IanB

Oh dear, can't hit the right keys now Should say 'hope' not 'hole'. Ian

There you go. From Eiyu Tasa no Kamon (hole that's right translation of title) Ian Bottomley

Lindus, As Thierry says, go to the Musée de l’Armée, not only are there Japanese armours there, but in particular two armours sent to Europe by Tokugawa Ieyasu as part of a gift for the French king, Henri IV. The gift also included swords and a naginata, but these seem to have been lost as was so much from the French Royal Collection. There are also two further armours, also given by Ieyasu to Stadholder Mauritz of Holland. These were in the Hague until French troops transferred them to Paris in the 1790's. There are also several other fine pieces including a fine folding armour and a staggering helmet shaped like a butterfly. Ian Bottomley

Another slight correction . Blunderbusses were never loaded with scrap or nails. Such a charge would jam in the barrel and cause it to burst. What was used was shot, often quite large such as swan-shot. Although some were made with iron barrels, most were brass or other non-ferrous alloy to avoid the need for constantly unloading them and cleaning them out. With a brass barrel, the charge could be left in for a protracted period without worrying about corrosion. Tucked under the driver's seat on a coach, or by the door of a house, the yawning muzzle made it an intimidating weapon against an attacker. Interesting though that so many have what our American cousins would call a 'second strike capability' in the form of a fold-out bayonet. Gave you a second chance if the charge of shot didn't do its job. Ian Bottomley

I worry for friends in Sendai, but as yet have been unable to acertain if they are alright. According to the BBC news, the explosion in Fukushima has injured some but not seriously. My heart goes out to all who are suffering in the calamity. Ian Bottomley

All, I've missed a lot of this having been occupied the last few days. What it may be is a ball from a grinding mill. About 8 years ago a number of similar balls turned up from an Indian source, one of which was brought to the Armouries. An examination showed it was wootz steel. Seems somebody got their hands on a pile and decided to make money out of them by claiming they were cannon balls. I suspect this is what it is. It could well be bronze - used in a bronze mill for grinding something that would ignite by sparking. Ian Bottomley

Rich, Without a doubt a conical jingasa. Real ashigaru ones are either 6 or 8 iron plates or a piece of rawhide bent round and sewn up the seam. Mail and plate zukin are made for tatami gusoku. Ian

Guido, No, I have no information at all about Takeda Shingen using that type. In fact, he was long dead before jingasa worn for travelling seems to have been developed. I understand the term bajo-jingasa, some of which have a kamon under the front brim since if you were standing and looking upwards you would see it. If you examine prints of daimyo gyoretsu, the guys riding horses generally wear this type while the ichimonji style was seems to have been worn by the lower ranks on foot. This is also born out by the numbers of surviving jingasa. You see 10 ichimonji style for every bajo jingasa. Just who worn the odd-ball types I am not sure. I have one based on a farmer's hat, made of iron plates and very high quality. I also have one that is similar to a bajo jingasa except that the front brim and crown copies a European morion but at the back it is more conventional. It isn't the best quality but interesting. Ian Bottomley

Judging by the uniformity of the tameshi dents on that dou, it looks like they have been done using a big domed punch and a sledge hammer. Ian Bottomley

Rich, Unfortunately, the term jingasa is used for what are essentially two types of headgear. During the Sengoku period, ashigaru needed arming and the simplest and cheapest form of helmet that could be devised was a conical hat of iron plates or lacquered rawhide. By the Edo period, these helmets had become transformed into lacquered hats for wear when travelling. In the vast majority of cases the fairly steep conical shape of the ashigaru type became flattened into the very shallow form of most Edo period Jingasa. Those of higher rank adopted what I call the bowler hat type whilst others had them made in wacky shapes and designs - just to be different. Almost all of these later jingasa are essentially of multiple layers of paper, formed in a mould and lacquered. You do occasionally find them in iron when they obviously retained a defensive function, but the vast majority are as you say sun shades. By the end of the Edo period, and I suspect mainly in the Meiji period, a number of iron jingasa were made that were embossed or heavily decorated with gold and silver overlay, but its my belief they were for the tourist trade since most are not really finished inside, just given a nominal coat of black lacquer. They are all jingasa but their functions were very different. Ian Bottomley

All, Definitely NOT a screw. The Japanese gunsmiths did all they could to eliminate as many screw threads as they could. Note how they have riveted the internal sear spring to the lockplate rather than fit it with a screw. I have seen these held by a key-hole slot fitting to a standing stud as well. It is probably just an ID mark of some kind - I was going to say it might be a kamon, but not I think so since the line across the circle is on the diagonal. Ian Bottomley

Morita San, Oops, Mea culpa. Ian Bottomley

Eric, This gun gets better. The condition of the bizen is amazingly good. I hope the bore cleans up as nicely as the outside of the barrel. Piers, Looks like Sanzayemon saku. Ian Bottomley

