Slowbows, Clap lock trigger, how many pounds pull are they, and whats the pounds on a roller nutt?

whats the poundage on a clap lock and roller nutt?

Geezer here, picking up the gauntlett:  Pounds force on a claplock?  I have no idea, having never built one, but looking at bows that employ claplock, I would say 200-300 lb. should be workable, given a properly made 'hand' and bowstring.
For roller-locks, it depends on how they're built.  I make a lot of lightweight crossbows @ 70 lb draw. For those I use a decent hardwood for the stock and a simple Delrin roller, with a mild steel (allthread) sear for the trigger to work against.   They work out fine.  For customers who want much over 100 lb. draw, I usually reinforce the edges of the nut-socket with slabs of moose-horn... occasionally axis stag horn. If the slabs are put in correctly, they'll hold up indefinitely... occasionally you chip an edge, but generally speaking they work fine up to my limits of @ 200 lb. You see lots of horn/bone reinforces on medieval bows up to @ 1000 lb. draw.  Delrin rollers will work perfectly well on a 200 lb. bow, but I don't think I would put one on a 300 lb. bow.  The lugs might fail.  The few bows I have built over 200 got moose-horn rollers.  Very strong medieval bows... say anything over 500 lb. or so, often got a couple of steel pins driven through the lugs, down into the body of the roller.  I've done that with 1/8 or 3/16 in. steel rod, epoxied in place and it worked fine.  If you wanna know how much power you can use with a roller-lock, there are big siege bows that probably draw 1500 lb. with a 10 inch power stroke... there's a nice one in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.  It has a bone roller @ 2 inches in diameter and the same in width.  The socket is undoubtedly lined with bone, and the lockplates look like cow-horn.  Remarkably, for such a strong bow, it has an old-fashioned single-axle trigger.  That suggests a lot of trigger pressure for release, but then again it IS really long, so maybe it's not too much work.  Does that help?  Geezer.

Geezer wrote:Remarkably, for such a strong bow, it has an old-fashioned single-axle trigger.  That suggests a lot of trigger pressure for release, but then again it IS really long, so maybe it's not too much work. 

That's interesting.  My brother wants to work up to a heavy bow, around 1200lbs or so, and I've been thinking of a two-axle trigger for heavier bows that doesn't require strings or such to lock.  Even with heat treated sears wouldn't a single-axle trigger on a 1500# bow wear out pretty fast?

Sure it'll wear. Nobody said such a setup had the half-life of plutonium.  Back in the Olde Daye I don't believe they though in terms of weapon longevity the way we do.

The old-style, riveted-in wedge sears don't appear to be replaceable, either, unlike the threaded-in, modern type. Would a crossbowman back in the day just expect to replace the entire nut every so often? It seems like an easier option than reshaping the ticker end.

Actually, given a riveted-in wedge sear and a riveted in tickler-trigger, I figure the trigger would be easier to remove and hammer square on an anvil, then fit back in the stock.  But in fact, if you can get the rivet out of the trigger, you can probably get it out of the nut as well, in which place one can rework that surface or remove it.  There's a worse wear-problem: a tickler-drag groove that forms around the circumference of the nut. That, plus sear-wear might eventually require replacement of the nut.  Of course when you consider some bows had no nussfaden or pivot-pin through the nut, (Western bows in particular) it probably wasn't uncommon to have them fall out.  So prudent archers probably carried a spare anyhow.  Geezer.

Oh wow sorry guys, great information but i wasnt clear lol....i mean what the trigger pull on a clap lock and roller nutt, aka is it for instance 3 pounds to break the trigger and fire the shot? my bad        

Almost no one thinks in terms of pounds of trigger pull around here.  The pull on a single axle roller nut lock is going to depend on the geometry of the roller nut axle and the tickler axle, plus the length of the tickler arm.

Clap lock?  I don't know if anyone here has built one of the Slobows locks. 

In either case, more than 2 or 3 pounds, that's for sure.  We're not talking match grade rifle/pistol trigger pulls until you start building your own multi-axle actions with set triggers and such.

Oh ok thanks, wasnt sure

I find I really like a nice, light trigger pull   . I know you're asking about the Slobows locks specifically, so this is (once again  ) off-topic, but...my last build used a trigger like THIS (as in Ivo's post, #17...a "transfer bar" trigger, I guess? ) and the pull ended up pretty reasonable. I suspect by refining the lever arm lengths and so on, one could get a very sweet trigger pull out of this design.

Oh and thanks, Geezer, for the info...very interesting. I like thinking about day to day maintenance as a design aspect. Makes sense, I suspect I could get a tickler rivet out without a ton of damage, whereas I might potentially break the nut in half.

I have built a clap lock of my own design and incorporated a set trigger. Have to say you really can't get any better than that. Although I think the "lock time" is a little longer due to the set trigger hammer swing time as opposed to a directly activated release.

Todd