Late Gothic Crossbows and Accouterments

[Micke D]

Is there evidence that there the distances bethween the two "nutfingers" were standardised in one area or at least at one town? Does someone know about the distance bethween the nutfingers of the crossbows in Hermannsstadt?

Hi David!

I 'think' at least towns, maybe even regions, must have had some standards for a lot of military stuff including distance between nut fingers.
I think that Josef Alm mentions this in his book, someone in a 15th c German town gets an order to trim crossbow bolts so they fit between nut fingers.

The Hermannstadt crossbows are a very interesting group of crossbows as they are said to all be an old Zeughaus inventory, and if that's correct, they will be military weapons and should probably have the same distance between the nut fingers.

[Matchlock]

Hi Micke D,


You are right, of course,

That cranequin sold at Nagel auctions in Stuttgart might be as early as ca. 1490-1500. I actually based my dating on the bone handle, and my policy has always been to choose a later date rather than one too early. Decades of experience have shown that certain early criteria have often been found on rather late items, so as a principle I have been looking for the latest, the newest criterion on any piece.

Sadly Nagel had only this one image on their site, and the sale is over.


Best,
Michael

[Matchlock]

Hi David and Micke,


Concerning the Sibiu/Hermannstadt Gothic crossbows in the Brukenthal-Museum:

You guys seem to know a lot on them - may I ask you what source your knowledge came from?
All I have is the attached b/w photograph from 1934!


Best,
Michael

[Micke D]

The most interesting thing about that photo is, as you know 😉, the rack with crossbows on the right! I guess it is THE rack that they have been hanging on since the 15th or 16th century.

Thank you for the photo Michael, I had not seen it before, only a drawing of the rack with crossbows in Holger Richter's crossbow book.

I will upload what I know about the Hermannstadt crossbows in the evening.

[David Jaumann]

Your´re welcome for the pictures, Michael!

Nice picture!
Like Micke, I did only know the painted version on Holger Richters book.
That´s also where I got the information about the Hermannsstadt crossbows. Unfortunatelly, it´s at my home right now and not here in Innsbruck, where I recently started studying archeology. But I´m also already eager to read Mickes post about the crossbows.


@Micke:
So it really seems that there were some standarts for the distance bethween the nutfingers. I noticed that there are maybe two "types" of bolts.
The first one was probably especially made for one specific crossbow or a special armoury (look at post #25). The rear end is tapered gradually.
The second type could have been a mass product for many armouries, which had to be adjusted in each case. On post #254 you can see that these bolts were probably carved with a knife to adjust them to the nut. That would perfectly match to your answer of my question.
What do you think?

Best wishes,
David

[Matchlock]

Hi David and Micke,


I asked my friend, who collects 15th-16th century crossbows and all sorts of accouterments concerning a possible standardization of the width of the recess in the center of the nut that we had been discussing.

He told me that his collection comprised 6 (!) crossbows with composite horn bows, 19 cranequins and some 200 quarrels/crossbow bolts from various provenances, including some incredibly rare incendiary arrows.

Please see
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...bow+collection

His earliest crossbow is the fine and perfectly preserved piece from the Harold L. Peterson colln. (attached here), and it can be dated as early as ca. 1430-40!!!
Interestingly, he thinks that there was no such thing like a standardized space between the nut 'fingers'. He also emphasized that a great number of the bolt shafts in his collection had oval (!) rear ends while the rest was obviously cut to shape to fit that space between the nut 'fingers'. His conclusion is that the quarrel shafts were only cut right before they were about to 'see service'.
And: not all quarrels fit the nuts of any crossbow.


Best,
Michael

[Matchlock]

Hi,


I found this image I posted above in a museum's book on the earliest firearms in the Brukenthal museum, which of course are highly interesting to me. The book is by Elena Roman: Arme de Foc Portative Secolele XV-XVIII, 1981. The photos are of horribly poor quality, and although the one of the weapons room at the back of the book is said to have been taken in 1934, they all look that old.
Some six years ago I made contacts with the museum staff, and getting regular responses was really extremely tough and the uncertainty was almost unbearable although I had made the contact via a high-ranking official in the Romanian Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs. Well, I just hung on and by and by I learned that there was only one way to get what I wanted (good photos). And that way was called money, so I finally tranferred a few hundred euro. After what seemed an eternity, at least half a year or so, I received color (!) photos of their earliest Late Gothic and Early Renaissance firearms.
O.k., so they were in color but that was about all. They were visibly taken with the utmost reluctance, extremely dark and in very low resolution, 270 kB each. The museum staff had agreed to take the images in high resolution before, 5 MB each. In fact, however, I could hardly see anything that was of interest to me. Our agreement was that they would take many detailed close-ups of the lock mechanisms amd the marks on the barrels. Nothing of all that was on what I got. When I reclaimed, the contact broke up immediately and I was told that I would not get photos of the crossbows as a female member of the museum's staff, Anca Nitoi, wanted to do her doctorate on them. So that was it. An average span of time to acquire a Ph.D. is 2-3 years. After six years now I have heard nothing about an academic study on the Sibiu crossbows, and their internet site does not provide any information on museum's publications either.
Believe me, it's experiences like that that just make me comment pejoratively as usual: 'museums '

I attached two of those photos of their guns, just for the fun and for you to judge their 'quality'. It is only with a whole lot of imagination that I can tell by these images that the guns are early snap-tinderlocks from the 1520's to 30's.

Also attached find two close-ups of the crossbows, as good as it gets. And, attached at the bottom, in my archives I found a xeroxed copy of a historic photo of the array in the Sibiu weapons hall of ca. 1880, where some Gothic crossbows can be identified.

Finally, Sibiu seems to have split up the display of the crossbows; here is an impression of the Altemberger Haus, which belongs to the Hermannstadt/Brukenthal administration.


Best,
Michael

[Matchlock]

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