Thanks Jean! I'm slowly trying to work my way through it but this is great stuff!

Henry,

A couple more things on sources...

There is this Austrian "poet" named Peter Suchenwirt who described a whole Teutonic Orders reysa or raid from beginning to end, including both some astonishing cruelty and some quite serious peril, where you can see how they could easily get in trouble (extended periods where they were stuck in mud up to their horses saddles etc.). You can find this online but I can't remember where I got it.

There is another good "popular history" article called “Towns and Defense in Later Medieval Germany”, Nottingham Medieval Studies v. 33. (1989) with David Eltis

The Henry IV thing is called:

Expeditions to Prussia and the Holy Land, Made by Henry Earl of Derby (afterwards King Henry IV) in the years 1390-1 and 1392-3 Being The Accounts kept by his Treasurer during two years Edited from the originals by Lucy Toulmin Smith, printed for the Royal Camden Society M.DCC.XCIV (1894) (English introduction and preface, the rest is Latin)

Some other modern books from Poland in particular have good data from both historical records and archeological sources, notably:

Arms and Armor in the Medieval Teutonic Order’s State in Prussia, Andrzej Nowakowski, Oficyna Naukowa MS, (Poland),
(1994), ISBN 83-85874-01-1

and

Uzbrojenie w Polsce średniowiecznej 1350-1450 (Arms and Armor in Medieval Poland 1350-1450), Andrzej Nadolski (1990)

There is also a ton of archeology which is very useful, scattered around in different journals but one of the better ones I found was the multidisciplinary Lübecker Kolloquium zur Stadtarchaologie im Hanseraum, Volumes I-IV (many of the articles are in English). But you need to spend some time on JSTOR to track a decent cross-section down

They have done some archeological surveys where they have actually tracked the course of battles specifically by finding crossbow bolt-heads with metal detectors in the ground and still sometimes stuck in trees.

J

So I watched that video again and paid a bit more attention, and I noticed the list of 'ingredients' of the pavise. Quite fascinating. Translating i have

A base of "pinewood"

with various layers including a sort of paste (the stuff that looked like cement) made of collagen fibers, iron dust, glass particles, and bone-meal, then a layer of rawhide pieces and gesso, paint and sheet metal (brass? gold leaf?)

I don't know what kriedegrund or Rotfassung are, can somebody explain?

Apparently this is derived from an analysis of an antique in the Beyerisches Nationalmuseum Munchen.

The reconstruction mentions wood, "tendons", rawhide, gesso, and gold leaf, as well as glass particles, iron filings, bone meal, Chalk / gypsum / rye flour

And something called "Fassung"?

And another thing called "Hauteim"?

Then a layer of beaten rawhide.

So with all that, I think it makes some sense how these things could stop high velocity crossbow bolts and even bullets at longer ranges. Fascinating stuff.

By the way, speaking of sources on Crossbows, the Livonian Rhymed Chronicles tell us the story (or legend) of when and how the Lithuanians acquired the secret of crossbows from a renegade marksman named berthold

https://deremilitari.org/2016/09/descriptions-of-warfare-in-the-rhyme-chronicle-of-livonia/

The following summer, the Semgallians agreed to attack Terwetein. The said castle was located in their land. It happened on a day which had been previously agreed upon. In the settlement before the castle walls nothing which could be called Christian survived, being captured or slain. A dishonorable man called Bertold was there, the Semgallians liked him because he was a bowman, he became useful to them. If he would come over to them, they would spare his life. He did this and was glad. In a short while the Semgallians found plenty of crossbows and arrows in the dwellings outside the castle. Very swiftly they gathered them together. They were glad about the crossbows. The renegade Christian then took as many archers as there were crossbows. All those who did not know how to use them he began to teach to bend and to shoot. Because of this they let him live. Meanwhile the good Brothers had defended the inner castle in various ways. They intended to guard it and keep it in their hands. At that time an army attacked from all sides.

J

Sean,

Thank you and once again, thank you.

Jean

Jean Henri Chandler wrote

Quote:

I think in other words we just haven't had enough iterations or a large enough community with a need for military grade type late medieval crossbow replicas to move this along faster.

Thanks for all the info and the very considered reply, I simply don't have the time right now to respond in any depth, but you are certainly right that we need more people working at it.

Liebel calculated (yes I know, calculated) an expected range of around 260yds....

Benjamin Abbot wrote

Quote:

The weight of the period evidence I'm familiar with indicates that crossbows spanned by the belt or whatnot should hit at least as hard as English warbows, assuming similar strength of the shooter,

I can't see this. A longbow will have a power stroke of around 25", a crossbow as described around 5.5", so a ratio of 4.5:1 and a longbow is say 140lbs and a belt spanned crossbow cannot reasonably be more than 300lbs for a very experienced archer, so a ratio of 2:1. This immediately says to me that a belt spanned crossbow will come nowhere near a longbow.....

