I need some advice. I have been itching to create a reproduction of a 14th century composite crossbow for a very long time but I'm not up to the task of reproducing a composite prod with original methods. I have seen some reproductions of these bows for sale online, most prominently at todstuff.com and that got me wondering about different methods to produce what Tod calls a faux composite prod.
Tod uses a steel prod which he pads with something (rubber? leather? wood?) to make it look like a composite prod. I was, however, thinking that one could also just build up a prod out of alternating layers of glass fibre and wood laminate (maple?), basically a sandwich of wood-FG-wood-FG-wood-FG-wood... where the wood layers are maybe ... 4 mm and the FG layers are 1 mm each? This would be repeated as often as required until you have built up a prod to original thickness. The original composite prods seem to have been between 4-5 cm wide and either of a D shaped or rounded rectangle section so the stack of FG and Maple would have to be about 3-4 cm thick @ a length of about 80-90 cm. Has anybody ever tried to build something like this? Is it even possible?
The other take would be to build a thinner glass fibre and wood laminate prod and pad it with something like Tod does. Any ideas about a padding material?
Does anybody have other ideas on how structure a faux composite prod?
Tod uses a steel prod which he pads with something (rubber? leather? wood?) to make it look like a composite prod. I was, however, thinking that one could also just build up a prod out of alternating layers of glass fibre and wood laminate (maple?), basically a sandwich of wood-FG-wood-FG-wood-FG-wood... where the wood layers are maybe ... 4 mm and the FG layers are 1 mm each? This would be repeated as often as required until you have built up a prod to original thickness. The original composite prods seem to have been between 4-5 cm wide and either of a D shaped or rounded rectangle section so the stack of FG and Maple would have to be about 3-4 cm thick @ a length of about 80-90 cm. Has anybody ever tried to build something like this? Is it even possible?
The other take would be to build a thinner glass fibre and wood laminate prod and pad it with something like Tod does. Any ideas about a padding material?
Does anybody have other ideas on how structure a faux composite prod?