Drawings of a wooden crossbow or how to make a crossbow out of wood with your own hands. How to make a crossbow at home How to make a toy crossbow Spadek at home

Evgenia Smirnova

To send light into the depths of the human heart - this is the purpose of the artist

Content

How to make a crossbow - this question worries both hunters and shooting enthusiasts. Shooting from a crossbow, as from a military weapon, is left far behind. Today, crossbow shooting is practiced mainly by professional athletes, as well as by amateurs who want to shoot at targets. Shooting with a crossbow has a number of advantages over shooting with a firearm. Firstly, it is silent shooting, and secondly, accessibility and comparative safety. A crossbow does not require any permission or medical examination to purchase it. You just need to buy a ready-made one (for which you will have to pay several hundred dollars or more), or make a weapon yourself. That is why your favorite useful advice site will tell you today how to make a crossbow yourself.

How to make a mini crossbow - instructions

Before you start making a crossbow at home, you should familiarize yourself with the structure of this weapon. It consists of several main parts: a wooden base called a stock, a bow with a string, as well as a sight and stirrup.

Types of weapons and ammunition for them

Experts distinguish two types of crossbows - field and match. Ammunition for both types is considered to be feathered arrows. Carbon and duralumin feathered arrows are available on sale. You can learn and compete in shooting using a standard five-color archery target, which is also available for sale. Field crossbow shooters usually compete at distances of 35, 50, 65 meters (outdoors) and 10, 18 meters (indoors). Match shooters usually compete only in special premises - shooting ranges at distances of 10 and 30 meters.

Hunting with a crossbow is an activity for real men

Many owners use their devices for hunting. Hunting with a crossbow is fundamentally different from hunting with a gun - shooting animals from a tower, a helicopter, or driving an animal in a large crowd is not everyone’s cup of tea. Hunting, on the contrary, loves silence and solitude. In some ways, this type of hunting is reminiscent of the famous heroic pastime - hunting a bear with a spear. In fact, to shoot you need to approach the animal at a distance of 50 meters or closer. Not everyone will be able to approach a boar at such a short distance, and approaching it at such a short distance requires special hunting skills. Well, the more valuable the loot!

How to choose

All hunting devices can be divided into two categories - block and recursive (classic). Recurve crossbows do not have the increased power of block crossbows, but they are much easier to use and are more reliable. Their tension force is approximately 50 kg. Of the recursive species, they hunt birds, small and large animals. To hunt large and dangerous animals, more powerful block models are used. It is almost useless to shoot from them at a flying target - it is almost impossible to hit.

Power

For hunting birds or small animals, a crossbow with a draw power of 50 kg is sufficient. With a pulling power of 50-70 kg, you can hunt large ungulates. For wild boar hunting, crossbows with a power of 80 kg are used.

What ammunition can be used

Hunting large game requires special ammunition. To hunt large prey you need to use special professional arrows made of fiberglass or carbon. These arrows are strong and light enough to be properly centered to ensure a successful hit. There are also sometimes excellent aluminum arrows on sale. But such ammunition is only suitable for hunting small animals or birds. Manufacturers of arrows provide the possibility of turning hunting ammunition into sports ammunition - to do this, you just need to change the arrow tip. The threaded connection allows this to be done very quickly. A hunting arrow weighs from 30 to 35 grams, the length of such an arrow is from 45 to 50 cm. As a rule, the length of the feather of a hunting arrow is longer than that of a sports arrow, because the arrow needs to stabilize faster in flight to assume a firing position.

For fishing

Some shooters use a crossbow not only for hunting, but also for fishing. For fishing with a crossbow, harpoon arrows of a special needle-shaped shape are used, which allows the arrow to move in the water. At the end of a fishing arrow there is a hook to which a fishing line is attached. The other end of the fishing line is tied into the crossbow itself.

Found an error in the text? Select it, press Ctrl + Enter and we will fix everything!

Before you start making your own crossbow, you should decide on the design of this type of weapon. Its main structural elements are: a trigger mechanism, a bowstring, a bow with a string, a sight, a tension mechanism and a wooden base, which is commonly called a stock.

Of course, a crossbow made will be very different in design from the factory one. But the principle of operation will be similar. First you need to make the base of the crossbow. The base is the main element of such a weapon. It can be made from wood species such as birch or walnut. The thickness of the workpiece must be at least three centimeters. After creating the blank, you will need to project the shape of the future base onto it, and then cut it out.

As for the bow itself, you can use arcs from an old sports bow (if you have one) to make it. To connect the crossbow stock and the bow, you will need to connect the bow to the base. True, you can use another option. It involves the manufacture of a metal frame. The stock and bow will be placed on it.

How to make a bowstring

The bowstring should not have a high degree of elongation. Otherwise, a homemade crossbow will very quickly cease to perform its functions. So, the best material for creating a bowstring would be lavsan or fastfly. Wrap the threads by first stretching them between the nails. Don't forget to make loops for putting on the bowstring. It is impossible to tighten the bowstring without a stirrup, which in turn can be made of steel wire or cable.

