Ever look at paintings from the 13thc? the cross bow prod looks very short. as apposed to my crossbow prod that is the size of a short bow.

I have a small but thick hunk of bow wood left over, its very short like 2 and 1/2 feet or less. Is there any way i could make a small but powerfull crossbow prod out of wood that short? Im worried that it would snap on me.

Maybe the crossbows in the paintings are lamanent with layors of stuff in them. Maybe i should hold off untill i get some cowhorn to make it a little longer...












ok ok not from the 13thc but you get the idea




this guy seems to have one of those many layerd bows


now that i look at it my hunk of wood seems way too small but what the heck what do you think?

Yeah, their artwork is exaggerated, like when they depict their longbows in the tapestries. Completely out of proportion, but the ones next to the battle axe look decent.

  Greetings, DTB,                                                                           
     I understand your reluctance to throw away a nice piece of wood,
but my sense is that 2 1/2 feet is simply too short for a workable bow made only of wood ( not that I'm any sort of expert. ) I seem to recall reading somewhere that crossbow prods were made of steel, sometimes covered with leather, which might explain why they don't look like steel in the paintings. Certainly laminating the wood with horn or antler would make a big difference but would be a lot of work.
As I said, I'm hardly an expert ( I've always said "expert" is spelled:
"e-g-g   s-p-u-r-t" ) so I hope you can come up with something.   
      Thank you very much for the superb artwork, though. The hunting scene in particular brings back some great memories!!
                                                                               .......Dan

Quote:

                                                                                               
    Demagogs! I stand corrected! If I dredge the bottommost sediments of my mind, I seem to recall that crossbow prods were indeed made of steel.......later. That is, into the 1400's  and later, but I confess I don't know what was common earlier. Is there a reference that you know of that we could consult??              .......Dan

How would making a crossbow that shot spears work?

make this

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v653/DouglasTheBlack/others/balista.jpg


then scale it up. Its not too hard to do truth told, The biggest problem i had was the holes i had to drill into the top and bottom of the ballista.


If you need any help on like the details let me know and ill try to help. I am planning for this summer to make a huge verson of the one above but wood is not cheap

thats paracord that was twisted into 4 thicker ropes. Can you see the wood on the top? I put a pipe around that wood then twisted untill i started to hear the wood creak. Last i checked it pulled 50 pounds. I could shoot a pen very far, and bolts with fletching pretty far. The cool thing about it is how concistant it shot, i think after i mounted it to the picknick table the darts only had an inch or so varyation depending on how far back i drew it. remind me some time to get a pick of the bow arms. The rope was so tight it compressed the wood. 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v653/DouglasTheBlack/others/balistafront.jpg

Here is a paper on Teutonic Order and the importance of crossbow in their conquest of Baltics.

http://www.deremilitari.org/resources/articles/ekdahl.htm
->
"Throughout the whole of the Middle Ages simple and cheap crossbows made from yew wood were used in the country districts."


Also about ballista- i'm building one right now, too. Just 2 days ago i learned that simple wood isn't enough to hold the twisted rope. The crushing force created by twisting the rope is tremendous- my random guess is at least 10-15 times the draw weight of finished ballista.
Ok, i'm off to find some at least 1cm thick round steel bar now.