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Alan E




Location: UK
Joined: 21 Jan 2016

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PostPosted: Wed 27 Jul, 2016 9:59 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Matt J wrote:
I'm 66% of the way through the Heavy Arbalest Testing thread. I have a quick question and a longer question.

Is an arbalest a crossbow? Sometimes it seems like crossbow and arbalest are used interchangeably, and other times it seems like arbalest is a much larger version of a crossbow.

Now, on to the real question, and I'm hoping Tod will chime in. To those of you who shoot crossbows and use either the goatsfoot lever or the belt that allows you to simply stand up as you pull the string back, why does it always seem very slow? I'm referring to the various videos that have been posted on the thread. Is this a case of people being extra careful because they don't want to make a mistake and they are not really in any sort of rush? Or is it slow because you are pulling as hard/fast as you can, but the weight is so extreme that you just can't pull faster?

I ask because while I've never handled a crossbow, I'm imaging myself trying to reload the crossbow as efficiently as I could, like a soldier would do. And from my weight lifting experience and education, I can imagine that it would be quicker to pull the string back with a really powerful jerk, as oppose to a more controlled pull. Would pulling the string back even half an inch further than you wanted it to go be dangerous, or damaging to the weapon?
Well, I'm certainly not as qualified as Tod but ...
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/arbalest
Arbalest is one of the words used in medieval English to descibe various weapons of the crossbow variety. As the link says, from arcus (bow) and ballista (throwing machine), it is a machine (of any size) which uses some form of bow to power the projectile. Some probably wouldn't be called 'crossbow' by most people now, others would.

Overdrawing any bow is liable to cause it damage and jerking a bow may well achieve that. The cord of a crossbow has to be engaged in the trigger mechanism and (depending on type) that is not quite as simple as grabbing a bowstring in your fingers (i.e. it can require care).

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Matt J




Location: Durham, NC
Joined: 18 Aug 2015

Posts: 68

PostPosted: Wed 27 Jul, 2016 10:36 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Oh, I see, thank you for clearing that up. Sounds like how a square is a rectangle but a rectangle is not a square. A crossbow would fall under the umbrella of arbalests, but some arbalests would not be crossbows (such as a ballista).

As for the second question, it sparked in my head when I read someone's comments about how he was wondering how the fire rate would be for a trained professional crossbowman of the time. I can only imagine they would reload as quickly as possible with minimal risks, but I wonder how much they risked damaging their weapon.

If you had a, say, 400lb crossbow with a 6" draw, what sort of risks would be involved if you pulled the draw back 7" and then released it into the trigger mechanism?
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T. Kew




Location: London, UK
Joined: 21 Apr 2012

Posts: 256

PostPosted: Wed 27 Jul, 2016 11:21 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

That's requiring the catch to arrest the forward movement of the string and bow instantly, which is a very different task than it's designed for. I'd be quite surprised if your crossbow catch didn't just break on the spot when you did so. If you're using a simple spanning belt, what then happens is that the belt catapults the stock of the crossbow into your guts.
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Matt J




Location: Durham, NC
Joined: 18 Aug 2015

Posts: 68

PostPosted: Wed 27 Jul, 2016 11:49 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

T. Kew wrote:
That's requiring the catch to arrest the forward movement of the string and bow instantly, which is a very different task than it's designed for. I'd be quite surprised if your crossbow catch didn't just break on the spot when you did so. If you're using a simple spanning belt, what then happens is that the belt catapults the stock of the crossbow into your guts.


If I understand what you are saying correctly, than I want to clarify that I do not expect the catch to stop the drawing of the string, the user would need to do that.

I may be way off, but I personally wouldn't find it hard to believe that a person using a crossbow as often as a soldier would be able to get accustom to the exact distance of his draw length and be able to reload with decent swiftness. But, as I'm ignorant to the dangers of the crossbow, it might be reasonable to assume that even under the stress of combat a soldier would not risk damage to himself or his weapon in an attempt to reload quicker.

