by Geezer Fri May 25, 2018 12:31 pm
For binding on stirrup and prod, you should take a look at this video. It's probably the most authentic way to do it ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2VDpAauAZI ) Though I don't think the guy in the video is pulling hard enough. Still, that's not quite the way I do it. In the old days, I used two pieces of cord. The first tied in the prod and the second tied on the stirrup. For the prod, I went thru the bridle-passage and over the block, just as shown in the video. For the stirrup, I used a second piece, alternating a figure-8 over the stirrup (outside the bridle block) and then thru the hole (bridle passage). The idea was to make the binding for the stirrup sufficiently separate, so if it got a little loose, it would not make the prod loose. Still the cinching up the sides tightened both prod and stirrup. Was it any better? Probably not.
Also, I cinched up the sides of the bridle with separate cord... usually Tandy artificial sinew, with locked stitches that ran a cocks-comb right down the side of the bridle. If you see that on a repro-crossbow it's almost certainly my work. Nowadays, I bind in much closer to the way Jost von Ammen does it in the video. Geezer.