This is a historic bow, it doesn't have a safety catch. You pull the trigger and
you hold the trigger down until the nut has finished spinning. If it shoots to the left,
you move the whole bow to the left, if it shoots to the right you move the whole bow to the right.
Hi it's Tod from Tod's Workshop and Tod Cutler here and today we're going to talk about you
getting your new crossbow whether it's made by me or maybe or somebody else, an awful lot of this is
going to be useful to you. I'm obviously going to bias it towards my products because I make these,
it's also going to be applicable to other ones from other companies so listen in,
see what you can learn from it. So the first thing you need to know is these things are powerful
they're not powerful like a modern crossbow is powerful they're just completely different beasts,
these are medieval crossbows, medieval technology, medieval materials. They are not carbon
composites, they will not deliver bolts at 400 feet per second but they will deliver nice heavy
chunky wooden and steel bolts at 160, 170 feet per second something like that. That's what you're
going to get out of this, so it's dangerous, it's dangerous to human beings. The first thing before
you even load this for the first time, good range practice and if you don't know what I mean by
that, go and find out, go find some YouTube videos and learn, the second thing is they can hurt you,
so you need to know how to deal with it. This is where the string travels here, don't put
your fingers above that bit, either when you're loading it or when you're actually shooting it.
So the first thing is learn your way around the bow. So we have the string here that comes back to
the nut, so this component here and that is what holds the string in place. The trigger is what
releases that nut, so that's what shoots the bow. So you pull that, the nut will then just spin.
These are not modern computer designed bows, things will wear, so you need to keep an eye
on what's going on, you need to feel this bow. So what you need to do is when you shoot it for
the first time it's left my workshop, it works well but that might not be true after 500 or
a thousand shots. Things wear, so if the trigger starts to feel different start to inspect the nut.
So this part here will wear away and in fact if we just look you can see how it's worn it's an old
one that was returned back, possibly through damage, possibly through massive shooting.
But that can cause a hair trigger, you don't want that. So the best way to avoid that
wear is that when you shoot it you pull the trigger and you hold the trigger down until
the nut has finished spinning. If that nut comes around and clips the trigger it just
wears everything immediately because these are heavy bits of metal spinning around.
So the next stage is how do you load it? This is the 350 pound bow, now hardly anybody could
load this by hand and I certainly can't, so we use a device called a goat's foot lever
and it's this thing here. It's it's a device with mechanical advantage that allows you to
span this bow relatively easily. So you clip it on making sure that it is central to the string
because of course if it's off at one side or the other and the string comes back off at one side
or the other it won't shoot straight. So the nut you want to put into this position here,
you can see and then when I draw this bow back I put the butt of it into the crease between my
thigh and my thorax that seats the end of it. I pull this lever back and I pull it backwards and
I push down. It's really important here to keep your fingers down because if the trigger fails,
it could fail, you don't pull it back enough, it hasn't engaged properly, whatever your thumb
is vulnerable because that goat's foot lever could come forward, get shot by the bow and your thumb's
in the way, so keep your thumb down below the deck. You pull it back, it hits the back of the
nut and you will hear when the trigger engages, nice positive, but you can see the power now 350
pounds, I'm holding it on one finger. Goat's foot levers are great. I release the power
and now when you put the bolt in, don't put your fingers down close to the bottom hold it away so
the string won't hit it if something fails, seat the back of the bolt here against the string,
don't leave it floating here, don't leave it out here, right against the string
and then hold it in place and shoot. I've held the trigger down, now you can hear the nut spinning
until the nut finishes spinning. What happens if you want to shoot downward? Well we'll go again
So it goes on. I pull back, hands away from the top deck, I pull backward and down
and it's in place.
Now this time I can put my thumb over the top here like this, it's going to get knocked out
the way by the string, but not painfully, so I'll just do it again you can see now
that's fine you don't need a spring clip, you don't need a bolt clip to
shoot down off the battlements, to shoot down a hill. Just put your thumb on the
end it's really not a problem at all. But then the last thing I'm going to show you
is the 'safety catch'. This is a historic bow it doesn't have a safety catch. Span back
and now jam your hand in the trigger like this here.
The bow cannot discharge, so you can now put your bolt on
and now when you are ready you can move your hand from the trigger into the shooting position.
Simply done. So you have your bow, you've shot your bow safely because you've kept your fingers
off the deck both during loading and shooting you know how to use the safety,
you know how to set the nut. But what happens if it's not accurate, what happens if it shoots to
the left or the right? These have not got sights, they've not got sights like a modern bow has,
so it relies on you to sight down the rail, your intuitive natural shooting.
But that's not the whole story because if this thing shoots to the left because it might,
this is a handmade bow, the balance between one side and the other is not going to be perfect,
so what you need to do is you need to adjust the bow and you do that by striking on the limb tip.
