A 1548 Nuremberg Dagger-grip Over-and-Under Double Wheellock Pistol

Matchlock · 9th December 2013, 02:09 PM

Oh yeah, Raf, I see and it's my turn to be sorry now.

On the other hand, South Eastern European countries such as Hungaria - think of the Komorn swamps and River Danube finds! - or Romania went their own separate ways in developing spectacuar wheellocks as well. For more than 30 years, in my theories I have ardently pleaded for accepting parallel individual strategies/lines of access to the wheellock development, so I am all in your corner as far as this is concerned!

I do bear my doubts though as to whether to look upon early Italian wheellocks as 'earlier in time' than Germanic ones. More archaic they may seem, no doubt.

E.g., please cf. the locks of the earliest datable wheellock/crossbow combination in the Bavarian National Museum Munich, ca. 1521-26 (my personal guess is ca. 1525+, and I have handled it several times, alas without being allowed to take the lock out), and the earliest dated wheellocks in existence, a small Augsburg Marquardt arquebus of Charles V d. 1530, and another, very finely executed, of identical provenance and dated 1531, plus a completely different combined wheellock and snap-tinderlock Munich arquebus in the Liège Musée de l'Armée, dated 1532, the etching by Ambrosius Gemlich, plus an early-1530's wheellock gun in the Royal Armouries Leeds and some detached mechanisms in the Dresden Armory.
Thus we have a line of datet or closely datable wheellocks from ca. 1525-35.

Some of the wheellock combination weapons in the Doges Palace in Venice may be from the 1520's or 1530's but they are not dated, and their earliest combined crossbow and gun seems so archaic that one might assume it was made in the first decade of the 16th century (ca. 1505, as one authority believed), which is probably not true ... I have always tentatively assigned a dating of '2nd to 3rd decade 16th c.' to them, and their axe and gun combination is dated 1551 ...

P.S. It is great to have finally found somebody with a good insight in early wheellocks!!!

Best,
Michael

Raf · 9th December 2013, 06:18 PM

Thanks Michael for a reflective and informative response. I think I agree with you. Individual areas or centers of production have to be viewed as having their own histories and its probably unsound to read to much into comparisons. Therefore I agree that ' primitive ' italian locks are probably in reality no earlier , or not much earlier than their more sophisticated German counterparts . But they do illustrate the conceptual stages in the development of the idea. I am familiar with the Palallazo Ducale crosbow / wheelocks but not their German counterparts . Any pictures ?

Matchlock · 9th December 2013, 07:01 PM

Hi Raf,

Here are all the images that the Bavarian National Museum Munich allowed me to take of their famous wheellock/crossbow combination of ca. 1521-6, the barrel signed in etching FERDINANDUS, over a span of more than 30 years (!). Some of them were taken using flashlight, which of course is illegal ...

Who cares anyway? The crossbow won't mind, either, and I needed the information !

I remember posting some of them here on the forum but the search button cannot find a single one! GRRRRRRRRR !!!!

Do you have any photos of the Venice pieces?

Best,
m

Matchlock · 9th December 2013, 07:09 PM

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Matchlock · 9th December 2013, 07:15 PM

m

Matchlock · 9th December 2013, 07:18 PM

A few details of decoration:

the Cross of Burgundy and the Chain of the Order of the Golden Fleece (Kette des Ordens vom Goldenen Vlies).

m

Raf · 9th December 2013, 07:20 PM

Thanks for the picks .Did our posts cross somewhere? Compared to the Venice crossbow / wheelocks ( c 1510 ) the german version looks like its from another planet. Rather makes my point . With the exception of the hooked pancovers these early locks have all the classic features of later locks and one is left wondering where the development took place, how it was so rapid and why we don't see in German locks the same kind of 'primitive' features we see elsewhere. Please reasure me that the B and W pictures of Royal Armouries X11 1566 is a modern copy. Not the orrigional lock attacked by the Conservator from Hell...

Matchlock · 9th December 2013, 07:53 PM

I'm not sure what picture you mean but this ca. 1530 Augsburg/Munich lock is in the Dresden Armory and is preserved in the same perfectly original condition as the gun with the same makers mark (a dolphin??) on both lock and barrel of a long arquebus in Leeds, the stock all veneered in natural staghorn (bought via Fischer, Lucerne, in 1932).

In the 1870's, Moritz Thierbach had a line drawing of it made for his work Entwickelung der Handfeuerwaffen ...

Just because they are almost 500 years old these items do not necessarily have to look like pieces of dirt or as if they were excavated.
E.g., take the famous Monk's gun ...

