Howdy From New Mexico

Greetings to the Guild!

After some months of lurking and reading this fascinating forum, I thought I'd better join up so I could introduce myself properly! My name is Orien, and I'm a craftsman (knife and tool maker, primarily) from southern NM, USA. 

I've only just started attempting to build crossbows,  but I have many years of experience building and shooting handheld archery bows. I am really enjoying the crossbow experience so far (the high draw weights and "interesting" geometries are going to take a few tries to nail down, though!)

This is my first successful crossbow...basically a toy   . Wooden (elm) prod of some 70# weight, Tiller of desertwillow (Chilopsis linearis, a local tree in the Catalpa family), wooden roller nut with steel sear and tickler trigger.

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It's awesome fun to shoot, with probably enough power to hunt small game with...of course I immediately decided to make another with much, much higher draw weight   , which is now in process. 

I could not have gotten this far with xbow building without the help of this fine forum, so...thanks to all for sharing projects and info! I look forward to sharing my work with y'all, as well.

Cheers!
-Orien

Welcome!!

Nice first bow.  And all wood!  Congrats.  I love the Desert Willow tiller.  How long is that prod?  You could hunt with that, but remember that a 70# crossbow won't have the impact of a 70# vertical bow.

Hi kenh, thanks for the welcome! I appreciate the nice words on my crossbow, it was a particularly fun project. This crossbow-building thing is fairly addicting, I fear...  

The prod is 36" end to end. I figured I'd have the best chance of success making a wooden prod, since I'd made wooden bows before...actually it was quite hard to get a high enough draw weight, and I blew up one prod before getting this one to work. I can tell it has a lot less power than a handbow of the same weight would, but the bolts are fairly light so they fly pretty fast. A rabbit at close range would be in trouble, I think.

What I find I'm really interested in trying is steel bows. I have another small crossbow with a 14" long leafspring prod almost finished up, and also started the forging on a 24" medieval-style prod with rolled ends I hope to get 300# out of. Should be tricky to heat treat, but as a fairly experienced knifemaker I feel like I have some chance of pulling it off (I'll still be testing it from behind a plywood baffle, using a long cable and a come-along, just in case   )

Thanks again!