David's point about the Japanese using the French as the model for their new army led to an unfortunate lapse in Japanese taste. It seems the Shogun liked the idea of cuirassiers and ordered kit from France to equip a bodyguard. There duly arrived crested helmets, breasts and backs from the Klingenthal arsenal whilst the jackets, trousers and boots were probably made in Japan. Now on a 6 foot plus Frenchman this uniform looks splendid. On the rather small statured Japanese of that era, the thigh-length boots must have looked distinctly unfortunate. Anyway, when the Germans won the Franco-Prussian war, so the idea was dropped and the German army was taken as a model. In the Museum attached to the Yasukuni Shrine there is an unmodified helmet and cuirass from this venture whilst the Royal Armouries has the same parts converted into a standard Japanese armour. By the way, Stephen Turnbull is acting as advisor on the 47 Ronin film. Ian Bottomley

Ron, I take all of your points and appreciate your expertise. I think both of us agree that plant oils are good for wood and that mineral oil can be bad when used in excess. That and the fact that wood shrinks when it dries out were my only tenets. As for Tung oil, in a previous incarnation I worked in a research lab where there was a dirty old winchester of the stuff. Nobody knew who had ordered it, or why, and nobody wanted to go to the trouble of disposing of it so there it remained. I note from the net that it is the best waterproofing oil for wood but does not stop vapour. I must try it. I appreciate that ferrous metals rust like mad, but in my experience when russetted and kept in ordinary internal conditions it is reasonably stable. It is as if the rust forms a passive barrier, probably because it has been handled and sealed with grease. We know hydrated oxides are hygroscopic. I have had though the odd russet helmet with small rust spots that kept breaking out even when treated. I tried BLO, wax and all sorts but whatever I did, eventually they started up again. My guess is that they were sites of impurities in the metal. In the end the helmet went elsewhere and became someone elses problem. We had a bad outbreak at the Armouries a while back which grew in concentric bands from an initial site and looked just like the fungi that grows on trees. I was convinced it was microbiological but I was wrong - it turned out to be nucleated from contaminants in the air conditioning and grew even though the humidity was controlled. This was however on bright metal not russet. Cheers Ian

Ron, No way did I suggest water, only allowing the wood to absorb atmospheric moisture to regain its original dimensions. Japan's humid climate is a far cry from our centrally heated homes, which wreck havoc with woodwork. I agree that barrels do rust in contact with the tannins from the oak stocks. My concern was the result of my experience with guns that have been over-oiled in the past. The wood tends to get spongy and any attempt to retore the surface finish is a waste of time. Fortunately I've never had a problem with Japanese guns, but with European ones, having got the barrel out and the loose rust removed by oiling and scraping, I tend to wipe the whole barrel with boiled linseed oil. This soaks into the russet finish and once hardened has proved to resist new rust formation for decades yet remains dry when handled. I have russet helmets I treated over 40 years ago that still glow when the dust is wiped off . It's what the old gunmakers used and if it was good enough for them .... We have some old Tower of London stock that were coated with some gunk in the 19th century that when cleaned off has preserved both the wood and metal in absolutely pristine condition. What it is I know not but it looks revolting and smells not too good but by golly it worked. I suspect there will be an animal fat content (knowing the coves who used to clean the collection with such improbables as Rangoon oil and brick dust, it probably has aardvark fat in it) mixed with oils. It is no use at all unless things are going to be stored for a considerable time in a harse environment. No doubt there are now new potions on the market, but I have reservations about anything with silicones in - it tends to spread where it shouldn't. I've never tried lemon oil - I must get some and give it a go. Ian

Eric, Nice barrel. All in all a really nice gun. I'm a bit cautious about oil and stocks. Linseed or teak oil are fine for renovating the finish on old stocks but these are drying oils. I use the latter, rubbing it on to take off the dirt and then wiping clean with a soft cloth. After many, many applications it builds up to lovely finish on walnut stocks. Mineral oil tends to soak in and swell wood, leaving it rather soggy. Only use it on moving metalwork. 3 in 1 is even worse, being a penetrating oil (mineral oil with a solvent) it is good for loosening seized parts but not on woodwork. The fact that the barrel is seized in the stock is probably because it has been stored in centrally heated house and dried out. The best policy would have been to let the gun absorb moisture very slowly in a unheated room. Now that there is oil about this will I suspect take longer. The crack may well have been caused by the wood shrinking onto the barrel. I have repaired such cracks on European guns, when the crack is clean, using superglue, clamping it and wiping off any excess glue before it hardens. Being very fluid, it runs into the crack and does a good job. In this case I would wait until the barrel is off and then perhaps apply a touch of glue from inside the barrel channel. Ian

Eric, You have done it again. Well done. I love the striped wood. Is the barrel decorated? Ian

