New member - greetings to all from Nova Britannia

Hello, all. My name is Dane. I'm somewhat new to the world of crossbows, but not bows. My primary focus is bows of the Stone Age, as well as primitive technologies in general, including the atlatl. Most of my interest is the bows of Mesolithic and Neolithic Europe, while my secondary interest in Roman history and technology. I'm a member of two Roman living history groups, Legio III Cyrenaica (Flavian period), and Exculcatores Iuniores Britanniciani, a Late Roman unit we are just getting off the ground.

Primarily, I decided to build a crossbow to understand how they work and the methods of construction I will need to master to build a reconstruction of a late Roman arcuballista. I am very much indebted to Darivs (Kurt) for his amazing build-along of a medieval crossbow, which I am following religiously for my first project. I also want to thank Kurt for the materials he has published on his site when he built his ballista. I have been working on two Roman torsion arrow shooters (scorpios), which are about 60 percent complete at this point, and his ballista stuff helped me decide to go ahead with that form of madness.
Ideally, I will work toward crossbows made with totally period tools and materials as a form of experimental archeology, but for now, I am using modern tools. I am using hand tools as much as possible, however, but since this is not a totally 100% authentic bow, I feel using power tools is fair and sane. .

I will begin posting my project soon, and any help and pointers along the way would be of course welcome and appreciated.

Dane / Titus

Hey and welcome to our little forum. Sounds like you have a lot of fun projects ahead of you. We'll all be glad to help you out and looking forward to see what you make expecially the arcuballista. Building one of those or something similar is on my list of projects as well. Just need to get some more tools

I am something of a beginning bowyer myself and one of these days going to get back to working on a holmeguard/mollenbat inspired longbow.

I agree with that power tools is fair and sane. especially if your trying new things.

Thanks for the greetings. This place looks like fun. Paleoplanet and Primitive Archer are the other places I hang out online.



I’ll start posting the progress on my current crossbow I hope this weekend or sooner in the projects section. It is coming along well (knock on wood), and has been a lot of fun, and different than the other types of weapons I usually focus on.



Besides the arcuballista, I have on the drawing board a ancient Greek gastrophetes, which is what can be considered the first catapult. I’m investing in a vertical mill to help make the trigger parts, pawls, etc., though I do have the capability to cast those parts from bronze. This one I plan to make primarily with my collection of hand forged Roman tools (working repros, not originals!), and a big 15 foot long maple branch that fell into my yard from a snowstorm of a few years ago which is now seasoned sufficiently to make the case and other wooden parts from. Maple, like many of our domestic hardwoods, was used in the Classical World. The weapon will, as well, have at first a heavy self bow, probably hickory and pulling 200 lbs, but later, I will construct a composite bow for it.



Good luck on the holmie / mollie. That is a very challenging design, but worth the effort. I ruined a few staves and boards, but finally got a nice one made from hophornbeam. They are excellent performers. Remember to keep as much bend throughout the lower limb, as it is easy to hinge them at the first fade nearest the handle. A tiny bit of bend in the outer limbs is a good idea, as well. The little bow I am shooting in my avatar is a replica Sarnate bow, a Neolithic flatbow design from Eastern Europe made from HHB, but originally from ash. The ancient designs are always surprising and fun to mess with, and date back so much farther than any mechanical arrow shooter.



Dane