Spoon (artillery)


It is called a spoon to a copper plate or curled iron with its long wooden handle.

It served to introduce the charge of gunpowder in the guns when they were not loaded with a cartridge. They were of various sizes and dimensions for mortar, stone and howitzer.

The spoon with scraper was a variation of the previous one; on the opposite side of the handle was a kind of curved figure with a round tip, which was used to scrape and clean the barrel beforehand. Only the mortar and howitzer had a spoon and scraper attached; the guns had each of these pieces with a separate shaft.

Military, etymological, historical, technological dictionary ..., José Almirante, 1869

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