"If you give me a lever and a place to stand, I can move the world." - That goats foot lever is a class piece of engineering.....those crossbows are pieces of art.
English Warbows were so superior to crossbows though, despite some minor advantages, like shooting from cover, or holding fire while the enemy advances..
A sliding lever so that mechanical advantage increases at the same time as the load is also so damn clever. Working out the ideal curve on them would be a fun exercise - even if in period they just iterated towards the correct design by trial and error.
The amount of careful study, which probably involved a lot of trail and error, involved in getting that shape is testament to the skill and intelligence of the folks making them. Once you have the pattern it's easy to copy and disseminate, but until then it's a crazy engineering challenge.
Seems like the Italian style of loading has the advantage of being able to put the Goat's Foot on your belt and let it fall free when done loading. Making it much more "Battlefield Ready" without the risk of dropping the lever.
Seems like a really bad idea to point the business end at yourself at all. Todd said himself that if the trigger fails the goats foot becomes the projectile.
Placing lever on the hip may originate in Italy but became international. In 16 century in Denmark plates on the levers of goat foots had row of holes to fix padding, same as plates on guilded goat-foot levers in Royal Armory in Madrid. Benin bronze of Portuguese crossbowman in British museum has a goat foot lever hanging from the belt in similar position, he can reload without removing the goat foot. The same method was used in 19 and early 20th century by continental shooters but they used heavily padded belt.
I have seen the manuscript drawings of them and they actually shaped the end of the lever to curve around the shape of your leg to make it more comfortable to span.
When shooting that with the bolt going off camera, you really need to add in a Wilhelm scream at one point. The scream itself is so much of an easter egg at this point that you need to do it in at least one video.
5:45 I had a cool pat on my own back that I knew what arrowhead that was. I've watched your videos enough times that I actually learned something and I love it.
@@euansmith3699I think it was the old Ivanhoe American TV show that used a very similar sound effect in the show’s intro, except it was used when an arrow (shot by a regular bow, not a crossbow) hit a tree and vibrated in place. It always struck me that it should not make such a sound as it indicated that the arrow had not hit straight on.
There’s a Lucas Cranach painting, Hunting near Hartenfels castle, and in the lower left corner, there’s a guy using the ‘Italian’ method, even though his bow has no stirrup
Hi Tod, love all your work. I wasn't sure the best way to bring this up was as it isn't really relevant to this specific video, but posting here as it is the most recent. I was reading a brief account of the battle of Towton 1461 and the idea of the Leeward battle line. Apparently the Yorkist commander Fauconberg, upon noticing the strength and direction of the wind deployed his archers in such a way that their arrows fell in the centre of the Lancastrian army, but return fire from the Lancastrians fell short. Not only that but the Yorkists were able to gather these arrows and shoot them back. Awesome tactics from Fauconberg. I wonder if this is something that would be demonstrable by Jo with his longbow and just how strong the wind would have to have been for this to really have made a difference. Sorry if this is the subject of another vid, but I didn't see it and perhaps someone could signpost me if it has been. Cheers 👍
Interesting point on the Italian style reload and the stirrup - I'd always assumed the stirrup was just too handy for transport and storage to remove even when you don't normally use it for spanning the bow. Plus as it also allows you at least try to use any of the other spanning methods if the need arises - I expect if you are desperate enough most folks could manage to load sort of weight crossbow at least a few times without the lever and it would be easy to span it with the windlass, which could be useful for folks carrying upper body injuries.
I always wondered about the stirrup on heavier crossbows too. Kings, Governments and Warlords aren't known for spending any money on weapons for the Rank&File they don't have to*, and the extra fitting of a stirrup on a crossbow you can't span with some form a leverage is one thing that should be dropped..... Until you see that method. *Kings, Governments and Warlords quite often spend extra money on fancy weapons for themselves....... You just have to see a gold plated AK to know this to be true
That thing looks like magic!! Man I can't even imagine being around when that was invented it must have been absolutely mind blowing. Mechanical advantage is so cool.
I am a big fan of the rolling nut trigger system. Ive even built a functional crossbow with 90 lb fiberglass limbs using a slight variation on it. I only modernized the actual trigger part. Its got a heavy trigger pull but I trust it not accidentally firing as easily so its a sacrifice I'm willing to make.
Rolling nut is good but there is much more modern system with a hook that looks like reverse number '7 .The more force you put on it the trigger pull force remains same .Instead of one big leaver like on rolling nuts system it uses smaller bar to distribute force evenly and then you have classic pistol trigger .Force is applied differently ,instead of pushing into trigger it pulls small bar forward.Key is in 2/3 distance ratio of small bar that looks like this --O---I When done with needle bearings you get extremely smooth trigger.You can even put automatic safety on it . I wish i could send you a link to design but youtube doesnt like links.
@@zumbazumba1 Thanks but the one I built has a modern style trigger and I dont want a super easy trigger pull or extra shit for a safety. It works great and Im still hitting my target every trigger pull.
The Italian method that you described honestly looks like mostly a safety measure. Aside from having more leverage ("work smarter, not harder" always means safer as well when it comes to physical work), it also means if there is any mechanical failure at maximum draw, the things flying apart are aimed at the ground. Sure, if the goat's foot goes flying out in front of you, it isn't going to harm anyone you care about - probably -, but it's awfully hard to get it back when it's lying out in front of the firing line.
Thank you for continuing to explore medieval crossbows. Given that you can span a 600lb prod easily enough, I suspect well-trained & athletic crossbowers in period could manage 800-900+lbs with a lever. It makes me think of period artwork like Lazzaro Tavarone's depiction of Genoese crossbowers in Jerusalem bearing large crossbows & long goat's-foot levers. Crossbows had almost entirely left European warfare by Tavarone's time, but the piece possibly gives a sense of 16th-century military goat's-foot crossbows before they phased out. In theory, a lever-spanned crossbow with a horn prod could probably match the performance of yew warbow.
I kinda wonder what could Joe Gibbs span with belt, doubler belt or goats foot just with his strength and 160+ bows experience. Andreas Bichler can apparently do 420 pound fairly easily, while Todd did 470, though with bit more elaborate belt. So I wouldn't be surprised it Joe could do much, much more with a bit of training. Could be cool idea for content.
@@fallenafh981 726lb according to the video rather the description, but yeah. If Tod can rather easily span 600lbs with a long goat's-foot lever, it's very likely historical soldiers could have spanned 726lb (or considerably more). & a 726lb composite crossbow already slightly outperforms a 160lb yew warbow.
Here in the U. S. we call the length of travel of the bow or crossbow string, the power stroke. Lengthening the power stroke has a profound effect on the speed/power of the arrow. You could probably achieve equal arrow speed if you cut the poundage down to 200 lbs, went with a longer crossbow bow (prod) and increased the power stroke to 12 inches. Longer prods make the crossbow cumbersome to carry around however. More modern crossbows also use a flexible prong that bends upward as the arrow passes under it just in front of the cocking latch and the pressure holds the arrow firm to the arrow rail. Saw somewhere that arrows under 16 inches are called bolts for these old style crossbows. Pretty much all newer type crossbows shoot arrows 18 to 22 inches. Thanks for sharing. That cocking device has a lot of ingenuity.
