swiss national museum crossbow LM-6010

Hi Guys,
Attached is an article by A. Bichler, posted with permission, into a fascinating crossbow.  The report is in German, but there is an English language summary at the end.  To cut a long story short, the horn-bow and tickler do not belong to the tiller and the tickler is relatively modern, the prod is contemporary with the tiller but the slot for the bow-string is too narrow for its string.  Also, the bow has been cut down by 16cm or so at some point and made thicker, perhaps to mimic horn-bows in the 16th century style? BUT, a target crossbow from the mid 15th century, and with a pin-lock, how rare is that!!  The 6mm slot suggests a bow of maybe 200lb (80kg), so a yew bow?  OR maybe yew and sinew?? That yew and sinew option is my speculation, it is not mentioned in the report but they did exiat at the time and sinew offers a lot of advantages if you have to hold a shot a longish time....

This is great! It's interesting to see the push pin lock used in a target bow.

The sitting position is also interesting, it makes me think of indoor shooting for some reason.

I usually think of clap lock crossbows when I think of target shooting. The tickler is interestingly shaped never seen a tickler that was made out of wood that was curved before.

stuckinthemud1 wrote:  Also, the bow has been cut down by 16cm or so at some point and made thicker, perhaps to mimic horn-bows in the 16th century style? BUT, a target crossbow from the mid 15th century, and with a pin-lock, how rare is that!!  The 6mm slot suggests a bow of maybe 200lb (80kg), so a yew bow?  OR maybe yew and sinew?? That yew and sinew option is my speculation,

Where is this coming from?

The article included describes the prod as follows:
"
Tips have been trimmed about couple cm by sawing through bastard string nocks. Draw weight is estimated to about half a ton.

The prod is apparently not original. Given that the lock slot is 7 mm deep and typically strings on bows of this strenght were 12-15mm thick.
"
Further Bichler speculates that the original bow was 76 cm long based on typical prod:bolt track proportions on surviving examples.





80kg mentioned in the text is just notion of normal draw weight for hand spanned bow. A heavier bow would need a spannig aide like wippe or belt claw. So if the bow was hand spanned ,it would have probably pulled ~170#

Abb. 2 shows "reconstructed" wood sinew prod of 120kg (250#) draw weight.
- Notice historically incorrect string. Those "shoulders" on bolt-table mark the brace height. (See period illustrations eg. Abb. 4 on OP page 83) This is a mistake Bichler stubbornly keeps repeating in his reconstructions (see Bichlers appendix in Richters "Die Hornbogenarmbrust"). Stringing a bow like this not only causes the string to rub badly agains the bolt table but the bolt will actually fly off prematurely when the string bumps on the shoulders, resulting with horribly poor efficiency.

Thanks for joining in on this, I dont speak German and Google translate has its limits. I thought the draw weight is estimated by how much draw weight a 7mm thick string can safely pull.  The length of the bow was also an estimate, based on, I thought, the fashion for laths at brace to be more or less the same length as the tiller, so since the tiller is 82cm long, the lath is about 160mm, maybe even 200mm too short as it measures 655mm in length. Thank you for the corrections. 
Andrew