Latchet Crossbow - rapid fire historical crossbow

hi it's Todd of Todd's workshop here and today we're gonna have a look at a latchet crossbow at least that's what I know it has so I copied this about twelve or thirteen years ago from one in a private collection now I don't know of any others in museum so if any of you out there please let me know I'd really like to to know about similar examples this was dated to the late sixteenth early seventeenth century and this style of crossbow I understand was popular amongst border Reavers they loved their horse back they loved Civil Defence they loved scrapping or maybe they didn't know they did a lot of it anyway and this is well suited to that so it is not of devastating power it's got a short draw length 280 pounds in draw weight it's notable because it has an inbuilt cocking lever now that does a couple of things one is it allows you to reload quickly and it allows the whole system with a crossbow trigger system to be reliable it's all sort of established technology this it's been around for a while more form or another now if you think about firearms because of course we're now in the age of gunpowder absolutely if you're talking about state the art wheelock pistols there are neither faster reload and nor are they reliable and so this has an advantage over those they of course have got stopping power in a way that this just simply doesn't but it depends what you want for things horses for courses now the other thing about this is it has a top trigger so the trigger system here is the rotating nut that is held in place by this sear bar and that C bar in turn is held in place just here on a little notch I don't know if you may see that a little step on the trigger there's no spring system in here you can put one in it is difficult I must say it's very tight in all of this system so the whole thing comes up you can see that the hole there's not a lot of room really for a trigger spring system and the original did not have one so I've not put one in this but it does mean that you have to set it by hand each time now what happens is you pull the trigger back see it pops down nuts free to rotate so it's an established fairly straightforward system it's slightly tricky to set up because of course if you think of full-size crossbow you've got a long trigger bar maybe 8 inches 20 centimeters long you've got a long leverage and a full hand to squeeze that and set it off this one you've only got your thumb so it's got to be a lighter trigger so you're always in the danger with a mechanical trigger and it being light and not many parts that it is either too hard to shoot or it's a hair-trigger so there's a little bit of working to get through that the other thing that's very notable here of course is the lever action so you've got a catch at the back there a very positive catch because you do not want you do not want this catch to fail while the bow is loaded because if it does that two things going to happen one your face or your hand is gonna get very severely hurt the other of course is that the whole trigger system because it comes forward here would be driven forward and into the front of the boat so destroy the bow and a good chance of destroying part of you as well so that catch is probably singing you leave the most important part of this whole system it cannot fail and there we have it so we've got a cherry stock and a little bit of bone detail on the front bone on the top deck nice bit of steel work here that's just used to bolt the whole thing together and then a tiny little bolt bridge so a bolt guide at the front here that just holds the front keeps it all aligned and it allows very free movement so you're maximizing the efficiency of what is actually inherently a very inefficient system notably again there is no bolt clip which you would absolutely think would be a necessity on something like this but on the original it wasn't there the topped regard also forgot to mention is rather handy in this context you can kinda shoot it from the shoulder but it's yes your thumb is there it works but it's not really set up for that much more sort of shooting from the hip but the other thing is that it allows you to shoot single-handed because you've got the trigger on top you got your thumb there and you can just shoot although you gotta load it two-handed you can then once band shoot single-handed so it is a useful little thing hasn't got the stopping power of a big bow obviously but it has certainly got divergent qualities because you're not going to want a bow of one of these in the face or the chest close range so let's go shoot it start catching running it forward make you saw that the catch at the back is down okay it's 280 pounds so it's got a bit of grunt in it clearly you can see why you'd make a good civil defense weapon it hasn't got the hitting power of a big cross boat it hasn't got the hitting power of contemporary firearms at the time but it has got simplicity and it has got speed of reload so it's one shot every 10 seconds I'm getting a grouping just shooting from the hip okay close range but I'm getting grouping like that and it's not a bow that I shoot I made one of these for a few years clearly very very effective and there you have it the boarder Reavers latchet crossbow [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Tod's Workshop

Views: 345,090

Keywords: crossbow, medieval, rennaissance, border reiver, archery, historical

Id: M0m5udFoPnA

Length: 6min 24sec (384 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 24 2019