It is simple and a friend bought an original off eBay for £50- amazing! And it is so simple and crude and offers so much utility for the effort of making it.great invention
I wonder if it would be worth to design a goats foot lever that stays on the crossbow but "rests" on the stock? Something like thicker hollow legs that runs on the side pins and the one can flip back after the string is pulled an locked... Still, fun video as always.
@@DH-xw6jp He did mention some flaws with that particular design in a earlier video when I asked about that, something about low draw weight. This time I was trying to ask about a way to design the goat foot to stay without changing the draw eight. I just don't know the English, or really what the parts are called in my own language, names for the parts I am thinking of. Oh well.
The direction of the lever matters to clear the bowstring and path of the bolt when folded. So a level on the underside of the stock. And lifting the string away from the stock is preferred to pushing in. So the lever starts pointed back and moves forward.
Actually very tricky and then you have to hold up the lever weight too so not all roses. My thinking is that when these were current and tens of thousands of people were making and using them over generations, nobody did it so they would catch on. That to me says it was unlikely to have worked
That explanation you give in the demonstration about finger placement while loading and how the goatsfoot can become the projectile, might explain the why the Italians loaded in the style they did.
With the bolt falling out from what I heard it's also possible to have a thin copper strop a little over the nut to hold the bolt in place, it would get in the way of some loading methods but the goatsfoot should be able to just slide over it.
I love this experimental approach to history and Tod's exploration of historical engineering + scientific exploration of the results . There's no room for romanticised or biased inflections here - it's just exploration and presentation of what has been discovered and what could have been possible.
Just little physics nitpicking - It is not the power of the string that goes up with cube of thickness. It is the stiffness. The maximum safe draw length is reduced as thickness reversed, so the draw weight goes up as thickness squared and the potential energy will directly depend on the thickness. And if there are two bows both surviving the same draw length, the thinner one is under strained and less efficient.
@JanoTuotanto: Surely it depends what you mean by efficiency. Typically when you are talking about energy, it means the ratio of useful energy that you get out (in this case the kinetic energy that the bolt end up with) to the energy that you put in (in this case the energy that Todd is putting in when he spans the crossbow). So, you could have a thin bow that takes you 2J to draw that gives a bolt 1J of energy. That has an efficiency of 50%. Then you could have a thick bow that takes 4J to draw and gives 2J to the bolt. This one is obviously the stronger bow, but the efficiency is also 50%.
Linguistical nit-picking: It's worth bearing in mind that physicists and engineers have a set of jargon words that mean very specific things within the field - strength, stiffness, toughness, hardness, power, work, efficiency, elasticity, plasticity, yield - that can have broader meanings in normal speech. Power means a specific thing in physics and engineering, but can also mean 'peak force during the draw' in common parlance. Usually the usage in common parlance predates it's use in technical jargon.
@@QuantumHistorian, you could search for Euler-Bernouilli beam theory. However, it is likely to come up with something a bit mystifying unless you are keen on maths. Tomorrow I'll see if I can find something that explains it in a more accessible way.
Having said that, beam theory might help with the general ideas, but the mathematics of bows is surprisingly complex for a bendy stick with some string attached.
@@mementomori4972 the lever is just sending a signal to the motorcycle to stop itself. The crossbow's power is 100% coming from the man loading it, it's still just a fancy bow
@@mementomori4972 the brakes are on the motorcycle, you are just actuating the brakes, the brakes making friction on the disk stop the vehicle. So the vehicle is actually handling the energy dissipation to stop the 500lbs item going at 160 miles per hour. The force you use to actuate the brakes is just used to move the brake arms to go in contact and make friction. In a crossbow the power to load the bow comes from your arm (and back), it can be a crank or a lever, but you are storing your own energy in the bow. If the crossbow was like the motorcycle, it would have something like an airsoft gas cartridge connected to a piston to load the bow when you trigger it with a lever.
@@mementomori4972It's pretty hard to compress brake fluid. All I was saying was that It never crossed my mind that Tod would lie about how draw weights, I was in no way trying to start an argument here in the comment section.
I like that their oblong shape perfectly matches what you'd expect from a Cam on a compound mech. Both use torsion, leverage, and variable radii to create a mechanical advantage!
Great video as always Tod. It got me thinking on the logistics of firing and reloading. Mass fire and reload vs firing line by line to maintain constant fire, or mass fire with a dedicated reloader and a dedicated shooter.
The moment you hear Tod use the 'sportscar / truck analogy' you shared long ago *big smile*. I still think it would be interesting to mount a force sensor /accelerometer of some sort to understand how hard the arrows/bolts hit. I know you can just estimate from speed mass, but some force might be lost from breakage etc.
Simply fascinating! I've never seen an actual reloading of a crossbow before, only the Hollywood movie nonsense. Thank you very much for the education on how these actually function!
I read some 10 years back Naval officers accounts from the Napoleonic Wars, and in one, someone claimed that men from the Orkneys had brought their Crossbows with on board the ship they had signed up with. If this was just a tall tale I cannot say, but I found it interesting at the time. And why not, much quieter on a "cutting out" expedition where stealth is vital.
what if you stacked more of the things on the side where the lever hooks, further back on the stock? Meaning that after drawing back the string the first time, you could move the leaver back and keep drawing. Would it be possible to increase draw length and strength, or have we information that this was ever done? Seems like a cool idea to me. Great video, love your crossbow builds!
My ~500 pound munitions grade bow with the regular goat's foot is already decently powerful but this is an interesting upgrade, almost to the cranequin hunting bow level. I still plan on getting a cranequin bow from you eventually just because I like cool mechanical devices but to be honest I shoot the Balestrino you made for me earlier this year the most often.
Horn composite prods are much more efficient in transferring energy to target than steel prods. But they are ridiculously expensive and difficult and time consuming to make. Makes me wonder if it would be possible to make crossbow prods out of modern fiber materials that look and behaves exactly like the original horn composites
Fascinating results. You could easily span andreas bichlers 620 pound composite crossbow, and that already had a more powerful shot than the really heavy long bows (151j vs 131j on a 160 pound longbow) for not a huge decrease in speed.
Someone needs to start making composite crossbows spanned by goats foot levers. Bichler doesnt use them as he claims they were not used until essentially the early modern era
hi Tod. firstly love your work I think the Stirrup is there exactly why it should be, to put your foot in, so that the leg holds it firstly on ground/surface. The using the "cocking tool" to cock the bow, using the power of your hands, having the cocking tool like that may not have really worked specailly in the heat of the battle.
If you're hunting and you get one shot, I guess that prep time doesn't really matter, and I also suppose that out-of-shape sportsmen would prefer an easier method.
I had always assumed that the stirrup was a holdover and kept because it's useful for resting your xbow end-down without worrying about getting dirt and junk in the bolt's path.
