And today I'm back with two very powerful, but very, very different crossbows.
Hi it's Tod of Tod's Workshop and Tod Cutler here and today I'm back with two crossbows, one new,
one old; so this is a Tale of two Crossbows - part two. I did a recent film where we looked at
this whopper, which is a 960 pound draw weight medieval crossbow made by myself and this one,
which is a compound crossbow, 150 pound draw weight, obviously not made by me
and I compared them. I compared the two, the efficiencies, how they all worked.
Now a question that came up again and again is why didn't I shoot both bolts from both bows?
Well it was an oversight I suppose and a cautious one, but I'll come to that in a minute, but today
we are going to shoot medieval style bolts off this modern crossbow and we are going to shoot
modern bolts off this medieval bow and we're going to see what happens because I think you
might find the results interesting. Those of you who watch my channel regularly will
know I'm doing a series of films called the lockdown longbow and that is where I take a
medieval style arrow and I shoot it off a modern compound bow, not this one, but a similar one,
what that does mean is that I'm pretty sure I know what results I'm going to get off this. Because it
is a 67 gram bolt, I pretty much know what it's going to do; it's going to shoot well and you're
going to get a lot of momentum off it and a lot of power, but we'll stick it through a chronograph
we'll find out, but what is not quite so known is what is going to happen with my heavyweight
960 pound bow with lightweight bolts. Right about this moment half of you out there are screaming
at me "No don't do it! don't do it!" and the other half are going "what's the big deal?" well here's
the thing right; this bow is it's an old-style bow but it's set up to shoot heavy bolts, there won't
be any danger to the bow itself from shooting a light load, it's a bit like a dry fire on a bow,
it happens from time to time, it doesn't destroy the bow, wooden bows it's more of an issue,
steel crossbow lathes, it's fine, the string is the thing in danger. So I've measured this now and
once I've done my shot, I'll measure it again, if there's any movement I'll just replace the string,
but to be honest a single dry fire it'll be absolutely fine. Before we pop down the range,
I'd just like to say, at the beginning of my films I introduce myself as Tod, that's me,
from Tod's Workshop, that's where you find custom made pieces like these crossbows
and Tod Cutler and that is where you find my standardized knives and there are loads
of them that crossbowmen from 1400 would have loved to have. I'm just going to quickly show
you a couple of them; these two daggers here are totally suitable for a crossbowman either English
or Continental, from 1400 through to about 1500 so they come with the scabbards. It's
a basilard on the bottom and a rondel on the top, just beautifully made, correctly made, accurately
made representations of the daggers that they would have used, available from Tod Cutler.com.
Back on the range starting with a modern bow and a 23 gram modern bolt. Let's see what the speed is.
363.7 feet per second, so it was about 110 meters per second if I remember right;
for me that is really fast because nothing moves that fast in the medieval world, I know there are
bows that go faster, but for me that's big news, so now we're going to try the medieval bolt off
this. 67 grams; I'm just going to show you what I've done to it to make it fit in this. Now if
you look at the bolt on top, that is a standard 12 mm/half inch distance there. That doesn't fit in
the modern bows, so what I've done is I've had to slim it right down and because it's just a bit of
wood, I've reinforced it with some thread and some super glue, crazy glue, cyano glue, whatever and
that hopefully will be strong enough, but we're about to find out. So I'm going to load up now
for the medieval bolt. Oh! and that has just gone straight over and into the grass, but 226 feet
per second, I don't know what that is in meters per second, I'll put a conversion on the screen,
226 so a lot slower than the 360, but still it's going to pack one hell of a punch. We'll look
at the numbers on it at the end. I wish I could see it in the target; it's gone, it's well gone.
Rats. The next up, 960-pound windlass crossbow and for those of you out there who think that
this weighs 960 pounds, it's the draw weight, not the physical weight; you would be amazed.
Lovely; quite a difference. 181.9 I can't remember... about 55 meters a second, we'll put
it on the screen anyway. And now for the scary one and that's going to be the modern bolt. Before I
shoot this, I'm going to explain what you're going to see with what I'm doing with my thumb. This
bolt, if I put it on that old bow, is going to over balance, it won't sit there because it's too
long, so what I have to do is just like archers did if they were leaning out over the walls of
a castle or something, I'm going to put my thumb on the back of the bolt. That holds it in place
just like you're leaning down, just as if the bolt is too long and then I can shoot it. The string
will just skid under my thumb, it all sounds really scary and alarming; it's absolutely fine,
but for those of you who wonder what they did before bolt clips, that's what you do.
Just undoing these strings now because if you wait till afterwards,
it can be really quite difficult. Now that over balances, you can see it it won't stay on the bow,
so I've just got to hold it there, it's all a bit awkward it must be said,
so I'm just holding it there, you can see now with my thumb. Here we go!
Brilliant, brilliant! That got a really interesting result 200.7 feet per second,
200.7 off a 960-pound bow. We're going to go back and we're going to talk about that. I
was hoping that was the kind of number I was going to get and that shows something really
interesting about this bow. Back at base. First of all I took the modern bow and the modern bolt
23 grams and it shot 111 meters per second so that's the stats on that bow as it should be and
then I took the medieval bolt here, 67 grams. Now that came out at a much lower 69 meters per second
but the energy went up from there and that's 159 joules and the momentum in fact was 4.6 which is
significantly more than the standard format so that was a really good, really well performing
load for this bow. Fantastic. Next up I took the medieval bow and the medieval bolts, 67 grams,
55 meters a second 103 joules of energy, so that's what you'd expect for this, but then
I took the modern bolt, 23 grams, now this bow is 960 pounds in draw weight for any of you who
doubt that, there's a little clip at the end of this of me weighing this very bow originally
when it was made. 960 pounds in draw weight, intuitively you are thinking to yourself "well
this modern bolt is a third of the weight of this one it should go like lightning"; it didn't.
55 meters a second; modern bolt 61 meters per second. Now in energy terms, 103 joules,
that gives 43 joules of energy, that is absolutely rubbish. What's going on? Well it's it's really
simple. The bow on this modern one here it's made of materials that can spring back
very, very fast, partly because they're light but partly because of what the materials actually are.
This steel bow on here is really heavy, lots of inertia, it doesn't want to move back quickly,
but also its rate of return, I don't really know what the scientific terminology is,
but the speed with which it returns back to the, you know, the natural rest position. There is
just a maximum speed and it cannot go faster than that, so what it means is you can put something
heavy on it and it pushes it and it pushes it at a speed. You put something light on it and
it will go a little bit faster but not very much and that is exactly what we have seen here today.
So a way of thinking about this is this is a truck and this is a sports car.
This will shift heavy loads and it will get it there and it will deliver that heavy load but what
it won't do and what it can't do is deliver that load quickly, it is not a sports car,
it will never be a sports car. This is a 1400 state the art delivery truck and what it delivers
is big chunks of wood and metal, what it can't do is get there really fast, for that you need
your sports car. But anyway thank you very much, I hope you've enjoyed that today and see you again.
There 976 just short of a thousand.
Nice okay, well that's going to be Skllagrims one then because that's what he wanted.