I do keep many extremely early items in my collection that still are in perfect overall as-new condition (plus patina). I bought them because they were in such a good condition!

m

Matchlock · 9th December 2013, 09:14 PM

Back to the roots for a moment, meaning the short double-barreled arquebus from post #1.
A very similar small arquebus (nowadays commonly called a pistol), the iron parts ca. 1545-50, of similar dimensions (overall length 46.5 cm) but sadly newly stocked in 1560's style, was sold at a German auction: Hermann Historica, Munich, 33rd sale, 22nd March 1996, lot 966. The almost identical lock, the prite dogs and pierced wheel covers were characteristic of the mid-16th c. Nuremberg style.

Best,
Michael

Matchlock · 10th December 2013, 04:00 PM

Hi Raf,

I was beginning to like our discussions a lot - would you still care to respond?
Do you know what the tiny wing nut to the left of the wheel of the BNM (Bavarian National Museum) was meant for? And the vertical push button? I do ...

Best,
Michael

Raf · 10th December 2013, 10:11 PM

Hullo Michael. No I dont know and since this is not a conventional set up it would have to be a guess. I assumed the button was the trigger release for the secondary link . In view of the early date assume sear pushed into wheel slot by spring and disengaged by front end of the secondary link pushing down on the tail of the sear arm when button is pressed. In which case the wing nut is threaded into the lockplate and when fully screwed in pushes the tail of the primary sear out meaning the sear is locked into wheel so it cant fire. But ; has the secondary effect of making sure the sear always fully enters the wheel slot. So its a sort of compromise between the single piece locking bar and the later locking bar with prop. If this is right then it implies that at this early date the deficiencies of the single locking bar were known but the problem had yet to be fully resolved . Did I pass ?

9th December 2013, 07:01 PM	#3
Matchlock (deceased) Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Bavaria, Germany - the center of 15th and 16th century gunmaking Posts: 4,310	Hi Raf, Here are all the images that the Bavarian National Museum Munich allowed me to take of their famous wheellock/crossbow combination of ca. 1521-6, the barrel signed in etching FERDINANDUS, over a span of more than 30 years (!). Some of them were taken using flashlight, which of course is illegal ... Who cares anyway? The crossbow won't mind, either, and I needed the information ! I remember posting some of them here on the forum but the search button cannot find a single one! GRRRRRRRRR !!!! Do you have any photos of the Venice pieces? Best, m Attached Images

9th December 2013, 07:09 PM	#4
Matchlock (deceased) Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Bavaria, Germany - the center of 15th and 16th century gunmaking Posts: 4,310	- Attached Images

9th December 2013, 07:15 PM	#5
Matchlock (deceased) Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Bavaria, Germany - the center of 15th and 16th century gunmaking Posts: 4,310	m Attached Images Last edited by Matchlock; 10th December 2013 at 01:20 PM.

9th December 2013, 07:18 PM	#6
Matchlock (deceased) Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Bavaria, Germany - the center of 15th and 16th century gunmaking Posts: 4,310	A few details of decoration: the Cross of Burgundy and the Chain of the Order of the Golden Fleece (Kette des Ordens vom Goldenen Vlies). m Attached Images

9th December 2013, 07:53 PM	#8
Matchlock (deceased) Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Bavaria, Germany - the center of 15th and 16th century gunmaking Posts: 4,310	I'm not sure what picture you mean but this ca. 1530 Augsburg/Munich lock is in the Dresden Armory and is preserved in the same perfectly original condition as the gun with the same makers mark (a dolphin??) on both lock and barrel of a long arquebus in Leeds, the stock all veneered in natural staghorn (bought via Fischer, Lucerne, in 1932). In the 1870's, Moritz Thierbach had a line drawing of it made for his work Entwickelung der Handfeuerwaffen ... Just because they are almost 500 years old these items do not necessarily have to look like pieces of dirt or as if they were excavated. E.g., take the famous Monk's gun ... I do keep many extremely early items in my collection that still are in perfect overall as-new condition (plus patina). I bought them because they were in such a good condition! m Attached Images Last edited by Matchlock; 9th December 2013 at 09:18 PM.