I'm glad you explained the power difference in performance between old and new bows. Ive used a modern 130lb crossbow, and i'm sure it would easily shoot through someone's head even 30 - 40 meters away. Even with a bit of a thin armor helmet.Sorry that's a horrible way to describe it, but It made me wonder why they made such heavy bows in the past.
Horn composite crossbows are much more efficient in transferring energy to target than steel crossbows are. But they are ridiculously expensive and time consuming to make. Makes me wonder if it would be possible to make crossbow prods out of modern fiber materials that look and behaves like the original horn composites
@@jonathanengdahl9045 We have those already, they're the fiberglass-wood laminate composite limbs you see on modern-style recurves and selfbows. Fiberglass replaces bow sinew and horn in this case, as it is strong in both tension and compression.
@@Bulsh1tMan Thanks. I have never seen anyone make medieval european crossbows with that type of material. Tod makes his fake-composites out of steel which significantly reduces performance. Do you know if fiber-glass would be more or less expensive than steel?
@@jonathanengdahl9045 I've seen some very talented bow makers make their own fiberglass laminated wood core composites using e-glass or s-glass fabric, but it's not something I personally have dabbled in. Pretty niche since those with the time and money would usually go for the more authentic sinew and horn construction. More often, I see builders purchasing a factory-made fiberglass recurve limbs meant for modern hunting crossbows for their medieval crossbows. You can order 150-200 lb limbs for under $200 if I recall.
@@Bulsh1tMan I understand what you mean. Im not sure however if those types of prods that you are describing are very historically accurate for medieval european composite prods that tended to be short and thick and if recurved then only slightly so. They had short power strokes but very heavy draw weights of about 400-1200lbs. Andreas Bichler makes historically accurate european composite crossbows from the high and late middle ages. These are the sorts of fiberglass prods that I have never seen be made www.youtube.com/@medievalcrossbows7621
Todd I love your videos, you're great man! Keep up the fabulous work. Its so fun learning from your videos. PS. I'd love to see a video where you demonstrate the reload time for a crossbow behind cover (crouched or kneeled down behind cover). Like in a real medieval battle.
Hi Tod! I really love your channel and have been following it for a long time. You have a lot of different crossbows, but there are no crossbows of ancient China. I don't mean the multi-shot cho ko nu, but the Han Dynasty crossbow and its subsequent versions. I strongly advise you to make and test it. It has a more efficient trigger mechanism, which allows you to increase the length of the string tension. It does not have a trigger lever, but a trigger, as in modern weapons. The total draw length is 27-28 inches, like a bow, which is much longer than a European crossbow. This means that with the same tension force, the power will be several times higher... The Chinese invented it about 2000 years ago and used it before the advent of firearms. My name is Dmitry, I am from Eastern Europe and now I am just making such a crossbow for myself. I am interested in repeating this ancient technology and testing its effectiveness. I would love to see your tests of this crossbow. And in general, there is little information about them on the Internet and few reviews and tests.
3:08 Not sure if that's entirely true Tod. My opinion is that you're never honest about how amazing you actually are, plus you're constantly selling yourself short 😉 Thank you for yet a wonderful and interesting video
Hi Tod, Been a while since i've commented. Regarding field use of windlasses. I believe there's only a single depiction of a windlass in the field in medieval art. It's the late 15th century illumination for the battle of agincourt in Froissart's chronicle.
Looking at how far the bolt protrudes the front of the crossbow, to me it seems the stirrup is to guard the bolt and stop the bolt being hit. It could also be a carry handle for marching.
Watching this tells me I was not far off in my design for a cyberpunk world. A couple of large and strong individuals had bows made with a cocking lever on the bottom and a bolt magazine placed on top for 5 shots before reloading. The crossbow cocked like a lever action rifle except the lever ran the length of the crossbow. Take note, on a scale of 1-10 these guys had a strength of 14 and 16,
Also, look at the curve of the hooked bits. They are why the leverage changes from hard to easier as you draw. Someone put some serious thought into that, and probably used formal geometry to optimize that curve. Just another example of how dumb medieval people were. /s
Have you ever thought about making a crossbow with a captured goatsfoot lever? Like with slightly more material on the "feet" in order to create a sort of channel for the pins on the stock to reside within. Once cone cocking, you could fold it backwards over the stock until you fire, then bring it back forwards to cock again. No clue how the dimensions of it would work. Maybe it would be even easier to just leave it folded forward if there was a way to make sure the feet cleared the string when fired. Seems like It would be a fairly practical upgrade to the system, allowing easier use on horseback or confined areas. Less risk of dropping or loosing the goatsfoot (though I imagine the risk is already fairly low given you arent shooting crossbows inside of a melee).
Question for the house: I know that the strength of a beam is based on its dimensions (depth and width) and its weight by its cross-sectional area (depth x width), this is why you can chamfer the corners off something like a trebuchet arm and end up with a lighter beam but with the same (approximate) strength....... How does this work for blade springs, such as crossbow limbs? Less mass=faster action
That Italian method has me wondering if they had goats foot levers mounted on walls somehow, to help span crossbows. I might be wrong about how that would work though.
It does help in the field, when the goat's foot is dangling from your belt, anyway. You just flip your crossbow, attack and reload. For the other way, you'd either need a long rope or have extra steps removing&storing the lever at the belt.
The spanning stand is well attested in artwork in the 15th century. The "haussepied" seems to be the same device, and I've found that as early as the 1290s. Possibly the garroc/garrot is the same kind of device or else a crossbow spanned by the device - some of the accounts from the Clos des Galées in 1339/40 mention both a "garroc" as a type of crossbow and the installation of a haussepied - which may mean the spanning stand dates even earlier. I unfortunately haven't tracked any evidence beyond the 1290s, however. Interestingly, the spanning stand - at least in French accounts - seems to have been used on board ships as a bridge between two-feet crossbows and the larger windlass spanned crossbows. On smaller ships, it was their heaviest weapon.
@@tods_workshopIf you ever do, see if you can get in contact with Thom Richardson. He came across a reference to materials for making one in the Tower records, although he wasn't entirely what it was. I also suspect that E 101/17/6 and E 101/165/1 contain - along with detailed information on what was needed to construct a springald - some information about a spanning bench. Unfortunately my paleography skills aren't up to much more than reading chronicles in a gothic/textura hand. Richardson might be willing (or might even have already looked at them) to help you out.
