Craig, I may have been a bit harsh in my assessment, and meant no offense to you, but what most bothers me about his work is that he portrays himself as an authority, and yet he was writing about thumb rings in this way. One time only trying to use a thumb ring in the matter he illustrates proves to me that he never actually tried using that device, and made assumptions about what that little tab thingie is, or he obtained the incorrect information from some other party or source.
Thus, other areas of the work are suspect to me. I do wish to say there is a wealth of useful information in his work as well, but I will always read him with a bit of suspicion.
There must be more than one method to making a crossbow string, and I expect to try other methods over time. For now, I’m happy with what I did produce, and as I said, experience is the best way to learn. I also came into this project with my eyes wide open that mistakes will be made, craftsmanship will be less that ideal in some areas, and so on.
I’ve also found over the last couple of days just how difficult it is to pull back a 12.5”tip-to-tip, 190 lb. bow to get the string on it. My Rube Goldberg device worked wonderfully (essentially a 4’ long x 9” x 9” column from an aborted Roman catapult stand, a 4’ lever, leather strap, and hook), but I could only get the bastard string pulled back not much more than 1”. I tried just my own arms and gloved hands, but came up short as well.
I then remembered I have an extra loom just sort of laying about (really). It has been taking up space for the last decade, and will never be used again. Part of the loom is a very nice ratchet and pawl that keeps saying “use me.” I also have a large amount of ash boards, a thickness planer, some pulleys, lag bolts and carriage bolts, and the ability to create strong joints (mortise and tenon, saddle, etc).
A kind of machine I can both span and string heavy, short steel and aluminum prods (something like our conventional tiller trees), as well as secure and span and string / unstring already complete crossbows would come in handy. I am asking myself right now what a medieval arbalest maker’s shop would have been equipped with, and if they had something similar besides overworked apprentices to achieve certain tasks. And, the heavier you make your weapon, the more you need the mechanical advantage of a machine of some sort gives you over just unaided muscle power.
These projects do demand an additional set of skills and familiarity with mediums I find frustrating and enjoyable to learn and master, as well, which adds to both the challenge and my ability to solve problems.
Plan B, btw, is that I ordered an additional prod, but this time in the 85-110 lb. weight. That I know I can handle with my weak 21st century muscles
, as I finish designing and then building the above described machine. It would benefit me as the future becomes the present, as I am certain that I have more arbalests to make and replicate, as well as the weird and little-known variants to this kind of weapons technology. The Roman arcuballista is one, those nifty Chinese repeating crossbows look like so much fun, the ancient Greek gastrophetes, tension catapults of various kinds, the vastly powerful siege crossbows, early all wood crossbows, and we have so many examples of surviving crossbows, bolts and accessories in various collections and museums, an array of spanning devices like the cranquin, belt hooks, belt pulleys, goats foot, etc, one could spend a lifetime and barely scratch the surface of this sub-set of historic archery.
Enough pontificating for now lol.
Dane