Regards



Tod

Anything new on this front recently? I’m expecting my bow from Tod shortly, and I am super-excited, and literally just read every post in this thread.... it’s gold.

Just FYI, and because there was some confusion about a couple of ingredients mentioned for the pavise repro above, Kreidegrund is a primer/undercoat used (often, not always as far as I know ) in Medieval woodcarving to prime the sculpture for painting/gilding etc. I believe, it consists of the above-mentioned 'chalk' suspended in some form of animal glue.

It could also be applied to hide mistakes, or add details, that would have been too difficult or time consuming to carve (say, for example, veins on exposed parts of the body. These might be achieved by covering strips of leather, parchment, rope &c. glued to the wood, then painted).

Gefasste wooden sculpture generally means the wood is not visible anymore, i. e. has been painted/gilded. So, in this case, Rotfassung either alludes to a layer of paint or primer for gilding, or both. So, if I am not mistaken, we can translate Fassung variously as 'finish', 'coat of paint' or even 'undercoat'.

It would, of course, be great, if an actual art historian could check that I haven't committed any serious blunders here...

Bichler’s work in composite crossbows is fascinating. I think he has probably had the greatest success in replicating such a crossbow. Just from a materials point of view, I’d expect such a prod to be more efficient than a steel one, though obviously steel has some advantage in not being subject to as much change due to weather, and steel will, of course, be much more durable.

With regards to steel prods, I think in general they are more practical for those of us wanting a reasonably representative modern replica, even losing some pound-for-pound efficiency. But if money were no object, I’d certainly be interested in funding more composite replicas!

The first five years of my career was in a steel alloys materials lab. I tested a lot of springs and turbine fan blades!

Based on what I have seen in period records, the steel and composite prod weapons of equivalent 'rating' were considered to be basically the same in terms of effectiveness. For example they were interchangeable in the German Schützenfest, the only categories were apparently by size and the type of spanning method. A "Halbe Rüstung" crossbow could have either a steel or composite prod.

The only distinction I have seen is that the composite prod weapons were considered to be better in the winter or extreme cold. The steel prod weapons were at greater risk of snapping in very cold weather (snapping was always a potential danger with military grade crossbows). Conversely, they believed the composite prod crossbows worked better in extreme cold, as in they actually got stronger. For this reason the Teutonic Order preferred the composite prod type for their more powerful rated weapons. On the other hand in warmer weather there is also anecdotal evidence that prods could be damaged by rain, supposedly this happened to Genoese mercenaries in French service on a couple of occasions.

Other than that the only difference is that the steel prod ones were apparently significantly cheaper to make. Cost in some markets was 1 mark vs. 3-5 marks for the equivalent grade crossbow with a composite prod.

The x-ray of one composite crossbow prod showed a layer of wood, with 7 layers of horn over, and then a layer of "tendon" over that, and then a final layer of birch bark purportedly as a waterproofing measure. I have read that they specifically used the nuchal ligament - the ligamentum nuchae - of a horse, which is the tissue that keeps a horses head up. Horses apparently don't make any effort to keep their head up, they have to flex muscles to make it go down like to drink water or eat grass. That tissue is very elastic and strong and is part of the secret of the composite prod or hornbow. At least, this is what I read.

If you have ever seen these things in a museum the (composite) prods can be very thick, the one at the Higgins armoury had a prod almost as thick as my forearm and I've seen others like that in Switzerland and Germany.



Bichler is definitely on to something, I remember reading a paper about a test just a few years ago (I think maybe linked in this thread a few pages back) resulted in three weapons basically de-laminating after just a couple of shots. Getting all those materials to stick together properly can't be easy. Bichler seems to have figured that out.

I have seen composite bows, though mostly of slightly later period (16th & 17th c). Steel will be less efficient just because of mass density, if nothing else. The steel prod will have a higher moment of inertia.

From a materials point of view, the modern steel prods are no doubt better than their medieval counterparts (I am, of course, speaking to replicas which are reasonably faithful in dimension). Although the alloy selected and the quality of heat treat can have a huge effect on the yield point (beyond which we get plastic deformation or fracture), there is remarkably little variation in the elastic modulus of carbon steels (mebbe 5% variation around 200 GPa?). Not much chance in finding more performance in the prod, IMO. That leaves other possible efficiency bandits..... geometry and maybe the bow string seem like the only possible avenues for major improvements. Geometry is something we can evaluate pretty readily, but I don’t know the sensitivity of system to small variations in geometry. Same with bowstring. Can a very small unexpected stretch cause a significant loss of efficiency?

I think that Egon Harmuth had stated in "Die Armbrust" that about 45% efficiency is about the most you can get out of steel bow. So about 45% of energy 'stored' in a bent bow is being transferred to an arrow.

With selfbows using heavier arrows, you can get well above 80, while Adam Karpowicz was getting up to 95% with his Turkish reflexive bows.

http://www.atarn.org/islamic/akarpowicz/turkish_bow_tests.htm

Now the question is where could composite prods fit into this....