If the back curved like an mg42 buttstock you may get more purchase with your thigh and spread the tension over a wider surface. Itd be really cool if you pulled down the foot thing on the front underneath as a on board permanent goats foot. Itd be doing the same thing, but underneath. But build it where the tines at rest are far away from the string so it doesnt damage the string when firing when the string passes the resting point to shoot the bolt. Or even have the tines pass in a clockwise way slightly coming up and inch before grabbing the string so the string simple cannot hit the tines when firing. By grabbing from under the bow could stay upright the whole time mostly and the trigger would never get pressed or hooking on clothes or fingers bc now you belly is against the flat top and sides, trigger stays down, dangerous end (though no bolt) stays pointed out, the little brushguard thing now can be used in 2 different ways to load and you wont have to do any hooking the goatsfoot on even though that looks really fun too and i like the two pegs showing them belonging to eachother like a codependence that makes them better lol Sorry for any typos i just woke up lol
Tod, are you aware of any crossbows, maybe for sport or as a nobleman's gimmick, that used a "lever action" more similar to later lever action rifles? Where the lever is integrated directly into the body of the crossbow? I've doodled some ideas of how I think such a mechanism would work (maybe in a fantasy setting) but I'd be interested to see if anyone tried that historically too
Compared this to the sword scabbard quiver video you did those pictures looked to have used a similar draw technique while keeping the crossbow in the strong left hand. If they'd used a right-hand straight draw of the swor, as it seemed to show in all the paintings, your Italian style draw might have worked with the quiver on the right. Perhaps a right-draw side quiver alloed a goat's foot to e usd wen mounted on a horse? t would be interstig to revist the "talan" draw metod with a right side scabbard mounted bolt-box.
Great video Tod, I wonder how many shots you could get off if there was a helper loading the bows as you were shooting? Think something like that happened during castle sieges?
If you rest it's stock on the ground and use your weight and both arms to cock it, you can make an even more powerful bow. If you do, put a brass guard or spike on the stock so the wood don't rest directly on the ground.
@@patrickporter1864 i can answer this, having watched numerous of Tods crossbow vids. so if you talking direct line (a straight level shot) the maximum range of the xbow can't really be used because no one can aim that well. typically, whether xbow or warbow, 25m to 50m is considered 'target shooting' where aim-skill matters. The other type of shooting we could called it 'volley fire' and that can use the maximum distance. I don't know the exact volley fire range of this 600lb xbow, but i'd guage around 150m, maybe 200m?
There is an old Physics Maxim. "Give me a long enough lever and I can move the world." Therefore the longer the pulling lever the less strength it will take to span the crossbow
Nice work as usual, Tod. I'd be curious to know how heavy the bolts could be for these monster draw weights. Since the speed of launch is limited, but the power is great, I'd think it would be advantageous to shoot heavy bolts. Of course, that would make the recoil even larger. cheers from sunny Vienna, Scott
Interesting to hear that the Italian style is easier. On video it looks so awkward. I'm trying to picture soldiers doing that in a stressful situation and can imagine all kinds of fumbles and mistakes. You have to rotate the bow at least twice before it's ready. Once to point it in to your stomach/hip, then again to place the bolt. Noting that my crossbow knowledge consists entirely of Tod's workshop videos.
If a man hand a wall to press against you could build a super easy to load or super strong one like a map compass and essentially body slam a wall lol and bear hug the crossbow Using your weight not strength to load it. Another good idea would be a butt stock and two long tusks out the front specifically for castles so you just press against the wall/corner/floor next to you with two simple rods on rails in a square u shape Or extend the foot thing and make it a slider so you stand on the foot thing and press your opposite shoulder into it, pull up to reset which its already under your foot, and fire. It may be front heavy idk could be balanced. You couldn't really fire out a thin vertical crack, but thats for archers. A horizontal crack would be great for crossbows.
Looks like with a little modification, the goat's foot could be mounted on your belt for the inverted-style draw -- I'd expect that would make it even faster.
Crazy idea, could you integrate the goat foot into the crossbow without affecting use negatively? Yes it would be a more complex but faster to rearm sins it looks like just getting it on an off take much more time than spanning and loading.
Lovely bow, goat foot lever is really an incredible invention. Can you share your sources about them being from the late 14th cent ? I have a hard time finding anything earlier thanlate 15th/16th cent.
I went digging a bit seeing this. Payne Gallwey lists it as mid 14th but to be fair he is not always right, but a good a foundation. Have got no further than this but am sure a have seen manuscripts of a bunch of Italians outside a city walls using them from pre 1400 judging by dress, from my memory.
"If you give me a lever and a place to stand, I can move the world." - That goats foot lever is a class piece of engineering.....those crossbows are pieces of art.
I don't think that would work...
@@mementomori4972I imagine that’s just how they FELT about this new technology at the time not a literal statements 🤣 unless I’m wooshing right now 💀
English Warbows were so superior to crossbows though, despite some minor advantages, like shooting from cover, or holding fire while the enemy advances..
A sliding lever so that mechanical advantage increases at the same time as the load is also so damn clever. Working out the ideal curve on them would be a fun exercise - even if in period they just iterated towards the correct design by trial and error.
The amount of careful study, which probably involved a lot of trail and error, involved in getting that shape is testament to the skill and intelligence of the folks making them.
Once you have the pattern it's easy to copy and disseminate, but until then it's a crazy engineering challenge.
So cool to see you use it, it was an honor to try it out against the warbow with admin, amazing craftsmanship
You both know we want to see more, right?
Because we’re all helpless historical LARP addicts.
And yes, it is superb - and well *researched* crafting!
Yeah, you have to do that again, sorry. Non-negotiable.
"If you're familiar with the channel, you know I don't lie". Very true and the reason I keep coming back. Thank you Tod, for your integrity.
Seems like the Italian style of loading has the advantage of being able to put the Goat's Foot on your belt and let it fall free when done loading. Making it much more "Battlefield Ready" without the risk of dropping the lever.
Yeah that got me thinking you can probably use it while on a horse that way.
Seems like a really bad idea to point the business end at yourself at all. Todd said himself that if the trigger fails the goats foot becomes the projectile.
Placing lever on the hip may originate in Italy but became international. In 16 century in Denmark plates on the levers of goat foots had row of holes to fix padding, same as plates on guilded goat-foot levers in Royal Armory in Madrid. Benin bronze of Portuguese crossbowman in British museum has a goat foot lever hanging from the belt in similar position, he can reload without removing the goat foot.
The same method was used in 19 and early 20th century by continental shooters but they used heavily padded belt.
I have seen the manuscript drawings of them and they actually shaped the end of the lever to curve around the shape of your leg to make it more comfortable to span.
When shooting that with the bolt going off camera, you really need to add in a Wilhelm scream at one point.
The scream itself is so much of an easter egg at this point that you need to do it in at least one video.
Man what a brilliant idea! Hahaha, I had a good belly laugh!
Or a curmudgeon yelling “Dang kids with your newfangled crossbows!”
😂
5:45
I had a cool pat on my own back that I knew what arrowhead that was. I've watched your videos enough times that I actually learned something and I love it.
Is it just me or is the sound of the nut rotation really fascinating?
It is almost like a sound effect added to emphasize the power of the shot 😃😃😃👍
@@euansmith3699I think it was the old Ivanhoe American TV show that used a very similar sound effect in the show’s intro, except it was used when an arrow (shot by a regular bow, not a crossbow) hit a tree and vibrated in place.
It always struck me that it should not make such a sound as it indicated that the arrow had not hit straight on.
The sound of rattling in a cage, not spinning cleanly on an axle.
No, it's just you...
