Making wooden crossbow prods?

[admin]

Do you know anyone who has tried it except for very light toys?
It seems to me that quite a few of the surviving 15th century crossbows actually have bows of wood and horn, rather than steel. Does anyone know of attempted reconstructions of these?
I have been on a bow making course and made a longbow - if you have the right wood and some guidance it is really not difficult. I wonder if it might be fun to get hold of some wood and horn and give a crossbow prod a go...

[Stevie T]

I once made a crossbow prod from yew, no horn laminations, but I left it in too warm conditions and it snapped when I was trying to span it, 2 weeks before I due to hand it in for a CDT project!!

From what I understand of the horn/wood laminate prods it's a pretty lengthy process time wise. I think there were Czech re-enactors who were supposedly producing 1000lb prods but it was taking over a year to produce each prod. Whispers in the re-enactment world are many and usuallu exaggerated, so I wouldn't know how true any of that is.

[admin]

Why does it take so long to make composite bows? Something to do with the glue? I've never understood the reason why.

I wonder how well an ash bow with a laminate of horn on the front would work.

While we are here, this may interest some people as a light read:
http://www.thesharkguys.com/lists/top-7 ... crossbows/

[Stevie T]

IIRC it's something to do with the glue having to impregnate the materials, but that was more for the natural glues from the period. Don't know quite how it would work for modern glues, though I would think there would be quite a bit of info out there.

I would think the horn would go on the back of the bow rather than the front. Horn isn't too stechy but should store a lot of energy when compressed. As to the wood, you could probably pick up a yew stave pretty cheaply off ebay. It only needs to be quite short and wouldn't be of use to most bowyers.

[Jonathan Waller]

Ted Mcewan made some, I saw them during some work for the Armouries, he had been making tradition laminated Mongol etc. bows and this was an extension of that.
As Stevie says it was a year + long process. As you say it is to do with the glue, though the scoring of the horn etc. makes it an extremely intensive and time consuming process.

[admin]

Interesting, and presumably a simple wooden bow that short just breaks too easily unless it is fairly weak?
So in other words, a steel bow is a lot easier and quicker to make?

[Jonathan Waller]

Yes a yew needs to be nearly as long as it wood be for a hand bow.
Steel would be quicker to make but obviously needs access to the material.
Also it has been pointed out that once you have iron/steel of sufficient quality for a good crossbow prod its good enough for a good hand gun!

[Peter S]

Interesting, and presumably a simple wooden bow that short just breaks too easily unless it is fairly weak?
So in other words, a steel bow is a lot easier and quicker to make?

I know a reenactor type who made light (sub 40lb draw) crossbows with wooden prods for c.11-12th century stuff. He tried to make a 60+lb one, and the prod was looking at being 5+ feet long.

[admin]

Wow, interesting.

I wonder why they still bothered making the wood and horn laminate bows in the late-15th and 16thC's? What did they offer that the steel bows didn't? A faster reflex maybe?

[Stevie T]

Wow, interesting.

I wonder why they still bothered making the wood and horn laminate bows in the late-15th and 16thC's? What did they offer that the steel bows didn't? A faster reflex maybe?

After the discussion of the problems with impurities in steel in another thread, may it be due to the steel prods failing more often?

[Jonathan Waller]

Yes i would suggest the raw materials and access to them. Also without access to consistent supplies of the raw materials it would be hard to develop the appropriate levels of skill to produce them...

[bigdummy]

Interesting, and presumably a simple wooden bow that short just breaks too easily unless it is fairly weak?
So in other words, a steel bow is a lot easier and quicker to make?

They used to make very thick solid wood (I think yew) crossbows in the 15th Century Baltic which were called "knottelarmbruste", they were considered at the lower end of military crossbows by the Order but were probably significantly more powerful than most modern crossbows available today. So I think there must be a way to make one out of solid wood.


Here are a couple of antiques:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/museumsecrets/5425185445/






The composites are very complex and time consuming to make as Stevie and Jonathan mentioned and in addition, with a very powerful bow there is considerable risk of serious injury if it breaks, so it's tricky to experiment with this to learn to make them.

BD

[bigdummy]

Wow, interesting.

I wonder why they still bothered making the wood and horn laminate bows in the late-15th and 16thC's? What did they offer that the steel bows didn't? A faster reflex maybe?

The Swiss and the Prussian / Germans noticed that steel prod crossbows would sometimes snap in very cold conditions. This may be the reason why the Swiss were still using mostly organic prods while the Burgundians had switched to steel prods in the late 15th Century.

BD

[admin]

That's quite funny, because yew longbows also suffer a higher failure rate when it's cold... I think probably most springy materials are more brittle when cold.

[Gil-Galadh]

A reenactor friend is currently making a composite crossbow prod, I should ask him when he'll be ready.
And we have a few people here that have been working on reconstructing traditional avar/bulgar bows for some years now, but I do not know them personally.