Crossbow links

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  • #1230
    Hans Hellinger
    Moderator
    #1231
    Hans Hellinger
    Moderator
    #1233
    Philologus
    Participant

    And here is [url=https://bookandsword.com/armour-in-texts/rules-of-the-venetian-guilds/#title_crossbow]a handy page with just the English translation and the Latin original[/url], no back-and-forth. If your idea of medieval craft workers is Fulliautomatix banging out horseshoes by himself, this is a good picture of how communities of workers regulated quality.

    If you don’t have a good picture of medieval European crossbows in your head, [url=https://archive.org/details/Book_of_the_Crossbow_The_by_Sir_Ralph_Payne-Galloway/page/n149/mode/2up]Ralph Payne-Gallwey[/url] has some diagrams of the parts (although other parts of the book are not so trustworthy, he was one of those Victorian hobbyists who made stuff up to fill in the gaps of his research).

    #1501
    Hans Hellinger
    Moderator

    Have you seen our “Weapons of the Ancient World Vol II”?

    #1503
    Hans Hellinger
    Moderator

    Here I have fixed your links, the software works a bit differently here than on myarmoury and a lot of other forums.

    Translation of the rules of the venetian guilds here

    Ralph Payne Gallwey’s book here

    #1505
    Hans Hellinger
    Moderator

    This struck me as interesting:

    “No man or woman shall dare or presume to put new cloth with old in any work (laborerio), on pain of …”

    This sounds like they had women masters (not unusual in Central Europe but I didn’t know they had them in Venice)

    #1509
    Philologus
    Participant

    After a quick search I have “Weapons of the Ancient World Vol. 1” which I read back in 2010 or so, I don’t remember a second volume or see a PDF.

    There are also Doug Cole’s spreadsheets for calculating the properties of various bows and crossbows using his engineering degrees to simplify the model in a Dutch PhD thesis.

    #1518
    Hans Hellinger
    Moderator

    I will send you a copy of volume II. It includes missile weapons (including crossbows), armor, and firearms. We recently updated the firearms data based on the Graz tests and a series of accuracy tests done in the 19th Century (I had underestimated the accuracy and effective range a bit). The armor data as I said was largely derived from Alan Williams, and as you noted upthread, it is somewhat predictable assuming relatively good metallurgy. He did tests with firearms and also mechanical tests with arrowheads, lance and spear points and so on.

    With regard to crossbows specifically, there is a bit less clear understanding of the medieval type in modern academia. I have been following recent academic studies and ‘living history’ experiments very closely, and used a wide variety of sources, mostly recently Andreas Bichlers work, as he is the first to begin to approach the reported performance of real (higher end) medieval crossbows. Or the famous shot by Mr Gallwey.

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