Sounds a bit like the burp of crow. Very satisfying :)
There’s a Lucas Cranach painting, Hunting near Hartenfels castle, and in the lower left corner, there’s a guy using the ‘Italian’ method, even though his bow has no stirrup
I remember the days when Todd uploaded once every six months. I'm glad those days are gone.
Thanks, but still not very regular; just too busy
Hi Tod, love all your work.
I wasn't sure the best way to bring this up was as it isn't really relevant to this specific video, but posting here as it is the most recent.
I was reading a brief account of the battle of Towton 1461 and the idea of the Leeward battle line. Apparently the Yorkist commander Fauconberg, upon noticing the strength and direction of the wind deployed his archers in such a way that their arrows fell in the centre of the Lancastrian army, but return fire from the Lancastrians fell short. Not only that but the Yorkists were able to gather these arrows and shoot them back. Awesome tactics from Fauconberg.
I wonder if this is something that would be demonstrable by Jo with his longbow and just how strong the wind would have to have been for this to really have made a difference.
Sorry if this is the subject of another vid, but I didn't see it and perhaps someone could signpost me if it has been.
Cheers 👍
I woke up one morning a couple of years back to a howling gale and went and filmed a film…..go back to look for my Towton film
"well, not for the deer" - true enough
Interesting point on the Italian style reload and the stirrup - I'd always assumed the stirrup was just too handy for transport and storage to remove even when you don't normally use it for spanning the bow. Plus as it also allows you at least try to use any of the other spanning methods if the need arises - I expect if you are desperate enough most folks could manage to load sort of weight crossbow at least a few times without the lever and it would be easy to span it with the windlass, which could be useful for folks carrying upper body injuries.
I always wondered about the stirrup on heavier crossbows too. Kings, Governments and Warlords aren't known for spending any money on weapons for the Rank&File they don't have to*, and the extra fitting of a stirrup on a crossbow you can't span with some form a leverage is one thing that should be dropped..... Until you see that method.
*Kings, Governments and Warlords quite often spend extra money on fancy weapons for themselves....... You just have to see a gold plated AK to know this to be true
That thing looks like magic!!
Man I can't even imagine being around when that was invented it must have been absolutely mind blowing.
Mechanical advantage is so cool.
Imagine the day around 1550 your friends returned from the tailor with pockets in their hose/trousers. Revolution!
I am a big fan of the rolling nut trigger system. Ive even built a functional crossbow with 90 lb fiberglass limbs using a slight variation on it. I only modernized the actual trigger part. Its got a heavy trigger pull but I trust it not accidentally firing as easily so its a sacrifice I'm willing to make.
Rolling nut is good but there is much more modern system with a hook that looks like reverse number '7 .The more force you put on it the trigger pull force remains same .Instead of one big leaver like on rolling nuts system it uses smaller bar to distribute force evenly and then you have classic pistol trigger .Force is applied differently ,instead of pushing into trigger it pulls small bar forward.Key is in 2/3 distance ratio of small bar that looks like this --O---I
When done with needle bearings you get extremely smooth trigger.You can even put automatic safety on it .
I wish i could send you a link to design but youtube doesnt like links.
@@zumbazumba1 Thanks but the one I built has a modern style trigger and I dont want a super easy trigger pull or extra shit for a safety. It works great and Im still hitting my target every trigger pull.
The Italian method that you described honestly looks like mostly a safety measure. Aside from having more leverage ("work smarter, not harder" always means safer as well when it comes to physical work), it also means if there is any mechanical failure at maximum draw, the things flying apart are aimed at the ground. Sure, if the goat's foot goes flying out in front of you, it isn't going to harm anyone you care about - probably -, but it's awfully hard to get it back when it's lying out in front of the firing line.
Thank you for continuing to explore medieval crossbows. Given that you can span a 600lb prod easily enough, I suspect well-trained & athletic crossbowers in period could manage 800-900+lbs with a lever. It makes me think of period artwork like Lazzaro Tavarone's depiction of Genoese crossbowers in Jerusalem bearing large crossbows & long goat's-foot levers. Crossbows had almost entirely left European warfare by Tavarone's time, but the piece possibly gives a sense of 16th-century military goat's-foot crossbows before they phased out. In theory, a lever-spanned crossbow with a horn prod could probably match the performance of yew warbow.
I kinda wonder what could Joe Gibbs span with belt, doubler belt or goats foot just with his strength and 160+ bows experience. Andreas Bichler can apparently do 420 pound fairly easily, while Todd did 470, though with bit more elaborate belt.
So I wouldn't be surprised it Joe could do much, much more with a bit of training.
Could be cool idea for content.
Yes I could certainly span more and others much more
Nice find. They also seem to be very wide and recurved bows, possibly with a longer power stroke. If accurate it implies very powerful crossbows.
Andreas bichler had a 620 pound composite bow (spanned via crannequin) that shot 151j 😊
@@fallenafh981 726lb according to the video rather the description, but yeah. If Tod can rather easily span 600lbs with a long goat's-foot lever, it's very likely historical soldiers could have spanned 726lb (or considerably more). & a 726lb composite crossbow already slightly outperforms a 160lb yew warbow.
Beautiful mechanisms. Thanks, Tod.
You remind me again that I still have to finish my 110lbs crossbow that I started in 2020 x.x
Here in the U. S. we call the length of travel of the bow or crossbow string, the power stroke. Lengthening the power stroke has a profound effect on the speed/power of the arrow. You could probably achieve equal arrow speed if you cut the poundage down to 200 lbs, went with a longer crossbow bow (prod) and increased the power stroke to 12 inches. Longer prods make the crossbow cumbersome to carry around however. More modern crossbows also use a flexible prong that bends upward as the arrow passes under it just in front of the cocking latch and the pressure holds the arrow firm to the arrow rail. Saw somewhere that arrows under 16 inches are called bolts for these old style crossbows. Pretty much all newer type crossbows shoot arrows 18 to 22 inches. Thanks for sharing. That cocking device has a lot of ingenuity.
The amount of work and metal that goes into the Goat's Foot is amazing.
It’s such an impressive bit of physics and engineering that goes into such a simple looking object. Love it.
It is simple and a friend bought an original off eBay for £50- amazing! And it is so simple and crude and offers so much utility for the effort of making it.great invention
Not really....like he said it's pretty simple ^^^....
5:37 and in that set up the longer you stock is the more leverage you will have too
Always entertaining and informative. Thanks Tod.
My Tod alert went off. I'm here :-)
Light the beacons!
What a fantastic explanation, I immediately understood via your simple examples and comparisons.
I wonder if it would be worth to design a goats foot lever that stays on the crossbow but "rests" on the stock? Something like thicker hollow legs that runs on the side pins and the one can flip back after the string is pulled an locked...
Still, fun video as always.
I was about to suggest that!
He made an IRL version of the Skyrim crossbow that had a built in goats foot, that might be what you are looking for.
@@DH-xw6jp He did mention some flaws with that particular design in a earlier video when I asked about that, something about low draw weight. This time I was trying to ask about a way to design the goat foot to stay without changing the draw eight. I just don't know the English, or really what the parts are called in my own language, names for the parts I am thinking of. Oh well.