9th December 2013, 02:09 PM	#1
Matchlock (deceased) Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Bavaria, Germany - the center of 15th and 16th century gunmaking Posts: 4,310	Oh yeah, Raf, I see and it's my turn to be sorry now. On the other hand, South Eastern European countries such as Hungaria - think of the Komorn swamps and River Danube finds! - or Romania went their own separate ways in developing spectacuar wheellocks as well. For more than 30 years, in my theories I have ardently pleaded for accepting parallel individual strategies/lines of access to the wheellock development, so I am all in your corner as far as this is concerned! I do bear my doubts though as to whether to look upon early Italian wheellocks as 'earlier in time' than Germanic ones. More archaic they may seem, no doubt. E.g., please cf. the locks of the earliest datable wheellock/crossbow combination in the Bavarian National Museum Munich, ca. 1521-26 (my personal guess is ca. 1525+, and I have handled it several times, alas without being allowed to take the lock out), and the earliest dated wheellocks in existence, a small Augsburg Marquardt arquebus of Charles V d. 1530, and another, very finely executed, of identical provenance and dated 1531, plus a completely different combined wheellock and snap-tinderlock Munich arquebus in the Liège Musée de l'Armée, dated 1532, the etching by Ambrosius Gemlich, plus an early-1530's wheellock gun in the Royal Armouries Leeds and some detached mechanisms in the Dresden Armory. Thus we have a line of datet or closely datable wheellocks from ca. 1525-35. Some of the wheellock combination weapons in the Doges Palace in Venice may be from the 1520's or 1530's but they are not dated, and their earliest combined crossbow and gun seems so archaic that one might assume it was made in the first decade of the 16th century (ca. 1505, as one authority believed), which is probably not true ... I have always tentatively assigned a dating of '2nd to 3rd decade 16th c.' to them, and their axe and gun combination is dated 1551 ... P.S. It is great to have finally found somebody with a good insight in early wheellocks!!! Best, Michael Attached Images Last edited by Matchlock; 9th December 2013 at 03:38 PM.

9th December 2013, 06:18 PM	#2
Raf Member Join Date: Nov 2013 Posts: 252	Thanks Michael for a reflective and informative response. I think I agree with you. Individual areas or centers of production have to be viewed as having their own histories and its probably unsound to read to much into comparisons. Therefore I agree that ' primitive ' italian locks are probably in reality no earlier , or not much earlier than their more sophisticated German counterparts . But they do illustrate the conceptual stages in the development of the idea. I am familiar with the Palallazo Ducale crosbow / wheelocks but not their German counterparts . Any pictures ?

9th December 2013, 07:20 PM	#7
Raf Member Join Date: Nov 2013 Posts: 252	Thanks for the picks .Did our posts cross somewhere? Compared to the Venice crossbow / wheelocks ( c 1510 ) the german version looks like its from another planet. Rather makes my point . With the exception of the hooked pancovers these early locks have all the classic features of later locks and one is left wondering where the development took place, how it was so rapid and why we don't see in German locks the same kind of 'primitive' features we see elsewhere. Please reasure me that the B and W pictures of Royal Armouries X11 1566 is a modern copy. Not the orrigional lock attacked by the Conservator from Hell...

9th December 2013, 09:14 PM	#9
Matchlock (deceased) Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Bavaria, Germany - the center of 15th and 16th century gunmaking Posts: 4,310	Back to the roots for a moment, meaning the short double-barreled arquebus from post #1. A very similar small arquebus (nowadays commonly called a pistol), the iron parts ca. 1545-50, of similar dimensions (overall length 46.5 cm) but sadly newly stocked in 1560's style, was sold at a German auction: Hermann Historica, Munich, 33rd sale, 22nd March 1996, lot 966. The almost identical lock, the prite dogs and pierced wheel covers were characteristic of the mid-16th c. Nuremberg style. Best, Michael Attached Images Last edited by Matchlock; 9th December 2013 at 09:33 PM.

10th December 2013, 04:00 PM	#10
Matchlock (deceased) Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Bavaria, Germany - the center of 15th and 16th century gunmaking Posts: 4,310	Munich BNM Wheellock/Crossbow Combination Hi Raf, I was beginning to like our discussions a lot - would you still care to respond? Do you know what the tiny wing nut to the left of the wheel of the BNM (Bavarian National Museum) was meant for? And the vertical push button? I do ... Best, Michael

10th December 2013, 10:11 PM	#11
Raf Member Join Date: Nov 2013 Posts: 252	Hullo Michael. No I dont know and since this is not a conventional set up it would have to be a guess. I assumed the button was the trigger release for the secondary link . In view of the early date assume sear pushed into wheel slot by spring and disengaged by front end of the secondary link pushing down on the tail of the sear arm when button is pressed. In which case the wing nut is threaded into the lockplate and when fully screwed in pushes the tail of the primary sear out meaning the sear is locked into wheel so it cant fire. But ; has the secondary effect of making sure the sear always fully enters the wheel slot. So its a sort of compromise between the single piece locking bar and the later locking bar with prop. If this is right then it implies that at this early date the deficiencies of the single locking bar were known but the problem had yet to be fully resolved . Did I pass ? Last edited by Raf; 11th December 2013 at 09:55 AM.