my collection is the second smallest of the four.
Overall length 1.34 m, barrel length without socket 67 cm, socket 22 cm, maximum outer diameter 6.0 cm, minimum o.d. 4.0 cm, bore 25 mm, weight 12 kg.

One of the originally five haquebuts is lost.


Best,
Michael