The direction of the lever matters to clear the bowstring and path of the bolt when folded. So a level on the underside of the stock. And lifting the string away from the stock is preferred to pushing in. So the lever starts pointed back and moves forward.
Actually very tricky and then you have to hold up the lever weight too so not all roses. My thinking is that when these were current and tens of thousands of people were making and using them over generations, nobody did it so they would catch on. That to me says it was unlikely to have worked
That explanation you give in the demonstration about finger placement while loading and how the goatsfoot can become the projectile, might explain the why the Italians loaded in the style they did.
With the bolt falling out from what I heard it's also possible to have a thin copper strop a little over the nut to hold the bolt in place, it would get in the way of some loading methods but the goatsfoot should be able to just slide over it.
I love this experimental approach to history and Tod's exploration of historical engineering + scientific exploration of the results . There's no room for romanticised or biased inflections here - it's just exploration and presentation of what has been discovered and what could have been possible.
I swear i've seen this guy at a car stop thing in England somewhere with his wife, love your work Tod, huge crossbow fan!😉
Still cant believe I saw Tod but didnt talk cus I could'nt believe myself 😶
Just little physics nitpicking -
It is not the power of the string that goes up with cube of thickness. It is the stiffness.
The maximum safe draw length is reduced as thickness reversed, so the draw weight goes up as thickness squared and the potential energy will directly depend on the thickness.
And if there are two bows both surviving the same draw length, the thinner one is under strained and less efficient.
I'm interested, do you have a link for further reading about the physics going on here?
@JanoTuotanto: Surely it depends what you mean by efficiency. Typically when you are talking about energy, it means the ratio of useful energy that you get out (in this case the kinetic energy that the bolt end up with) to the energy that you put in (in this case the energy that Todd is putting in when he spans the crossbow).
So, you could have a thin bow that takes you 2J to draw that gives a bolt 1J of energy. That has an efficiency of 50%.
Then you could have a thick bow that takes 4J to draw and gives 2J to the bolt. This one is obviously the stronger bow, but the efficiency is also 50%.
Linguistical nit-picking: It's worth bearing in mind that physicists and engineers have a set of jargon words that mean very specific things within the field - strength, stiffness, toughness, hardness, power, work, efficiency, elasticity, plasticity, yield - that can have broader meanings in normal speech. Power means a specific thing in physics and engineering, but can also mean 'peak force during the draw' in common parlance. Usually the usage in common parlance predates it's use in technical jargon.
@@QuantumHistorian, you could search for Euler-Bernouilli beam theory. However, it is likely to come up with something a bit mystifying unless you are keen on maths. Tomorrow I'll see if I can find something that explains it in a more accessible way.
Having said that, beam theory might help with the general ideas, but the mathematics of bows is surprisingly complex for a bendy stick with some string attached.
Absolutely stunning!❤
Tod lying about draw weights never crossed my mind, I guess some people are just built different.
The only lie is, Tod pretending he is not one of the best content creators on youtube. The man has modesty a monk would study.
@@mementomori4972 the lever is just sending a signal to the motorcycle to stop itself. The crossbow's power is 100% coming from the man loading it, it's still just a fancy bow
What is the point in lying?
Tod also showed in a special video how he measured the draw weight of his previous crossbow.
@@mementomori4972 the brakes are on the motorcycle, you are just actuating the brakes, the brakes making friction on the disk stop the vehicle. So the vehicle is actually handling the energy dissipation to stop the 500lbs item going at 160 miles per hour. The force you use to actuate the brakes is just used to move the brake arms to go in contact and make friction.
In a crossbow the power to load the bow comes from your arm (and back), it can be a crank or a lever, but you are storing your own energy in the bow.
If the crossbow was like the motorcycle, it would have something like an airsoft gas cartridge connected to a piston to load the bow when you trigger it with a lever.
@@mementomori4972It's pretty hard to compress brake fluid. All I was saying was that It never crossed my mind that Tod would lie about how draw weights, I was in no way trying to start an argument here in the comment section.
I like that their oblong shape perfectly matches what you'd expect from a Cam on a compound mech. Both use torsion, leverage, and variable radii to create a mechanical advantage!
Great video as always Tod.
It got me thinking on the logistics of firing and reloading. Mass fire and reload vs firing line by line to maintain constant fire, or mass fire with a dedicated reloader and a dedicated shooter.
It would be so cool to see you making one of this again and your thoughts 😊
The goats foot lever is an amazing example of a cam and follower. Very impressive bit of engineering.
Thank you
Archeology: What it is
Todd: What they are
😂
It’s the GOAT of crossbow loading devices
Thanks Tod for the continued great content.
The moment you hear Tod use the 'sportscar / truck analogy' you shared long ago *big smile*. I still think it would be interesting to mount a force sensor /accelerometer of some sort to understand how hard the arrows/bolts hit. I know you can just estimate from speed mass, but some force might be lost from breakage etc.
Simply fascinating!
I've never seen an actual reloading of a crossbow before, only the Hollywood movie nonsense.
Thank you very much for the education on how these actually function!
Glad to help
Simple and easy to understand design
I read some 10 years back Naval officers accounts from the Napoleonic Wars, and in one, someone claimed that men from the Orkneys had brought their Crossbows with on board the ship they had signed up with.
If this was just a tall tale I cannot say, but I found it interesting at the time.
And why not, much quieter on a "cutting out" expedition where stealth is vital.
Interesting
Enjoyed it, as always. 👍👍👍
what if you stacked more of the things on the side where the lever hooks, further back on the stock? Meaning that after drawing back the string the first time, you could move the leaver back and keep drawing. Would it be possible to increase draw length and strength, or have we information that this was ever done? Seems like a cool idea to me.
Great video, love your crossbow builds!
I can't comment this this enough, i absolutely adore your content and when i have the money i will be getting a dagger and crossbow from you
Thanks
My ~500 pound munitions grade bow with the regular goat's foot is already decently powerful but this is an interesting upgrade, almost to the cranequin hunting bow level. I still plan on getting a cranequin bow from you eventually just because I like cool mechanical devices but to be honest I shoot the Balestrino you made for me earlier this year the most often.
Horn composite prods are much more efficient in transferring energy to target than steel prods. But they are ridiculously expensive and difficult and time consuming to make. Makes me wonder if it would be possible to make crossbow prods out of modern fiber materials that look and behaves exactly like the original horn composites
Fascinating results. You could easily span andreas bichlers 620 pound composite crossbow, and that already had a more powerful shot than the really heavy long bows (151j vs 131j on a 160 pound longbow) for not a huge decrease in speed.
Someone needs to start making composite crossbows spanned by goats foot levers. Bichler doesnt use them as he claims they were not used until essentially the early modern era
Great video Tod
I very much enjoyed your video and I gave it a Thumbs Up
You should hook the goat foot to a fish scale so we can see how much force you have to put on the lever and what does the curve looks like.
