[Adam Rose]

I can give you a few more detail shots of the Higgins bow. It looks like there are 2 distinct layers under the covering - wood backed with something else?



more: http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=crossbow&...nt&z=e

[Jean Henri Chandler]

These are great, thanks for posting. You are right I noticed some other layers but it seemed mainly on the surface so I figured that would be composite, but it occurs to me I really don't have any idea what the construction of a composite crossbow prod actually looks like internally.

So I guess maybe this could be composite? Are there any experts here on composite bows / prods?

Also, are we sure that crossbow was meant to be used with that cranequin (or any cranequin?)

If so I wonder why it has a foot stirrup? Maybe that is for emergency use in case you lose the cranequin or it breaks?

So many questions! It is definitely a serious bow. A scary weapon. Quite a bit of presence to it.

J

[Jean Thibodeau]

[Jean Henri Chandler]

I'm not sure. Most cranequin spanned crossbows I've seen though did not have foot stirrups. So that is why I was wondering if they were actually linked.

J

[Jean Thibodeau]

[Leo Todeschini]

I would be very surprised if that were not a composite, it looks like one, is very thick at the tips and has the snakeskin decoration of an overlay of printed paper or snakeskin and it was also the bow type of choice for these types of bow.

It is loaded using a cranequin and you can tell this from the position of the lugs. they are too far back to be for a goats foot and windlass don't use lugs.

I am not very familiar with these big bows but I would guess Jean has the nub of it in that the bow and cranequin will be too heavy to hold in the left hand while the right cranks like smaller bows so the stirrup will be to stabilise it while the ground takes the weight.

No idea about poundage, but the regular hunting bows needed cranequins so that would mean they are 500lb plus (approx) this is larger, but the length is also longer so as a complete stab in the dark I would guess 600-800

Tod

[Jean Henri Chandler]

Very interesting, thanks guys! I wonder if anyone else has photos of other composite prod crossbows, spanned by cranequin?

J

[Leo Todeschini]

I thought I would post up a video of me using a goats foot bow to show how it works.

It is a 300lb -320lb bow and managed a rate of fire of 5 shots a minute aiming and this could perhaps go upto 6 if I was a little more reckless.

You will find it here

http://youtu.be/iIkxyjVu9gc


Tod

[Blaz Berlec]

Excellent.

A question - is the kneeling position attested in medieval sources? It seems very reasonable - you can easily pick up lever and bolts from the ground, and a pavise placed in front of you would provide 100% cover most of the time.

[Leo Todeschini]

Blaz Berlec wrote

[Tjarand Matre]

Here is a (poor quality) video of me spanning a crossbow inverted with a very long goats foot. The bow is supposedly 450lb and I think I would have a hard time spanning it the "normal" way. It's a bit hard to see, but I start the spanning by using my right arm, and then my thigh and eventually my knee is involved, always with as much body weight applied as possible. And yes, I'm always afraid of battering myself should the goats foot slip ;-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPsS1pahWjM

[Jean Henri Chandler]

Great stuff guys, very interesting. I wonder what rate of shots you could get to if you had a lot of training, a professional level.

J

[Jean Henri Chandler]

Anything new? Any new testing been done?

J

[Leo Todeschini]

Nothing much from my end.

I have posted some musings before the great crash of '13 but nothing exciting. I made a 1250lb bow that was in performance much as the 900 was that I made before. I have another to make and will make a slightly different bow geometry and see what that turns up.

The string was about 16mm diameter and I wonder if I could get away with a lighter string to up the performance, but I don't really fancy finding out I made it too thin............

I made this video of me using the bow. [url] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEOeZTV9wiA [/url]

What is daft is that I found out half way through a new method of unwinding the windlass that makes it much faster to shoot. I now span the bow and leave the windlass on the bow and then unwind it completely before shooting. This does necessitate putting you hands in the way of the string, so you do have to believe in your trigger (or the maker of it).

I am off to the Wallace in a few weeks to look at some originals of about the right weight, so will faithfully copy the geometry of one of those bows and put up the stats.

Also for those curious, I got the bug for catapultas last year and I have just laminated a set of arms for a 3 span machine and ordered up the oak and lined Owen Bush up to come and join in the fun, so some time over the summer I will make a faithfull reproduction. This will throw bolts around 70cm long. I will keep you informed as there were some questions about these.

[Jean Thibodeau]

As suggested in another of your Topic threads I'm keeping this discussion to this extensive Topic to not repeat a lot of the information and opinions expressed in this Topic without creating a duplicate Topic.

[Leo Todeschini]

I actually started lower and with a 900lb found that a bolt of 80g leaves with a given speed and that increasing it to 125g gave only a loss of about 1-2 fps and then it started to drop quickly, so that you could assume that 125g would be the prefferred weight. The shaft weighs around 25-30g so the bolt head should be around 90g but museums very rarely have heads of this weight and more often 45-65g.

This perhaps suggests that although our ancestors were very good at empirical thought and actions they made bolts lighter than they needed to be. Why would they do this? Bolts do need to be certain sizes to work well and it could be that for them to fly cleanly at the required sizes, heavier bolts don't work. I have a feeling that this could be the answer.

The other view of this is that I have missed something here, but there are so many questions and so little time.

Tod

[Blaz Berlec]

Economics? Transportability? Bolt heads could be just made longer, if aerodynamics would be the problem. But yeah, there are lots of factors in play here.

[Benjamin H. Abbott]

Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey's famous 440-460-yard shot means that at least some of the larger crossbows could much exceed 170 fps. That distance would require 206 fps minimum in a vacuum. He made that shot with a 85-gram (three-ounce) bolt. At 170 fps, a crossbow's maximum range would have been significantly less than 300 yards (probably closer to 250 yards). I don't think that squares with the historical record, though we do have conflicting data points in that regard. Sir John Smythe, for example, gave 400 yards as the longbow's extreme range - and numbers from The Great Warbow make this plausible, assuming flight arrows and bows over 150lbs.

The 1200lb crossbow Payne-Gallwey used would presumably hit harder with a heavier bolt, but the approximately 200 joules of kinetic energy involved would have been sufficient for most purposes. There's no reason to employ a heavier, more expensive bolt when the cheaper, lighter one gets the job done. Especially if, as I'm arguing, period crossbows shot faster than current replica attempts, then lighter bolts probably did fly faster than heavier ones. That renders the observed predominance of lighter projectiles thoroughly understandable.

[Jean Henri Chandler]

Can we review why the replica bows are so much slower than modern crossbows? I have a cheap 150 lb hunting crossbow which makes 285 fps with a 20 -30 gram arrow.

J

[Harri Kyllönen]