Bugyotsuji

1.46 cm is 5 Monme, so 4 Monme something(?), according to this site: http://paomaru.dousetsu.com/file/09_hinawa_001.html

Very difficult to narrow down the date, but somewhere between 1630 and 1860...would be a starting guess. It could be older with later repairs. That pan looks seriously well used; it could be a second or third replacement? On the side of the pan is a character which may be Zen 全, meaning complete or satisfactorily made, put there by the smith, but again this is a guess as to the habits of this Sendai gunsmith house. (Are there no more characters on the facet to the right of the main signature?)

PS There is an example of a signed second generation Toyonari gun in the Yushukan Museum in Yasukuni Jinja in Tokyo. PPS None of the recorded guns are dated, sadly. Yours might have more info under the rust somewhere...

In the meantime after judicious application of Occam's razor, I have some partially good news. Your smith was first, second or third generation of a known Sendai gunsmith workshop. The thickness of the pan waist suggests a later one of these, but you have not yet uncovered enough characters to reveal his 'first' name. Here's hoping! In the meantime take your pick. Gen 1 芳賀十太夫豊平 (The use of Ju in his name suggests, to me, a Christian connection.) Hoga Judayu Toyohira Gen 2 芳賀十太夫豊成 (Toyonari) Gen 3 芳賀十太夫豊也 (Toyoya, Toyonari, Hiroya?)

Abraham Lincoln was generally speaking a good president.

Paul, thank you. Which photo contains the characters? We are expecting them to be underneath. In order to expose the characters and make them legible, you will need to remove the red rust without exposing bare metal. If you do expose bare steel, then you will have to re-patinate with something like gun blue, to protect the metal and for aesthetic reasons. This is a slightly more acceptable process than with Nihonto Nakago tangs.

The posters above have wrapped that up pretty comprehensively. I agree on the Sendai attribution, and the difficulty pinning down a Mei definitively to a single clan. (Same goes for sword koshirae.) Would it be possible to show the barrel and any interesting detail? Is it unsigned?

Hi Kris, Can you get a shot or two further down the Mei? Thanks.

Not being a practitioner of the bow I cannot judge the real meaning of the words 5号力, but "Number 5 strength/pull"? On the left is a length of 7 bu and 5 rin and as John says, a Kao signature at the bottom.

42.7 inches. Length of gun or length of barrel? Larger than any I can recall, and 9kg is definitely heavy. I wonder what the internal diameter is? Missing Ron's input here, though.

Great page! (500 USD for a powder tester is pretty steep, though!)

Those eBay offers are representative of the kind of thing you can bump into fairly frequently. It pays to be cautious. 'Nuff said.

Renews the pressure to learn how to read sosho script! Are you offering this?

Possibly kept the barrel, and sent the butt section to Japan for refitting with lock and plate? This way it would be legal. (Or if there is no vent/flash hole anyway, then no legal problem.) Sweet restoration indeed.

Can you provide the original source, Carlo? Perhaps the Chinese explanation will tell us more.

Reiter = mounted cavalry. You have already found almost the only known clear illustration of this subject. Taira Sawada published a book explicating this text. Although there may not have been massed battles dressed this way after the Shimabara uprising, there were many schools of gunnery active throughout the Tokugawa/Edo Period, and many books and scrolls illustrating methods of use for various weapons. Imagination must be at work in such illustrations too. There is a slight difference between short Tanzutsu (pistols) and slightly longer Bajozutsu (cavalry guns). Matchlock pistols were extremely rare, almost non-existent in the west, and even in Japan they were never common. Because of their traditional rarity, there are many clever fakes to be found today. In my experience one good Tanzutsu might appear for every ... 50-100 long guns?

The mekugi for Tanto changed to reverse screws in some cases, but the few examples I have seen seem to date from the Bakumatsu.

Haynes used the expression 'iron tea kettles'. Perhaps he was creating a short form for "kettles for boiling water for making tea"? A kettle is for boiling water, and a (tea) pot is for making tea, in my experience.

Try contacting Sawada Taira directly to ask for internal diagrams...?

Alexander, there were almost no wheellocks in Japan, but you can see six rare examples nine posts above, on this same page.

Without wanting to go into detail, it was I who had him linked in to our castle matchlock troop website in Japan. It was our Japanese members however, who objected and eventually had the link removed. They told me some of the reasons, but I sensed it was a Japanese thing, and tried to ignore it. One of the members of this NMB forum objected strongly when I pointed out that we need to take Mr Sugawa's work with a pinch of salt. Perhaps a 'grain' of salt may have been more American and acceptable...? Anyway, he is at least 80% factually correct. If you wish to read/learn more, Peter, please contact me for some good solid reading material.

Agreed, the guy has done a lot of work, and in the absence of anything else he deserves due credit. He is a bit like Marmite, though... as can be seen in the divisive nature of various threads here and elsewhere which have attempted to deal with his site.

Worth reading once, but keep your wits about you. Not all gospel, and needs heavy editing, IMHO.

Brilliant, makes all the difference. Thanks!

Cool. Wouldn't mind a tooth or two myself!