Good idea. That should be possible
Visit San Marino in Italy if you can and enjoy the vast collection of ancient crossbows in the local museum
Nice shirt, Todd! ;)
Thanks-all the best people wear them
hi Tod. firstly love your work
I think the Stirrup is there exactly why it should be, to put your foot in, so that the leg holds it firstly on ground/surface. The using the "cocking tool" to cock the bow, using the power of your hands, having the cocking tool like that may not have really worked specailly in the heat of the battle.
If you're hunting and you get one shot, I guess that prep time doesn't really matter, and I also suppose that out-of-shape sportsmen would prefer an easier method.
I had always assumed that the stirrup was a holdover and kept because it's useful for resting your xbow end-down without worrying about getting dirt and junk in the bolt's path.
Great video (again)! Note: Please consider recording and uploading in 1440p.
Another great episode, thank you.
I'm glad you explained the power difference in performance between old and new bows. Ive used a modern 130lb crossbow, and i'm sure it would easily shoot through someone's head even 30 - 40 meters away. Even with a bit of a thin armor helmet.Sorry that's a horrible way to describe it, but It made me wonder why they made such heavy bows in the past.
Horn composite crossbows are much more efficient in transferring energy to target than steel crossbows are. But they are ridiculously expensive and time consuming to make. Makes me wonder if it would be possible to make crossbow prods out of modern fiber materials that look and behaves like the original horn composites
@@jonathanengdahl9045 We have those already, they're the fiberglass-wood laminate composite limbs you see on modern-style recurves and selfbows. Fiberglass replaces bow sinew and horn in this case, as it is strong in both tension and compression.
@@Bulsh1tMan Thanks. I have never seen anyone make medieval european crossbows with that type of material. Tod makes his fake-composites out of steel which significantly reduces performance. Do you know if fiber-glass would be more or less expensive than steel?
@@jonathanengdahl9045 I've seen some very talented bow makers make their own fiberglass laminated wood core composites using e-glass or s-glass fabric, but it's not something I personally have dabbled in. Pretty niche since those with the time and money would usually go for the more authentic sinew and horn construction. More often, I see builders purchasing a factory-made fiberglass recurve limbs meant for modern hunting crossbows for their medieval crossbows. You can order 150-200 lb limbs for under $200 if I recall.
@@Bulsh1tMan I understand what you mean. Im not sure however if those types of prods that you are describing are very historically accurate for medieval european composite prods that tended to be short and thick and if recurved then only slightly so. They had short power strokes but very heavy draw weights of about 400-1200lbs. Andreas Bichler makes historically accurate european composite crossbows from the high and late middle ages. These are the sorts of fiberglass prods that I have never seen be made www.youtube.com/@medievalcrossbows7621
Todd I love your videos, you're great man! Keep up the fabulous work. Its so fun learning from your videos. PS. I'd love to see a video where you demonstrate the reload time for a crossbow behind cover (crouched or kneeled down behind cover). Like in a real medieval battle.
Stirrup is also useful for stationary spanning devices. Which you should definitly made a video about.
Hi Tod! I really love your channel and have been following it for a long time. You have a lot of different crossbows, but there are no crossbows of ancient China. I don't mean the multi-shot cho ko nu, but the Han Dynasty crossbow and its subsequent versions. I strongly advise you to make and test it. It has a more efficient trigger mechanism, which allows you to increase the length of the string tension. It does not have a trigger lever, but a trigger, as in modern weapons. The total draw length is 27-28 inches, like a bow, which is much longer than a European crossbow. This means that with the same tension force, the power will be several times higher... The Chinese invented it about 2000 years ago and used it before the advent of firearms. My name is Dmitry, I am from Eastern Europe and now I am just making such a crossbow for myself. I am interested in repeating this ancient technology and testing its effectiveness. I would love to see your tests of this crossbow. And in general, there is little information about them on the Internet and few reviews and tests.
Torque advantage is remarkable. I had a Gamo cf-20 air rifle and I bet it was harder to cock than that 600lbs bow.
love that "tung" sound!
3:08 Not sure if that's entirely true Tod. My opinion is that you're never honest about how amazing you actually are, plus you're constantly selling yourself short 😉
Thank you for yet a wonderful and interesting video
Hi Tod,
Been a while since i've commented.
Regarding field use of windlasses. I believe there's only a single depiction of a windlass in the field in medieval art. It's the late 15th century illumination for the battle of agincourt in Froissart's chronicle.
Looking at how far the bolt protrudes the front of the crossbow, to me it seems the stirrup is to guard the bolt and stop the bolt being hit. It could also be a carry handle for marching.
Watching this tells me I was not far off in my design for a cyberpunk world. A couple of large and strong individuals had bows made with a cocking lever on the bottom and a bolt magazine placed on top for 5 shots before reloading. The crossbow cocked like a lever action rifle except the lever ran the length of the crossbow. Take note, on a scale of 1-10 these guys had a strength of 14 and 16,
Building these things so that they really fit is a craft by itself
Also, look at the curve of the hooked bits. They are why the leverage changes from hard to easier as you draw. Someone put some serious thought into that, and probably used formal geometry to optimize that curve.
Just another example of how dumb medieval people were. /s
What’s the speed and weight of bolts used for the 600 pound crossbow? Like mid ideal weight and speed of it?
Have you ever thought about making a crossbow with a captured goatsfoot lever? Like with slightly more material on the "feet" in order to create a sort of channel for the pins on the stock to reside within. Once cone cocking, you could fold it backwards over the stock until you fire, then bring it back forwards to cock again. No clue how the dimensions of it would work. Maybe it would be even easier to just leave it folded forward if there was a way to make sure the feet cleared the string when fired. Seems like It would be a fairly practical upgrade to the system, allowing easier use on horseback or confined areas. Less risk of dropping or loosing the goatsfoot (though I imagine the risk is already fairly low given you arent shooting crossbows inside of a melee).
Thanks Todd love your Archery vids . Although I worked during the plandemic I saved the lockdown vids. This is a great video too. Thanks again.
I made the lockdown vids rather obviously during that period and it was a fun way to spend some of it
Question for the house:
I know that the strength of a beam is based on its dimensions (depth and width) and its weight by its cross-sectional area (depth x width), this is why you can chamfer the corners off something like a trebuchet arm and end up with a lighter beam but with the same (approximate) strength....... How does this work for blade springs, such as crossbow limbs?
Less mass=faster action
That Italian method has me wondering if they had goats foot levers mounted on walls somehow, to help span crossbows.
I might be wrong about how that would work though.
It does help in the field, when the goat's foot is dangling from your belt, anyway. You just flip your crossbow, attack and reload. For the other way, you'd either need a long rope or have extra steps removing&storing the lever at the belt.
The spanning stand is well attested in artwork in the 15th century. The "haussepied" seems to be the same device, and I've found that as early as the 1290s. Possibly the garroc/garrot is the same kind of device or else a crossbow spanned by the device - some of the accounts from the Clos des Galées in 1339/40 mention both a "garroc" as a type of crossbow and the installation of a haussepied - which may mean the spanning stand dates even earlier. I unfortunately haven't tracked any evidence beyond the 1290s, however.
