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Post by edwin on Mar 29, 2010 9:08:54 GMT
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Post by tastyger on Mar 31, 2010 1:18:44 GMT
Nice video...reminds me of making bows out of polar branches and hop twine when I was a boy at the hop fields in my home town here in Tassie. I don't think the guy in the video ended up with as many blisters as Ish. He only used a pocked knife to taper his lemon tree sucker into shape (George wanted him to use a spokeshave  ) and then used 3 braided pieces of cowhide to form the string... Ol' Ish was cunning to tell his younger daughter to use quail pinions to make the arrows fly truer and farther. A skill the tribe never lost. I recall fashioning a crossbow by hand using a piece of pine to form the leaf spring and a piece of rubber from around a car windshield for string. Ended up being a glorified sling shot. I found a working model of a real crossbow in a Popular Mechanics many years ago and my old man fashioned a working replica. Had a stock like a rifle. The leaf spring came from an acetylene torched cross cut saw blade and the string was plastic encased copper wire. God that thing was dangerous... We made one quarrel out of straight hard wood with a throwing dart brass fixed on the end . Damn thing went into an oak tree at 30 feet and we had to dig it out... Shades of Brod from Survivors or Big Willy from All Fools Day... Peter |
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Post by edwin on Apr 1, 2010 21:39:23 GMT
Had the Bow versus Crossbow discussion with a friend of mine and he reckoned that I favoured the bow because I had shot since I was twelve.
Yes the crossbow can be carried loaded and is simpler to aim but I still feel that control and rate of shooting gives the bow the edge. Mind you in an urban situation I would want my fibreglass recurve kept strung with an arrow on that string rather than my country longbow. Also in siege situations the crossbow would be invaluable.
To speculate in the violent PA scenario if with several children it would seem logical to equip them with even light bows so that they had something and even a hardened group of thugs might back down at the prospect of a real or potential mini-arrow storm.
To digress, it suprises me that in the sad incidents of knife-wielding nutters attacking children in schools that no class teacher had the wit to tell the kids to pick up their chairs and keep them pointing at the assailant while shouting and screaming, hiding under a desk does no good.
This point is made in the PA novel series "The Changes" where the heroine in charge of a gaggle of children in a dangerous situation gets them to each pick up and carry a stone for hurling purposes.
Edwin
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Post by Matthew on Apr 2, 2010 7:39:57 GMT
I would guess both bows and crossbows would feature in a PA Britain.
You could imagine two groups attacking each other with such weapons in a very desolate and crumbling council estate with the contrasts between the old and the new world coming very much to the fore. Would make a great scene in a British PA film.
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) and then used 3 braided pieces of cowhide to form the string...