Does anyone have an estimate of when a crossbow's draw weight would require a more advanced (and slower) reloading mechanism? The 300lb munition crossbows seem to be easily "cranked" with a goat's lever, but at what point is it no longer possible to use the goat's lever, or at what point does it become more efficient to use a spanning belt, or cranequin, or windlass. Both the cranequin and the windlass seem horribly slow to use, and I imagine they were only used out of necessity because the goat's lever was no longer sufficient.
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Leo Todeschini
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PostPosted: Wed 27 Jul, 2016 12:13 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Is it the Navy SEALS who say slow is fast?

Basically if you really rush stuff you will fumble things, so take your time and get it right, bad things can happen if you don't, but I would argue that 10 seconds a shot or something similar with a goats foot is fast. I suspect that lots of the training was repetitive and was to iron out all the small problems that do slow you down.

By hand I can span 180lbs, but am not body builder, so lets say with practice 250 would be OK for most guys, beyond that a belt helps a bit but not massively, a belt with a doubler pulley helps a lot and can span 400lbs easily, so for a trained guy lets say 450lbs. Goats foot levers will keep on working at any poundage, you just get bigger levers that I suppose become too awkward to use, but with a small lever I can do 400lbs, so with some of the larger Italian ones you see in the manuscripts, lets say 550lbs. Beyond this and you start to need mechanisms.

Bows breaking was clearly a problem. You see many museum bows that certainly do not have the original bow and that is one reason I believe that the draw length was very limited, far below what modern steels can do and that will be a function of steel quality and the slightly arbitrary nature of heat treatment at the time, combined with the very real desire of wanting to be safe, so over drawing would not be at all desired. That said the posture for a hand span would load your back in a jerk horribly and so not advised and with a belt may work, but an explosive release of power if fine for lifting a dumbbell but maybe less useful for guiding a string onto a nut. Also it is important to centre the string on the nut or the bolt shoots left or right, so careful placing of the string is required.

I believe that arbalest/arbalete is simply the French term for crossbow and is still used now although maybe a n arbalete is small crossbow?


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Matt J




Location: Durham, NC
Joined: 18 Aug 2015

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PostPosted: Wed 27 Jul, 2016 1:06 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Thanks for your input, Tod.

I do not know if it is the SEALS who say that, but I do understand the whole concept behind the tortoise and the hare.

I suspect the exact same thing. Looking at how modern soldiers spend countless hours repeating the same field exercises in order to iron out all the deficiencies, as well as ingrain the movements in your head so that during the chaos of battle you can rely on the muscle memory heavily. I imagine the same would be true of warriors and soldiers throughout history. This is what lead me to the idea that reloading the same crossbow hundreds of thousands of times would result in the ability to powerfully jerk the string with enough precision as to draw the string where it needed to go without pulling under or over more than maybe a quarter to a half inch. It sounds like I have grossly underestimated the complexity of the weapon, however.

Thank you for those estimates, and second thanks for you attempting to estimate the difference between yourself and a trained period soldier.
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Lafayette C Curtis




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PostPosted: Sun 18 Sep, 2016 8:47 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

If we want to compare it with modern soldiers, look at the rates of fire of modern assault rifles. The M16 is theoretically capable of 300-600 rounds per minute. But realistically, the magazine only holds 30 rounds and many M16s can only fire three-round bursts with each trigger pull (rather than full auto), so it'd be more realistic to expect a rate of 100 rounds per minute.

But what's the rate that modern US infantrymen are generally expected to achieve in combat? 5-12 rounds per minute.

It's just as noticeable in the case of automatic riflemen and machine-gunners. They're taught to reload correctly rather than to reload quickly because a hurried reload tends to result in more time lost from having to rectify jams and mis-feeds and all sorts of other malfunctions.

Another worthwhile point of comparison is with archers. Note that the correct form for drawing very heavy bows -- whether English longbows or Manchu composite bows -- tends to have the draw happen at a moderate speed, sometimes even splitting the movement into several stages to ensure the activation of the correct muscles to bear the strain of the draw and transfer it effectively to the skeleton. Jerking the string back and releasing it very quickly would give no time for the proper muscle and bone alignments to form, so the archer would likely go down with a serious injury after only a few shots.
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