Interestingly, the spanning stand - at least in French accounts - seems to have been used on board ships as a bridge between two-feet crossbows and the larger windlass spanned crossbows. On smaller ships, it was their heaviest weapon.
@@Cahirablein answer to the OP this comment correct. In answer to Cahirable, great detail, thanks so much and always rather fancied making one.
@@tods_workshopIf you ever do, see if you can get in contact with Thom Richardson. He came across a reference to materials for making one in the Tower records, although he wasn't entirely what it was.
I also suspect that E 101/17/6 and E 101/165/1 contain - along with detailed information on what was needed to construct a springald - some information about a spanning bench. Unfortunately my paleography skills aren't up to much more than reading chronicles in a gothic/textura hand. Richardson might be willing (or might even have already looked at them) to help you out.
Little bit deeper and little bit thicker is sometimes all you need
If the back curved like an mg42 buttstock you may get more purchase with your thigh and spread the tension over a wider surface.
Itd be really cool if you pulled down the foot thing on the front underneath as a on board permanent goats foot. Itd be doing the same thing, but underneath. But build it where the tines at rest are far away from the string so it doesnt damage the string when firing when the string passes the resting point to shoot the bolt.
Or even have the tines pass in a clockwise way slightly coming up and inch before grabbing the string so the string simple cannot hit the tines when firing.
By grabbing from under the bow could stay upright the whole time mostly and the trigger would never get pressed or hooking on clothes or fingers bc now you belly is against the flat top and sides, trigger stays down, dangerous end (though no bolt) stays pointed out, the little brushguard thing now can be used in 2 different ways to load and you wont have to do any hooking the goatsfoot on even though that looks really fun too and i like the two pegs showing them belonging to eachother like a codependence that makes them better lol
Sorry for any typos i just woke up lol
Tod, are you aware of any crossbows, maybe for sport or as a nobleman's gimmick, that used a "lever action" more similar to later lever action rifles? Where the lever is integrated directly into the body of the crossbow?
I've doodled some ideas of how I think such a mechanism would work (maybe in a fantasy setting) but I'd be interested to see if anyone tried that historically too
look up the "chinese repeating crossbow" for a historical version, it's even magazine fed.
Look up Loffenholz crossbow
And of course the Rivers Bos that I featured a few months back
@@tods_workshop of course, how could I have forgotten the dread mobility scooter reivers bow! Thanks
th-cam.com/video/d0sVBPkJF9Y/w-d-xo.htmlsi=1y2jYZ6c-BJl-ays
5:15 spanning belt plus goats foot ?
I really need to get around to ordering one of those shirts.
Compared this to the sword scabbard quiver video you did those pictures looked to have used a similar draw technique while keeping the crossbow in the strong left hand. If they'd used a right-hand straight draw of the swor, as it seemed to show in all the paintings, your Italian style draw might have worked with the quiver on the right. Perhaps a right-draw side quiver alloed a goat's foot to e usd wen mounted on a horse? t would be interstig to revist the "talan" draw metod with a right side scabbard mounted bolt-box.
I’d love to get one. I have an English longbow but the crossbows can a bit expensive due to crafting them I imagine.
Great video Tod, I wonder how many shots you could get off if there was a helper loading the bows as you were shooting? Think something like that happened during castle sieges?
I think the world needs a t-shirt of Tod doing a thumbs up saying 'Still got my thumb'!
Have you clocked the speed Tod? How does the foot/poundage compare to the lockdown longbow (or modern rifle rounds?)
If you rest it's stock on the ground and use your weight and both arms to cock it, you can make an even more powerful bow. If you do, put a brass guard or spike on the stock so the wood don't rest directly on the ground.
Love your channel. Tod the nut is loud as it spins. Was there any effort or design that made it quieter? Felt or leather as a washer or something?
600lbs? You must be really strong to wave it around like that
He's also actually a 10' giant. He makes everything to his size.
@@wamken619 It's from being around Joerg. Grew him a whole lot
he's a smithy. he's developed good upper body strength. comes naturally with the job.
What is the range of the bow.
@@patrickporter1864 i can answer this, having watched numerous of Tods crossbow vids. so if you talking direct line (a straight level shot) the maximum range of the xbow can't really be used because no one can aim that well. typically, whether xbow or warbow, 25m to 50m is considered 'target shooting' where aim-skill matters. The other type of shooting we could called it 'volley fire' and that can use the maximum distance. I don't know the exact volley fire range of this 600lb xbow, but i'd guage around 150m, maybe 200m?
There is an old Physics Maxim. "Give me a long enough lever and I can move the world." Therefore the longer the pulling lever the less strength it will take to span the crossbow
Nice work as usual, Tod. I'd be curious to know how heavy the bolts could be for these monster draw weights. Since the speed of launch is limited, but the power is great, I'd think it would be advantageous to shoot heavy bolts. Of course, that would make the recoil even larger.
cheers from sunny Vienna, Scott
Wow ❤ your crossbows bro, would love to see you make identical one with modern prong at modern draw length for experiment, cheers.
Interesting to hear that the Italian style is easier. On video it looks so awkward. I'm trying to picture soldiers doing that in a stressful situation and can imagine all kinds of fumbles and mistakes. You have to rotate the bow at least twice before it's ready. Once to point it in to your stomach/hip, then again to place the bolt. Noting that my crossbow knowledge consists entirely of Tod's workshop videos.
If a man hand a wall to press against you could build a super easy to load or super strong one like a map compass and essentially body slam a wall lol and bear hug the crossbow
Using your weight not strength to load it.
Another good idea would be a butt stock and two long tusks out the front specifically for castles so you just press against the wall/corner/floor next to you with two simple rods on rails in a square u shape
Or extend the foot thing and make it a slider so you stand on the foot thing and press your opposite shoulder into it, pull up to reset which its already under your foot, and fire. It may be front heavy idk could be balanced. You couldn't really fire out a thin vertical crack, but thats for archers. A horizontal crack would be great for crossbows.
I wonder if the stirrup is like a bipod to rest against fortification while taking cover
Looks like with a little modification, the goat's foot could be mounted on your belt for the inverted-style draw -- I'd expect that would make it even faster.
Crazy idea, could you integrate the goat foot into the crossbow without affecting use negatively? Yes it would be a more complex but faster to rearm sins it looks like just getting it on an off take much more time than spanning and loading.
Leveraging the bow also reduces the potential injury of a misfire as nothing would get launched down range or into your hand.
Given this is a high powered crossbow, what would be the optimal draw weight for ease of use by the user to defend against an enemy?
This would be about there in my mind
Lovely bow, goat foot lever is really an incredible invention. Can you share your sources about them being from the late 14th cent ? I have a hard time finding anything earlier thanlate 15th/16th cent.
I went digging a bit seeing this. Payne Gallwey lists it as mid 14th but to be fair he is not always right, but a good a foundation. Have got no further than this but am sure a have seen manuscripts of a bunch of Italians outside a city walls using them from pre 1400 judging by dress, from my memory.
Pretty cool!
😎
As always lots of fun and lots to learn ^^