"How To Make Everything": Early Crossbow

Saw this cross my YouTube notifications earlier.

Andy George of the YouTube channel, How To Make Everything (HTME) posted a video yesterday (May 28, 2022) about working with a blacksmith to create an early crossbow under the tutelage of Dr. Stuart Ellis-Gorman.



This shows some interesting aspects of the construction process. That includes a catastrophic failure of their first prod as they attempt to string it!  

There's a separate video containing a full interview Dr. Ellis-Gorman:



If you're not familiar with the channel, Andy George picks a technology and attempts (with varying degrees of success and fidelity) to recreate it from scratch. Previous projects have included creating lenses from scratch, including prospecting for the correct sands, borax, and other minerals, developing a process to fire and grind the glass, etc. It can be a fun watch.


In his current technology exploration, he's heading for Gunpowder...but this seemed a logical step after archery, with early trigger mechanisms, etc. 


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// [i]I'd rather this was about my own project, but it's on-hold pending a change in my work schedule. At any rate, I've been lurking here on and off for a few years!

Kinda fun on one level but that wouldn’t even be a kids bow in medieval times where peasant hunting bows (no cranking device for a peasant) would be as much as the owner could draw - and a man who did physical labour all day every day would easily draw above 180, maybe up to 250lb. Also crossbow use in England never was replaced by longbow, they used both weapons but for different purposes, longbow on the battlements, crossbow sniping though the arrow slit windows, massed longbows in the centre, mounted crossbows skirmishing…,Europeans did the same thing but didn’t really use the super heavyweight war bows as much as the English