 In covering the major technologies of humanity as we work away through history at this point We've done a few different projectile weapons From the atlattle to the sling to two varieties of bows as we start to advance further into history Things start to get a little bit more complicated when we start to add technologies like a trigger into the weapon We're gonna try and make today the crossbow to learn a little bit more on the history and background I talked to a historian who just written a book on the history of the crossbow So like many great technologies its origins are in ancient China The earliest really solid evidence we have for the crossbow is Fiery ancient China So they're in the terracotta army has crossbowmen in it with very detailed surviving crossbows in it So in china it has this origin in kind of fifth sixth century bc maybe even earlier And it's used well for at least the next thousand plus years European history is a bit messier So we don't really get any evidence for it until this roman writer called the gtus writes this manual of war in the fourth century A.D. So we're already like nearly a thousand years after its invention And then it's from then we kind of get it in the middle ages And so there's a bit of a debate of is it an independent invention or is it just this is what 1500 years worth of Messing around has produced some people kind of think of a like linear evolution Or you go from the bow and arrow to the crossbow and then eventually replace with guns But these weapons they're used kind of overlap quite a bit and the ancient chinese crossbow They're really close to the overlapping technologies at that time When their standard bow that you would use for normal archery mounted onto a stock with this trigger mechanism That has to be all the way back at the end of the stock because you have to get that full 28 inches When you're in medieval europe they're a bit different England uses the bow then it uses the crossbow then it abandons crossbow for the bow again And they kind of seem to do that they don't completely abandon the crossbow But it becomes a more tertiary weapon But in other countries you see a much more mixed use Particularly in france you see quite a bit of bows and crossbows used They are kind of overlapping technologies and they often use together and a lot of armies would have both of them in it Well, what are the advantages the crossbow had over tradition of bows? The advantage just advantage breakdown really is the crossbow is Generally going to be more powerful than a bow crossbow has this potential to become extremely powerful Whereas the longbow kind of taps out at what's physically possible to draw the other real advantage crossbow has is that it can stay loaded So when you pull it back into the trigger it just rests there There's no strain on your body so you can keep a shop ready whenever you want the bows real advantage It's just way faster discussion on how quickly it takes to reload a crossbow It really depends what device you're using with it But even then they're never as fast as someone going all out with a bow is What are some of the biggest misconceptions some people might have about crossbows? Well, aside from the fact they're almost always by kind of movie villains, which I think is everybody loves crossbows One of the big myths I think is there's this idea that the crossbow was this easy to use weapon That could be used to kill a knight and as such was kind of frowned upon by european society Which we do actually see this idea like a poorly trained militia man killing a highly trained elite was a real complaint It's in don Quixote actually, but they're talking about the arquebus And it's kind of people apply it backwards thinking well the crossbow must have been the arquebus of the 12th century and it's It's not really the same. It's very different military content Next up is actually building the crossbow steward walked me through some of the key components So I'll need to make for my crossbow for the bane bits. You need a bow Sometimes also called a lathe or a prod you need your stock Which is the piece of wood you mounted on you need your trigger mechanism Which is generally based on what we call the lock is a peg trigger Which is a much simpler lock mechanism pushes the trigger up it pushes the pin up and releases it So they added stirrups and chinese they often had like they made of rope versus in that theory european ones Which would be made of metal so you put your foot into that and that allows you to use your legs To span the crossbow as opposed to having to use your arms So that's a real benefit you're no longer damaging your bow using your much more powerful leg muscles Thank you again to steward for sharing his knowledge I had to unfortunately cut down his interview quite a bit We can watch the full thing in the link in the description lots of really interesting information in there Be sure to check out his book the medieval crossbow a weapon fit to kill the king when it comes out later this summer Now to start forging the metal parts and for that We've got a little help from ag who at this point is basically a resident blacksmith And they've actually been suggesting that I make a crossbow for quite a while now So they're going to be lending a pretty big hand in this and while my workshop is still getting rebuilt We're going to be borrowing their space and a lot of their