Hey guys,

can you tell me anything you know about making a chinese "repeating" crossbow??

Thanks


Mike

1. Draw back crossbow string.
2. Put bolt in groove of crossbow.
3. Aim crossbow.
4. Shoot bolt at target.
5. Repeat! ;D

I'm just fooling around, but is there such a thing as a repeating crossbow?

Yeah, the chinese used it, it's a little crossbow with a wooden prod. It has a lever that is attatched to the string that you cock ( i think ). Thats all i know

Get rid of the Saddam picture, it's distracting.

Maybe this can help.

www.chinahistoryforum.com

After that go to 'ancient chinese arsenal' , next enter the word 'repeating crossbow' in the 'search forum' box.

I have seen pictures of the chinese repeating crossbow.  It has a magazine on top of the bow string.  After each shot the shooter would pull back the entire magazine with the bow string.  The action would load the next arrow.  It is not very strong and has very limited range.  Most repeating corssbowmen would use poisonious darts to make their weapons lethal.

From looking at the thing, it appeared as though it had a draw wieght of no more than 30 lbs  :P AND THEY DARE TO CALL IT A CROSSBOW!  >:( >:(  

Just kidding. I still like the idea of a "repeating" crossbow. 2 seconds to reload beats 30  :P

For info on chinese crossbows, see

http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?showtopic=3777

http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?showtopic=514

http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?showtopic=1475

that's very neat - love the chap's reconstruction.
Integral cocking lever that automatically loads next bolt.

Put it this way at 30lbs draw weight I'd use a slim solid steel dart, very very sharp, good penetration. Nice piece of kit.
The mediaval equivalent of a bolt action carbine.

What about accuracy??? How the H#@* do those darts fly in a strait line if they're unfletched??  :-/

BTW, the display picture of the guy who reconstucted that that is... quite amusing  ;D ;D ;D

i think english was talking about this a while back. Haha i wonder where he got himself off to? i am happy there is not more tech english brawls going on, but i miss all the cool things he made. :)

Chinese repeating crossbow is not as accurate a single shot crossbow.Because the bolts are unfletched,they have weighted points or spiral cut along the bolt body.

I miss english too.  I remember when I would have an idea, he would be the first person to point out the problems and suggest what he would have done. :'( ;D

Heh, yea, i made that sucker once. I didn't have that serious engineering attitude towards the crossbow as the guy in the links had, i just took whatever scrap wood was lying around, cut out rough details with figure saw. Had to correct the design as i went, but it turned out as a working crossbow.

And the lever mechanism gives a rough 3:1 advantage when cocking the bow, so you can use a 90lbs prod and be pulling back something like 30lbs. Still not much of a warbow, but better than just plain 30lbs. Mine has been used with bows from 29lbs- 60lbs.

Rate of fire is simply amazing- 1shot/second. A real machine gun. Accuracy is an issue, though, but sacrifices have to be made. And i used it in LARP (live action role playing game), where ranged weapons rarely get used at distances exceeding 25m- a devastating machine it proved to be.

Now just imagine some , say, 200 crossbowmen with these babies- 2000 missles in 10 seconds. Now that is some serious target saturation!  :o


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v234/Demagogs/arbalets.jpg

Nice crossbow  :D

What kind of wood do you use for the prod??  ???

Dang. There is nothing legally comparable to a good LARP game. Only thing is, I don't have any "weak' bows and the only player I have is my brother. Still we have alot of fun sniping at eachother with padded arrows. I use the weakest bows Ive got- a 35pounder and a 40pouder. Probably not safe, but very fun. Also I wear a bit of leather armor- just enough to keep it from really hurting. Might help if I wore a helmet too, but life aint perfect.

Oh, the thing is 100% ash in the picture. Both the tiller(stock) and the prod. Now i've got a bamboo 50lbs prod installed though.
And yeah, nothing beats a good dynamic larp battle- skirmishing the battle line, taking potshots at those knights-en-shinin'-armur (aka "tin cans"). If you've got a shield wall to hide behind, that is.

Sounds like a hell of alot of fun  :D

First thing after school tomorrow, i'm gonna start building me one of those cho-ku-nu's !

wrote on Oct 12^th, 2005 at 5:42pm:

i think english was talking about this a while back. Haha i wonder where he got himself off to? i am happy there is not more tech english brawls going on, but i miss all the cool things he made. :)

Yup. English really knows his stuff

I think if you used bolts that were thicker at the back than at the front, you could maybe improve the accuracy of the unfletched bolts needed for a repeating crossbow.

yea, that would probably work. But that guy has been gone for years, and the last post in this thread was in 2005.

The old Military Channel show, "Weapon Masters" did a segment on this weapon:
http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/chinese-repeating-crossbow/p75zhvn

The historian, Mike Loades, pointed out that this was a weak, inaccurate weapon that was intended to be used for things like castle defense... Put a few hundred in the hands of defenders and you could have a virtual rain of bolts... Possibly poisoned.

There have been more modern attempts; I seem to recall that Crossman or one of those firms came out with a repeating model years ago.
In reality, any crossbow you can draw by hand isn't going to be very effective.

Bikewer wrote on Aug 9^th, 2014 at 3:28pm:

In reality, any crossbow you can draw by hand isn't going to be very effective.

I'm not a big or strong guy,but can pull a 170lb xbow by hand without aid, in successive fire, no problem.
Within 50m bolts would nail unarmored or lightly armored body parts. Considering how about a 1foot diameter circle is easily hit by a somewhat trained crossbowman at that range.

In Gallway's big history of the crossbow, he points out that the earliest battlefield weapons were perhaps in that range; 150-200 pounds, the prods being wood backed with sinew.

These were rapidly replaced with increasingly-powerful weapons that required mechanical aid; belt hooks and foot stirrups, "goats-foot" levers and the like.
Later-period weapons required small windlass arrangements or mechanical "cranquins"... Draw weights had gone up to around 1000 pounds.

The problem with crossbows is the short power stroke.  The longer the bolt or arrow is on the string, the more effective it is.  It takes something like a 300 pound (225kg) to equal the distance of an archer shooting a 75 (32kg) pound bow.  And the rate of fire is about 1/2 an archer. 

English archers with 100+ pound (45kg+) outranged and outshot Ventian crossbow men several times.  The second time, the crossbow men were shooting crossbows that out ranged the long bow with the steel prods, however the leaders' tactics sucked and they lost again.

I want the repeating crossbow to be cool, but it just doesn't make sense to me on paper or in use. Unless the darts are poisoned with something quite potent and you are shooting at a bunch of shirtless farmers, I just don't understand it's real world application.