Other Items
LANYARD: Made of a strong twisted cord, 12-feet long, with a wooden handle attached at one end and an iron hook at the other.
The
lanyard hook was attached to
the eye in the serrated wire of the friction
primer after the primer was seated into the vent. The gunner would grip the
wooden handle and pull the lanyard quickly, thereby causing the wire to pull
through the friction primer, causing a spark. This would ignite the powder charge in
the cannon tube. FRICTION PRIMER TIN: These are two different Federal friction
primer tins that originally held 100 friction primers in sawdust. A
friction primer is a small brass or quill tube, known as the priming tube,
filled with gunpowder and used to send a flame to the powder charge inside
the cannon bore. It was ignited by pulling an attached rough wire quickly
through a friction composition contained in a second tube. The resulting
flame was transferred through the tube and into the powder bag in the bore.
A lanyard was used to pull the wire.
