Crossbow superiority (and adoring of beautiful yet useless stuff)

Paddling_man said:
If you are interested in longbows, you've got to go to the accompanying link. This gentlemen showed up on another forum I'm on and I found the link in his profile. One word for his ability with the longbow: Amazing!

When you go to the site be sure and watch the videos!

http://www.shrewbows.com
Click to expand...

Flu Flu !! FluFlus are fun, the perfect arrow for lazy people (me).

At least a couple of the years I went to the Denton Hill (Pa) archery shoot in the '90s there was an older fella (can't remember his name, Roger something I think) who did stunt shooting. His finale was shooting aspirin out of the air - aspirin! :eek: Doesn't matter how many times you see that it's still un-freakin-believable!!
 
I thought the advantage of the crossbow over the longbow was abiltiy to penetrate armor?



Paul
 
Hehe- the French knights at Crecy and Agincourt found out the hard way that the English longbow quite successfully penetrated armor...

There's a little throwaway scene in Ivanhoe where the good guys (and a thinly-disquised Robin Hood) are besieging the evil Knight Templar's castle.

The archer (I forget the name Scott gave him) complains to Ivanhoe about his enemy's "damned proof armor" which his bow won't penetrate. There was a lot of back and forth between the makers of armor and the makers of weapons to penetrate same.
 
Longbows could penetrate armor under some circumstances. A direct hit from a bodkin point would do it, especially at the right range with the right amount of power and against the right armor. I believe the minimum pull on a longbow for war had to be around 80lbs, but I'd bet that over 100lbs was more common.

Crossbows made for war that had to be cranked were definitely more powerful.

Longbows were lighter, less expensive to manufacture, and could shoot more rapidly. Crossbows required substantially less training and skill, however.
 
The very heavy, windlass-cranked crossbows meant for castle defense were called arbalests, as I recall. Usually, three crossbowmen to a firing point. Fire, move aside, crank, fire.....
 
I don't think that crossbows are generally superior to firearms, but they do have some advantages:

They're a good alternative in places where firearms are illegal.

They're very quiet.

There's no tell-tale muzzel-flash at night to signal your position.

The "ammunition" is reusable in most cases.

They're rather easy to become accurate with in a short amount of time.

They can be left ready-to-fire at a moments notice for very long periods of time.

You can fish with them (you can probably fish with a firearm too, but it would probably be messy and retrieval is difficult without a line).

I don't think that most places require a permit or license to own one.

There is no gun-powder residue on your hands after firing one.

The spent bolt cannot be traced to a specific crossbow the way that a spent bullet can be traced to a specific rifle.

Well, that's about all I can think of at the moment.

Allen.
 
I'm considering "rolling my own" crossbow as my next project. The design of the "nut" and trigger is fairly straightforward, and the stock is mostly cutting and shaping.
I was going to try to make my own prod (the "bow" part) but commercially-made numbers are readily available at very cheap prices. Any number of internet sources have (Chinese-made, no doubt) prods ranging from 80 pound to 150 pound for anything from under 10 bucks to no more than thirty.
 
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