tools So let's get started with the first part and probably most important the bow or prod This is 50 160 high carbon spring steel We won't be trying to make our own carburized spring steel for reasons of safety Just because pulling back 80 to 150 pounds here is what we're going to estimate we're going to get We can't have that braking. So we're going to be using 50 160 It's a really reliable spring steel to steal that I know really well And we're going to taper our limbs down all the way We're going to forge out the prod or the limb This is going to be the most tedious process out of the entire project because these two not only have to be Perfect dimensionally to hit the weights that we want to hit. They also have to be perfectly symmetrical across So even if we're out a little bit on one side, the other side has to match it perfectly or else our crossbow won't draw It's also the hardest steel to move. It's not going to move as fast into the hammer So it's going to take us Quite a while so you should probably get this heated up and get at it So next up we're going to forge the stirrup Which is basically a ring that goes on the end of it allows you to hold it down while you reload it So we got a stock bar and the forge going to flatten it out first and then wrap it around to make the loop shape We're going to start rolling this into a ring and then we're going to forge weld it over the horn and these nice Tapers are going to make sure that we have a nice even weld So we don't have a piece sticking out on top and bottom And then because it's thinner here, we're going to reduce the likelihood of a cold shut And with this extra surface area, we're going to get a much stronger weld all along the surface Because this has to hold when we're stepping down on top of it and drawing the crossbow back So now we have this piece of o1 tool steel And out of this we're going to forge a flat spring bolt hold down This will serve two purposes on our crossbow. The first is in case the crossbow is to tilt or tip The bolt won't actually fall out and you don't have to worry about keeping it perfectly level before you fire And second because we're using a pin lock mechanism This will actually provide a hard stop so the pin can't come up from underneath it So we're going to get this hot and then we are going to forge it flat and by flat I mean around a sixteenth of an inch Now for the last piece the the trigger mechanism also called the tickler the worst term ever made. Yeah Um, so we have some half inch steel heating up in the forge right now. We're going to forge that down Pin locks are going to be pretty easy. We don't have to worry about the engagement at the edge. So there's no sear surface We should be able to knock it out pretty quick. Okay. So what's what are going to be the steps of the process here? First step is we're going to taper that down and draw that out So we're going to take it from round bar down into square And have a nice long taper to form the body So now that we have this taper drawn out all the way up here roughly to length What we're going to do is we're going to go in and push these sharp corners down So those don't dig into your hand when you're pulling the trigger And after we push those corners in just a little bit We're going to twist in this center section. Just give it a little bit of detail And after we do that or even before I guess the order doesn't really matter We can come back up here and forge in a little bit of detail So this will flatten out and swell and give kind of an end stop So we don't just have this trailing end on the end of our trigger Thank you to Helix sleep for sponsoring today's video I look forward to getting to good night's sleep once I know I have this crossbow locked and loaded for my personal protection But you know what else helps you with a good night's sleep a high quality bed like today's sponsor Helix sleep makes premium mattresses and bedding that's customized to fit your needs and conveniently shipped right to your door It comes rolled up in a box and it's super easy to set up yourself They have a simple quiz that you can fill out and get matched with the best mattress for your sleep pattern I'm personally more of a stomach sleeper, so they paired me with a helix dusk mattress I've had the mattress for seven months now. 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So now we gotta do the wood. So we'll walk us through that process So we have some rough cut lumber here. That's Just a two by four, but none of it's actually going to be flat and nothing is going to fit together nice And with upcoming projects, I think this is going to be a really good time to learn some hand tool woodworking So we have some of my planes here uh, we're going to Take the stock down to size and we're going to carve it out. We'll go through So the first step here is to square up our lumber and then we can go and mark out our lines and Make the stock and to do that. We have a selection of hand planes Put in the vise Now that we have our reference surface plain down flat We've checked it with a square. That means that we can start squaring up the other sides according to this Now that we have our crossbow stock all squared up One of the things that we're really going to need on our crossbow is a track for the bolt to ride in We can just take this And track a line down. We can chase this in with a chisel. So there's our first