A few pics from my last week's trip

[Don Krag]

Some neat pics from the royal armouries last week. I was really expecting to see more items on display there. I know quite a few of the pieces they have and was kind of disappointed to see so much "fluff" and so little actual items on display. Especially when they took up an entire wing with anti-gun/knife propaganda. That was just rediculous. Although some of the anti knife posters were kind of funny. Kind of like our old "this is your brain....this is your brain on drugs" commercial, only it was "this is your face....this is your face after a knife fight" posters.

Anyway, I'll stop before I get started on a roll and just show the pics:

Big mortar (my 6'4" boss in front of it for reference):





"Little" mortars (floor bricks are about 12"x10" for reference):




Big chinese bronze cannon (8" or so cal)





Now for some gonnes. I really want to make a repro of this first one. It was about 1.5" cal and seriously heavy duty!





I'd like to do this one also. It was a true "handgonne". It was found just this past August. Total length is only about 9" long and about 50 cal. I'd definitely want some leather gloves before popping that off in my hand.

[Don Krag]

These were a few others I saw. The first pic is a pair in the Royal Armoury. If I remember correctly they were from India and dated to the British Colonial period.



This was in an antique store up in York. A broze gonne and side dagger and a ballock dagger. You just don't find things like that in antique stores here in Texas!

[cannonmn]

Never have seen a gonne like that.  L950 is probably cheap if the thing is real, which I have some doubts about.  Anyone have any ideas about real vs. repro on that one?

[KABAR2]

If that black dot is the touch hole it is rather small.......

looks too round......

would expect to see larger....

[Double D]

3x5 index card for scale.  Roughly 11 or 12 inches long and around 2 inches or so major diameter

[Don Krag]

I questioned the authenticity on it. The seller supposedly has documentation for it. I wasn't a "serious buyer", though, so I didn't get much out of them.

That's not an index card. Use the legal envelope in front of the oversized envelope for scale. It was ~4" dia at it's widest point, and looked to be about a hair over 3/4" cal.

What struck me as odd was the banding appearance, but yet the entire piece was formed from a single hunk. Lathe turning was available for cleaning up casts...but would they have bothered to put all the banding and steps...or just left it smooth or a more simple contour? I can't think of any 14th century bronze peices I've seen with an exterior contour like this, but I tend to focus on iron objects and don't pay much attention to bronze ones.