Incendiary weapons: the 'stoclades' ball and the 'buffonico'
A hemp-and-pitch ball of firing tubes and a lance-top powder tube to terrify horses and men
A page of incendiary weapons. The stoclades (also written stloclade) is a one-foot ball of hemp and pitch-glue, cored with dried-fungus tinder and packed with copper 'tails' of scoppietti feeding off an internal labyrinth of powder; lit like a blow-pipe, its fire shoots through eight vents so no one can pick it up and quench it, and the little tubes then spit their deadly shot one after another with a fearful din, with a sulphur-and-pitch variant for use aboard galleys. Below, the buffonico is a banded-iron firing tube two braccia long, mounted atop a lance, its barrel tapered at the tip and charged through the mouth a b with fine powder cut with lead filings. The top of the sheet shows the spiked ball and its labyrinthine powder core; a long thin tube runs across the page.
On this page
The 'stoclades' incendiary ball of scoppietti
The stoclades is a ball one foot across, made of hemp and pitch-glue, filled with copper 'tails' of scoppietti no longer than a finger, each covered in sinew or glued paper. These rest on a copper ball bored like a labyrinth and packed with powder, its passages crossing the holes of the scoppietti. Fired like a blow-pipe, the flame shoots through 8 holes so no one can quench it, and the tubes spit their deadly shot one after another with a fearful din; a galley variant uses paper tubes packed with pitch and sulphur.
Dried-fungus tinder at the core
A short note directs that dried-fungus tinder be put in the middle of the stloclade. It supplies the slow-burning heart that carries the flame into the powder labyrinth. The name is written here as a variant spelling of stoclades.
The 'buffonico' lance-top firing tube (a, b)
The buffonico is an instrument set at the top of a lance, two braccia long and an eighth thick, made of banded iron with a thin barrel tapered toward the tip where the fire passes. It is charged through the mouth a b with powder well tamped, then capped with a small tube pierced by a very thin hole. The powder is fine and mixed with rasped lead filings, and when fired it brings great terror and harm to horses and to the enemy.