bit of layout both sides nice Parts we have mostly crossbow done now Next we need something to actually shoot with it So we need to make some bolts first up. We need to make the arrowhead for them Previously we've done tanged arrows. They're a little bit easier to make But because of the force that the cross will actually shoot these we need to make socketed first up What we've done is we've taken the end down and we're starting to form a flat kind of conical shape I was using the rounding end of the hammer And now after this heat because we have this established I'll probably switch over to a crossbeam and really start to widen this out and turn it into a thin sheet That'll be rolled over into our socket at the end This is all going to be wrapped around and that's what's going to form the socket of our head And this is going to keep going on. We're going to get less and less heat So it's kind of important to move fast because even now these heats are Way faster, but this is going to get down to the same thickness as sheet metal All the way down from the half inch stock that we started with What we can do is we can start rolling this over and all this thin sheet We'll start to form that little conical Socket that will then attach to the shaft of our bowl What we're going to do now is start to form the bodkin point up here Uh, so what that means is we'll start to define this shoulder that's naturally formed over the edge of the end Bill a little bit more and get that little neck in And after that we can cut it off and we'll actually hold it from this side and start to form the point down It's tragically breaking the first prod. Adri went through the entire process to make a brand new one This time making sure the heat treatment was absolutely perfect So if you want to trouble, I have the prod now with the very last step of tying it onto the crossbow like this The process of tying it through this hole onto there And this is actually the easier way to do it, but still going to be a huge pain So it's going to start it with lots of wrapping and tightening Because we need it really tight because it'll be a lot of force in this releases and we don't want to fall in part All right, so we got the crossbow all assembled and ready to fire have been actually fired yet But we're at the range and give a shot. We just measured it It's at about 110 pound draw strength, which is a bit more powerful than the bowls The last few bowls that I made are a little underwhelming But this one's a lot more promising than for comparison a few different bows to try it out next to and see See how they compare A lot of resistance, especially how much you really crank down on it to get to fire, but then it's it's got a nice boom to it Survived a shot. Where'd it go? Oh no The airhead did not stay on the actual shaft. So we've not lost it Which are pretty nice You can tell it as a left is very front heavy So it's kind of dipped down and kind of landed almost 45 degree into the target But it seemed to shoot with decent force. You can tell it's pretty good success and a lot of fun to shoot Uh, you've got a a bit of stretch to the bow string and This is all coming loose from the lashing so you might need to wedge it in there But it hasn't fallen apart. It hasn't blown up in any way space And it shoots so I think I think those are all the check marks for a successful crossbow No, so originally this Prod was designed to have a two and a half or three inch brace height So the string should be sitting back here, but under the power of this bow It's actually stretching out. So now we're stuck here with about a one inch brace height. I think I have an idea though So what if we so we twist it first to get the uh that length back, right? I sat down you held this and I put my feet against it and I pulled back like I was rowing It's so close Team work makes the dream work. All right, let's see where this goes His longbow and I've come with my recurve bow. We have a couple different limb sets for uh, two different recurves here Actually, so you can try out and see you know where they compare against a known variable It is much much easier to Take someone who's new to archery hand them a crossbow and make them proficient You can get them up in a custom to it within a week whereas it can take Years in order to train someone to be proficient with a longbow or recurve bow What's the draw weight on this uh 60 at 26 It's an acquired taste How does this compare to uh your regular bow? Uh, let's see. It's definitely different, but I loved it. Um First time shooting any sort of bow with a trigger on it. Um, let's see I was impressed. I was not expecting A string this wide to function as well as it did, but we were able to lob some heavy bolts 40 yards No problem Had some hiccups along the way learned a couple things lost a couple of points on the bolts, but Overall it was awesome. We've got the next phase and weapon technology with the crossbow And uh one step closer to the eventual gunpowder age So if you think you're going to do all of our spoilers on patreon, thanks again for watching If you enjoyed this video be sure to subscribe and check out other content We have covering a wide variety of topics. Also, if you've enjoyed these series consider supporting us on patreon We are largely a fan funded channel and depend on the support of our viewers in order to keep our series going Thanks for watching