Unusual Jitte

[Carlo Giuseppe Tacchini]

  watsonmil said:

In the meantime a big thank you to you Malcolm for bringing this historic site to everyone's attention. I certainly did not know about it's existance.

 

EDIT, added link to the original page where the pics come from. Bottom has the cannon-making explanation so is more coplete.

 

http://www.rekihaku.ac.jp/english/publi ... tness.html

 

Guess this image might give some hints on the matter discussed :

 

[John A Stuart]

I am curious about the date that diagram is from and what it is portraying. Fluted taps came in the 18th century, I think. It looks to be more a swage. John

[Carlo Giuseppe Tacchini]

Methink you're right on the date.

[Baka Gaijin]

Morning all

 

Here's a link to the entire database in English:

 

http://www.rekihaku.ac.jp/english/index.html

 

And this past exhibition in particular which shows gun making books and scrolls from 16th and 17th Centuries

 

http://www.rekihaku.ac.jp/english/exhib ... 61003.html

 

(click on the PDF link within the page for the exhibition catalogue).

 

Also check out

Kunitomo Teppo no Sato

Matchlock Museum in Omi

(The village of Gunsmiths)

534 Kunitomocho Nagahama,

Shiga Prefecture 526-0001

Japan

+81 749-62-1250

 

Cheers

 

Malcolm

[estcrh]

Malcolm, thanks for this info, the pdf has some very interesting facts. http://www.rekihaku.ac.jp/exhibitions/p ... 1003_e.pdf

[Baka Gaijin]

Morning all

 

Here's the link to the Kunitomo Matchlock Gun Museum site:

 

http://www.kunitomo-teppo.jp/

 

Press the second link from the left on the top nav bar and scroll down for pictures of the forge and tools

 

Cheers

 

Malcom

[estcrh]

  estcrh said:

Malcolm, thanks for this info, the pdf has some very interesting facts. http://www.rekihaku.ac.jp/exhibitions/p ... 1003_e.pdf

if you open the pdf and look at section 2.1. PARTICULAR KIND OF GUN Bôbiya and hiyadutu. The weapon called a "hiyadutu" looks a lot like the unknown weapon discussed here. viewtopic.php?f=9&t=2554&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=estcrh&start=1200

 

[Bugyotsuji]

Interesting thread. Many thanks Malcolm and Ron for the heads-up and links. Yes, looks good, and I'd be happy to go and check it out and do a writeup sometime. No proper internet access at present but should be more able to participate on this forum within a day or two.

 

PS Eric, Hiyadutu is just a different Romanization of the Japanese, more normally written Hiya-zutsu (flame arrow gun) for Western understanding. Bobiya means the same, Bo being a pole or handle or stick, and biya being the same word as Hiya.

[Baka Gaijin]

Afternoon all,

 

Here's a link to some interesting images:

 

http://www.mlsa.jp/eng/?cat=8

 

Cheers

 

 

Malcolm

[IanB]

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

[John A Stuart]

Hi Ian, Very informative, thanks. I can understand the hardship creating screw thread by filing. It was done this way in Europe for hundreds of years. Labour intensive and a specialist tradecraft. No wonder with the mass production of muskets in Japan that another way was used. In Europe a way to reduce the labour to produce threaded products of metal was to cast them with thread. I think this originated with wheel wrights where what used to be threaded wood in axle and wheel hubs became steel pieces. I don't suppose this was used on such finely wrought thread as on breech plugs. As a curiosity, original breech plugs were wooden as well. I wonder if this difficulty in producing tight thread is why the hackbutt didn't become more popular with it's turn-off breech. John

[IanB]

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

[John A Stuart]

I was thinking of casting crucible steel. I suppose the need would be limited given how small were the pieces in question. I had in mind a process like Sheffield did with blister steel. Not sure if the timeline would be right in any case. One place I shall visit someday is the Birmingham Proof House. John

[Baka Gaijin]

Morning all

 

http://www.gunproof.com/

 

http://www.gunproof.com/Organised_Tours ... tours.html

 

Cheers

 

Malcolm