If it shoots to the left you move the whole bow to the left, if it shoots to the right you move the
whole bow to the right. What I do not want you to do is every time you get it out of the box,
every time you get it out of the house, tap it around, you will loosen it and it will all go
to heck. It's just once. Once when you get it. I mean I do it here in the workshop so
they should come to you good, but do it once, be happy with it, leave it right. But what you do,
you put a tiny mark on the bow just there either side and then you tap it. Don't tap it that way,
but tap it if you like along the arc, so I tap it with a copper faced hammer like this.
That's kind of all it needs. It's now moved one, one and a half millimeters,
so sixteenth of an inch. Just put it back and it's back where it was more or less.
That difference is enough to make it shoot right or left, you will notice it. Which brings me to my
next bow type because this one is lashed, there's not a lot you can do with it, but the wedged ones
you can adjust a lot easier. Before I show you the different parts of the wedged bow because it
is a little bit different, remember I make these things, I love making them, I love shooting them,
you can buy them off me so just come down to the site, have a look at it. If you're not interested
in buying crossbows like this, all sorts of Tod Cutler medieval daggers, incredible budget prices,
but really good authenticity. But anyway these wedges are I suppose are more of a
military technology, the last ones like the last bow we shot definitely for the military as well,
but this wedge type was almost exclusively for the military market.
So first of all you take your bow and it comes to you like this all sort of partially assembled. Put
the bow itself centrally, very often there's a little indicator on the bottom of the bow,
it now positions itself like that and you can just hold it there and if you have a look at that
stirrup it's just got two little rivets that just hold everything into the right place. You take the
smaller of these two anvils and you just put it into the slot, a little fiddly there we're in.
That one faces forward and you just position it then you take the larger of the two anvils
and that goes into the back position,
and then we have our two wedges,
and they go so that the angle of one and the angle on the other
goes sympathetically, so that when they're in together they basically make a flat platform.
If you fiddle with them before you put them in you'll understand what I mean.
So now you have the wedges and the anvils in this position.
Now first of all you just take a hammer and you just tap that wedge
just lightly but then you will soon find it starts to push the other wedge out
and so what you need to do is you take your own anvil, a big hammer, and you can hold
that behind the wedge and start to drive it in and then try and keep them a little bit even,
but you get the idea.
Now these things have to be tight because this is what stops the bow moving. If the bow moves
it won't shoot accurately it'll be different every time, but it also this is a really you know it's
a powerful dynamic object these will loosen off and they do loosen off so in the early days of
owning this bow you will find that they will move and you have to go back into tightening them. So
everything is now tight, nothing moves, but it might loosen off, it might loosen off over time,
so what you can do is put a thin sliver of metal maybe one millimeter thick between the
wedges or between the wedge and the anvil and that spaces everything out a little bit more,
allows you to get it all tight again. The real difference between this and the lashed bow is
moving it side to side is much much easier. Of course you can still knock it, but also you can
undo the wedges and move it a bit more. Probably one of the reasons it was a military bow, it's
easier to dismantle this, easier to look after it, easier to change things and that's always good in
the military context, but here you are. So you know that you need to shoot it safely, you need
to look after it, keep an eye on the trigger make sure things don't move, make sure it doesn't slip,
keep your hands off the top deck, hang on to the lever do not let go for any reason during
loading and then you pull it back you load it you shoot it. You want to shoot downhill? Put
your thumb on the back you'll be just fine. Pick up the bow, set the nut to the forward position,
pick up the goat's foot, seat the bow into the crease of your leg,
goats foot on, all the way back holding tight, releasing the pressure,
seating the bolt against the string, keeping the bow slightly lower
than perhaps you think because bolts always rise off one of these crossbows
and shoot. Hold it tight, they kick but they don't kick backwards they kick up,
hurts your cheekbone. Gotta hold it down
and all you gun people out there are going "of course that doesn't kick!" well
you know what, it's got two kilos of rapidly moving steel at the front. It kicks. So as you
notice there I'm just holding the trigger down bit like a safety. I'm now good, holding tight,
shoot, the trigger back on. So it's quite a rapid bow to shoot. If you wanna shoot it
kneeling, I'll show you that in a minute. Now the great thing about crossbows
is you can shoot them from cover,
it's great for hunting, great for sneaky warfare, so you can also span this kneeling.
And a goat's foot lever bow, relatively fast to shoot.
And although this is only 15/18 meters, relatively accurate.
But before you go, don't forget it's not just crossbows, it's not just t-shirts,
they help under the Tod Cutler brand we do budget knives like these and they are excellent value
for money. They are the right sizes, the right shapes, the right styles and they are proper
working knives. Go check the website out, have a look, it will interest you. So that's it,
everything you need to know when you first get a crossbow from me; thank you.