A metal bar used in the casting of ordnance (see quots.). Obsolete. rare.

An instrument by which the spring in a wheel-lock firearm was spanned or wound up. Obsolete.

†(a) (perhaps) = height-rule n.; (b) ‘a stair-builders’ gage for the risers and treads of a stairway’ (Cent. Dict.).

a rule for measuring the bores of guns.

(a) (Astronomy, now historical) (W. Herschel's term for) a determination of the number of stars visible in a given region of the sky, by…

A rod upon which the core of a gun-shell is moulded.

(a) ‘a device employed to determine the initial velocity of projectiles by means of the recoil of the gun’ (Hamersly Naval Encycl. 1881); (b) ‘a…