John, yes you could an did cast threads for certain applications, but not hand gun barrels - cast iron would be far too brittle. Even cast iron cannon were a problem for a long time. Off topic but interesting is the fact that the war at sea during the Napoleonic era was won by the British partly because of cast iron guns. Before cast iron guns were successfully produce they had to be made from bronze, which was in limited supply and hence limited the number of ships and the number of guns each carried. When cast iron was used, it was relatively cheap so you could produce an almost unlimited number of them. A lot blew up at proof, but that didn't matter too much. No, you have to forge a handgun barrel from iron to resist bursting pressures. Hence the diagrams of welding strips radially around the basic barrel tube to offer maximum resistance. Ian

Eric, A friend has passed on a photo of the Liverpool piece for me. Most interesting is the helmet which is a type of eboshinari kabuto made from two main plates. One plate is a single piece of iron, the other rivetted up from twenty some scraps!!!!. Ian

John et al, You are quite correct about fluted taps. The only old Japanese one I have seen is a picture in a book on Sakai guns that isn't really a tap in the western sense. It is in fact a piece of steel, threaded like the bizen, but with a tapered lead and with four flats filed on it before hardening, leaving just narrow threaded areas. These male threads are easy enough to form by winding a long triangular piece of paper around a rod and filing the spiral thus formed. If I have interpreted their use correctly, the 'tap' was used in conjunction with another, longer length of steel rod with the same pitch thread on the end, but slightly smaller diameter. After boring the barrel, the longer rod was inserted in the breech end and the breech area hammered. This is the way the rifling is put into the barrels of modern guns. This process imprinted the form of the thread on the inside of the barrel but distorted the bore somewhat. The tap was then screwed into the imperfect female thread to swage the imprinted thread to the final form. Having a negative rake, such a tap would not cut but would defined the thread form by distortion. The other text concerning the arrival of guns in Japan is interesting but omits quite a bit of what is known of the tanegashima story. Yes, guns had arrived earlier than 1543, but they had little impact because they were ineffective. Sadly we don't know what form of gun these were or why they were so poor but they seem to have been Chinese. The Portuguese had captured Goa in 1510 where there was an arsenal. This they took over, putting Germans in charge to produce guns and cannon for their Far East operations (the Portuguese were never really arms makers and imported most of their guns from Germany and Bohemia). These Germans introduced the idea of the snapping matchlock that had been developed in Germany and turned out such good guns that a Goan gunmaker was sent to Portugal to show the King. A variety of these snapping matchlocks continued to be made in Kurg until the 19th C, whereas the rest of India favoured matchlocks based on Turkish models. These Goan guns were then carried eastwards to places such as Burma and on to China and Japan. There are drawings in Chinese texts that show these guns and I have already mentioned in another thread that two survive in the Tokugawa Art Museum in Nagoya. These two guns show exactly the same two mechanisms that the Japanese continued to make, virtually without alteration - one with an external mainspring and one with a spiral internal spring. The only contribution the Japanese seem to have made was to eliminate screw threads, replacing them by tapered pins and tenons, and simplifying the shapes of the components so they could be more easily mass produced by casting in brass. Why they were better guns is hard to say except that they had iron barrels that were well bored and with the snapping matchlock mechanism could be properly aimed. Ian Bottomley

Eric, Piers, As far as I recall, the Chinese spears are nailed to the shafts through holes in the socket. I know there are a couple of naginata type (of the type depicted being carried by Kwan Yu [spelling?]), where there is a slit in the shaft and the blade has a tang that fits in and is held by a rivet with washers each side. The slit is then filled with a separte piece of twood glued in each side. These have a cast brass dragon's head at the top of the shaft with the blade issuing from the mouth. The staff weapons in the Armouries have a remarkable origin. They were supposed to have been ordered by a European lady from an armourer in Nanking, the originals being preserved in a temple there. Apparently two sets were made , the originals being destroyed in bombing. Subsequently, one complete set arrived at the Tower of London, followed by the major art of the second. Ian

Carlo, Good masame grain though. Ian

Carlo, Snap! Here is a fake money carrying tanto that must have been made in the same workshop as the top example illustrated in the tanto book - notice the spiral designs on the scabbard. The part that carried the coins is paper-thin but carved from solid wood with a slight curve to fit the scabbard. You would have thought it would have been easier to make it from veneer rolled around a former, but no. I once owned a long wakizashi with a drawer concealed inside the saya alongside the blade. When you took the sword out, there was a small notch for your fingernail just below the koiguchi which pulled out a drawer made of horn about 14" long and about 1" wide. Ian Bottomley

I've just had a look at some of what was said during the day. In a few cases not quite what I said or meant, but by and large some quite interesting questions and comments. I hope those who were there enjoyed my ramblings and found it worthwhile attending. Long soak in a hot bath now needed after having kept the seminar going all day, then I can crawl off to my pit before arising early to get to Birmingaham Arms Fair tomorrow - Oh what a frantic social life I lead!!. Ian