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I
made this crossbow about 25 years ago, and it's been hanging in my garage ever
since. There are a couple of details which I wanted to improve, and I'd noticed
that the binding holding the D-ring on the front was frayed.
As
you can see from the picture below, the binding failed catastrophically when I
tried to cock the bow using its bending lever. The D-ring flew across the
garage and was lost until Mrs Cat's detective skills located it!
The bow was then stripped down.
The
main work I did was to make another horn clip to hold the bolt (arrow) firmly
in position, and to forge two nails to attach it to the stock. The top of the
stock is inlayed with a blank ivory shield. This always irritated me somewhat,
so I engraved and inked a suitably "medieval" motif!
A new string finished the new work. The rest was cleaning and reassembly.
The
revolving steel nut that holds the sting when the bow is cocked is rather interesting
for two reasons.
- It appears that it
won't fit into its socket.
- The pivot appears
to be merely some string, as you can see in the picture below.
I'll
explain. The nut is rotated and sort of hooks itself down into the socket. The
whole socket acts as the pivot, with the load being taken on the front face. The
socket was made by drilling a hole the size of the nut into a piece of wood.
This is then let into a rectangular hole chiselled into the stock.
The string simply retains the nut to stop it falling out.
The
binding of the prod to the stock is remarkably solid. The method is shown in
the picture below. It's self-explanatory (I hope).
The
steel parts cleaned lightly. They'd acquired a nice layer of rust over the
years! The bow (prod) itself has a dull and slightly-pitted "authentic" look. It
isn't really an authentic look, of course, as a sporting bow would doubtless
have been maintained in a good clean state.
Editor's
Note: Part 2 of Del's
Archery Adventures – Crossbow Refurb will run next week. Del will discuss the bending lever,
stringing the bow, bolts and shooting it.
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Re: Del’s Archery Adventures - Crossbow Refurb (Part 1)
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