I’m William Baxter, a passionate artist who finds inspiration in capturing the fleeting beauty of life.
This is a place to compile information from the wheellock forum and to provide myself a place to search and store my research material.
Search
Reference Material
Books and Manuals
Historical Reference
How to – Class coming soon!
I have always admired functional art. Art disguised with another purpose…
Mix intelligent, inspiring, and creative art with black powder and noise. I was hooked!
As I have experienced, “Art is not an object. It is the excitement inspired by the object.”
When I go into a museum, I don’t say “I want that!”, I say, “I want to build that !”
After a health scare a few years ago, I decided to do what I said I would do “later” in life, and started to develop the skills necessary to create such objects.
Wheel locks and flintlocks are simple in function. However, it is the highly ornate, almost over the top, decoration pieces that inspire (actually yell at…) me to build one.
These ornate masterpieces are at the top end of the spectrum of engineering and art.
It takes a unique combination of skills to design, develop, and decorate these objects of precision and beauty!
Besides the engineering skills necessary to make the object function, additional sculpting & engraving skills must mastered. Yet it is the ornamentation that is most prominent.
One is drawn to art visually. Therefore, the “Art” needs to be as, if not more, precise in its design & execution than the engineering. Visually it has to make sense.
To get this right.. One has to do research.
What’s New in the Archives
NMLRA – Gun Seminar 2025 – Wheellock Building Class
Books
-
Bestiary Imagery in Hebrew Manuscripts of the Thirteenth Century
Adam S. Cohen Abstract: In medieval bestiaries, knowledge about animals and their behavior is regularly given a Christian moral interpretation. This article explores the use of imagery related to the bestiary tradition in three Hebrew books made around the year 1300, focusing especially on the richly decorated Rothschild Pentateuch (Los Angeles, Getty Museum MS 116).…
-
Der Blockbau
E I N F A C H B U C HZ U R E R Z I E H U N G W E R K G E R E C H T E N G E S T A L T E N SI N H O L ZV O NHERMANN PHLEPS
How to Articles
Peter Kunz
Historical Reference
-
About the development of the Brescian wheellock in the last decades of the 16th century
Paolo De Montis Introduction One of Marco Morin’s most important contributions to hoplological literature was certainly his research into the German origin of the wheellock system, research often in conflict withthe studies of another eminent scholar, Claude Blair, according to whom the wheellock system was first created in Italy. The dating of the two sources…
-
About the Agreement of 1476 between the Brussels Painters and Tapestry Weavers Concerning Cartoon Painting
Guy DELMARCEL n 1876, Alphonse Wauters, the archivist from the city of Brussels, published the first specific study devoted to the history of Brussels tapestries .[1] It was the outcome of his life long research in the city archives, and several very interesting documents were published in his book. Among them, he revealed an agreement…
-
A Description of Indian and Oriental Armour
Illustrated from the collection formerly in the India Office, Now Exhibited at South Kensington, and the Author’s Private Collection. With a map, Twenty-Three Full-page Plates (Two Colored), and Numerous Woodcuts with An Introductory Sketch of the Military History of India by The Right Hon. Lord Egerton of Tatton, M.A., 1896 As the catalogue originally drawn…
-
Ground-Truthing Excavations at Los Adaes (16NA16) May, 2010
George Avery Abstract In May 2010, Stephen F. Austin State University—funded by the Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (CERL)—conducted excavations at Los Adaes State Historic Site (16NA16) to ground-truth the results of a geophysical survey of the presidio area of the site conducted by ERDC CERL and the University…