Posts: 1,420 Location: New Orleans
Wed 24 Mar, 2021 8:06 am
The thing I keep returning to, is
I just don't see this discrepancy of range in the historical records between steel and composite or horn prod weapons. If there
was such a wide discrepancy as that in terms of performance, and given the rather enormous volume of records and manuscript data surviving from say, the 14th-16th centuries, and the importance of crossbows both as weapons of war and tools for hunting in that period,
doesn't it seem likely that someone would have noticed and commented on this? Given the strict legal guidelines in the shooting contests, which as I have pointed out in a post upthread you may have missed, on several well-documented (and some famous) occasions discrepancies in the shooting contest invitations (which stipulate the target size and range to the target) have led to lawsuits, feuding, and bloodshed, wouldn't they mention different grades (as in, steel vs. horn) for the shooting competition? All I have ever seen is different ranges for crossbows and handguns, or (more rarely) for 'large' and 'small' crossbows.
So far as I know, the only data supporting the idea that horn or composite prod crossbows of the late European (i.e. short powerstroke) type would perform better than steel prod, is based on a very small number of modern replicas, and informal discussions like this one in this thread.
My understanding about Payne-Gallwey's shot is that it was one of the very large 'wall crossbow' type weapons. One of the fundamental issues with trying to make sense of crossbows is that there are dozens of different specific types of weapons from all across the world which fall into that very broad category but we tend to conflate them all together and talk about them by borrowing data points from across 5,000 miles and 2,000 years ... which ultimately makes any sensible analysis all but impossible.
If you will forgive my making a suggestion, while I fully appreciate that you make a wide variety of artifacts in your workshop and have to run a business, you have also obviously gained some traction and begun to spend a bit more time with your youtube videos. You have done several videos on crossbow performance and at the risk of presuming too much, it seems to me that you have begun to have a genuine interest in this very tricky puzzle of sussing out that particular not-very-well-understood piece of kit.
I think you might gain further success as well as enjoy some other knock-on benefits if you found and partnered with some academics for research on actual performance benchmarks and historical fabrication techniques. Things like prod shape and composition, bolt or quarrel shape, composition and weight, composition of the string, etc., as well as historical data such as I have been alluding to in the thread - how far and how fast they historically were able to shoot.
I would make specific suggestions in this regard but I'm sure you have better connections and know more people than I do. I think we both know some people at the Royal Armouries at Leeds for example, and there are obviously several other institutions around the UK, and even more on the European Continent, where you might be able to form some sort of collaboration to mutual benefit. Many of these places of course have antiques that can be closely examined - as I am sure you have done to some extent - but it could be done much more systematically. And they have manuscripts and books which can be searched through for literary data. One or two grad students could aggregate a lot of useful data for you.
When it comes to analysis I'd also recommend focusing on a specific time and place. If you compare 12th century military weapons from Central Europe with 18th century hunting weapons from Italy or France, again, the signal to noise ratio may diminish. If you examined say, weapons from Italy or Central Europe across a 200 year span of time, you might find a little bit more of a consistent pattern to their construction.
As for this comment "
Performance differences can be achieved, but a modern optimised spring steel will perform as well or better than anything they had then for the role of being a spring. Mass is the same. " ... which you and several other people have brought up repeatedly in the thread, I think Pieter B. made a really useful point, which you might have missed since you said you skimmed the thread. There doesn't seem to be a way to link a specific post here so I'll just quote the most relevant passage:
Quote: |
Modern people have this tendency to look at an old design and find "problems" with it which often rest on misunderstandings.
For example people a priori assume firearms were worse weapons than bows and crossbows and invent all kinds of reasons why the former displaced the latter rather than questioning their initial assumption. People look at the design of old bombards and deride their comically short barrels and extreme bores but these design issues becomes a feature of good design when one takes into account the quantity and quality of powder that existed then; given those parameters they are actually better than later designs.
I can do the same with composite bows/crossbows and invent a problem which would require some explanation.
Horn sinew composite is a bad material compared to wood
It has a lower stiffness and a higher density than something like yew or hickory meaning you'd end up with a spring that has worse performance. It's only advantage is that it has a higher ultimate yield strength.
Thus we would expect a 'sensible' design to only use horn sinew composite for bows or prods with a higher poundage than wood can handle. Yet we do see composite bows and prods manufactured at draw strengths that were within the range of wood.
Why then do we see this bad design? Did the Mongols manufacture composite bows because they had no access to yew? Did the Genoese use composite crossbow prods because they were cheaper than wood?
The truth however is that the higher ultimate yield strength and the fact that it is a man-made material are strengths which allow it to outperform a wooden bow for a given poundage. Its very nature allows it to be shaped to form factors which wood cannot handle, you can add a reflex or deflex to the design or shift the mass of certain parts which you cannot when shaping a wooden prod. |
The modern engineering mindset is very good at solving problems, but only if the right data goes into the calculations. It's not at all unusual for us to miss something in the all important early stage which affects the outcome, especially if we have already reached firm conclusions about what is likely. If we find some indication that this doesn't match other data points that is when it's a good idea to go back to the sources for data, and on this and many other similar matters, the sources are antique weapons and historical records.