Making a historical crossbow - with the HIGHEST arrow speed?

In this video I build a crossbow with a horn bow. All work steps are done by hand. The aim was to produce a historical crossbow designed for maximum arrow speed.

To achieve this goal, it was important to keep the weight of the bow (340 grams) low and to maximize the acceleration distance (30cm) of a light arrow (15 gram). The bow has a draw weight of 200 pounds (approx. 90 kg).

Decisive for the arrow speed is the bowstring (natural long flax yarn) with a low dead weight (11.1 grams at 64 cm length) and maximum tensile strength (approx. 400 kg). This corresponds to 4 times the draw weight and is certainly borderline.

The crossbow bow is made from a combination of horn, wood, animal sinew and birch bark and was used from the Middle Ages (12th century) onwards. Everything is held together with glue from the swim bladder of a fish (Isinglass) and rabbitskin glue. Both glues have been in use for centuries.

The stock is made of maple with an arrow rail made of horn. The trigger mechanism is a so-called "schnepper" and has been in use since the Renaissance (15th - 16th century).

The production of a prototype 1.0 with subsequent filmed prototype 2.0 was very time-consuming and took me almost half a year.

I hope you like the video and have fun ....


0:00 Intro
0:30 Horn
2:26 Wood core
3:41 Gluing horn and wood core
6:05 Sinew covering
11:44 Tiller
13:11 Birch bark
14:38 Trigger mechanism
15:35 Crossbow stock
20:06 Small parts
22:18 Assembly
23:57 Shooting test