Attach one end of the cable or wire to the base of the crossbow. And at the other end, fix the handles. You will also need to adjust the tension level of the bowstring after fixing it. This can be done directly on.

Trigger and arrows

After adjusting the bowstring tension, you can proceed to making the trigger mechanism. The role of such a mechanism will be a wooden lever, which will need to be carefully built into the crossbow. Then you need to mount the sighting device. Front sights can be used for mechanical sights.

Arrows for a homemade crossbow can be made from ordinary boards and then planed. If you want the arrows to be strong, you should not drive nails into them. Otherwise, the arrow may break when reaching the target.

A copy of an ancient crossbow is a very interesting thing both in terms of appearance and when shooting from it. Now let's talk about how to make a crossbow at home so that it really looks like an ancient weapon. Nowadays, there are many modern crossbows, but their cost is quite high, and you want to hang a working copy of an ancient crossbow on the wall in your bedroom.

Now let’s look step by step at what is needed to create a wooden crossbow. Few tools are needed.

Well sharpened knife.
Drill.
Hacksaw for metal.

Preparation of material, or How to make a crossbow from wood

In order for the product to look and shoot like a real weapon, it must be made from suitable wood:

Poplars.
Ash.
Pines.
Duba.
Maple.
Acacias.

These trees are perfect.

A crossbow consists of two main parts - the bow and the stock. If we are making a weapon with a power of up to 20 kilograms, for the bow we need to find an even branch five centimeters thick and a meter long. If the power of the crossbow is planned to be more than 20 kilograms, then it is better to take a blank 10 centimeters thick and a meter long. For the crossbow stock, select a branch with a diameter slightly thicker than the bow blank. If there are branches on the sawn material, under no circumstances should they be completely cut off. You just need to shorten them so that the length is from three to five centimeters. If you cut off the knots completely, they will immediately crack and the workpiece will be damaged.

Drying harvested wood

Before making a crossbow with your own hands, you need to ensure that the material dries gradually. To do this, you need to cover the cuts with varnish so that moisture does not escape through them too quickly. We also cover the cuts on the knots. If this is not done, then due to rapid evaporation the wood will crack, and this is undesirable. After this, the blanks should lie for a month in a dry and dark place. The longer the wood dries, the better.

Primary processing

The material is ready, we can start. Let's start with the onion. We examine the annual rings of the tree. Where they are thinner, the northern side, that’s what we need. In this place the structure of the material is much denser. Now you need to cut the workpiece in half and take the north side for the product. After everything is done, the tree needs to be allowed to lie for another week so that the remaining moisture comes out.

Making a crossbow bow

We begin making a bow, during which we will see the structure of the tree and learn how to make a crossbow at home using ancient technologies. So, let's get started, we need to cut off the layers of the tree where its core is present. If you leave it, there is a risk that longitudinal cracks will appear. Then we measure the middle of the bow and begin to cut off the excess material, making the bow. When processing, you must ensure that its shoulders are the same. We check for bending all the time. As soon as the shoulders begin to bend even a little, you need to make a test bowstring.

A test string is a strong rope with one loop on one side and several on the other, located at different distances. They are needed to measure the bend of the bow arms. The more material is cut, the more they can be bent, while changing the loops to closer ones. By constantly pulling the test string, it is easy to see whether the bend is uniform after processing the bow. After all, if you look only visually, you can make a big mistake. The density of wood is not the same in all places, so a seemingly perfect bow may bend unevenly. Sometimes it happens that a thick section is a weak point, while a thinner section, on the contrary, does not bend. To avoid mistakes, you need to constantly check the onion. Only after studying all the nuances can you make a working copy, understanding how to make a crossbow with your own hands, and fully display the power and beauty of the ancient weapon.

Making a crossbow stock

In the front part of the stock you need to cut a two-centimeter depression where the bow will be located. After we mark 30 cm from the edge, the bowstring and arrow will walk on this surface. We level this plane if there are bends or branches on it. Afterwards, you need to measure out a place for a gutter 1 cm thick and 0.5 cm deep, then cut out holes for the bow and trigger mechanism. It is better to do this with a chisel or a carpenter's cutter, but to understand in detail how to make a crossbow, the drawings will help.

Trigger

Let's take the simplest hold, called a nut. This is a cylinder that rotates freely on an axis. On one side there are hooks for the bowstring, on the other there is a stop for the L-shaped trigger. If the crossbow has a draw weight of up to 30 kg, the trigger can be made of wood. However, if the power is greater, it should be made of metal.

Making a bowstring

You need to take a board and insert pegs 1 cm thick. They should protrude 3 cm. From one to the other, we wind a nylon thread in a circle. When the thickness of all the threads is approximately 5 mm, you need, without removing them from the pegs, to wrap this skein once in a circle so that all the threads are tightly wound. After this, near the peg, we collect the two halves of the bowstring with our fingers and wrap it again, but much tighter, until the next peg. So, we will get a bowstring with two loops. A diagram on how to make a crossbow will help you understand everything. Everything is very clear on it.

Assembling the crossbow and pulling the string

First you need to attach the bow to the stock, then we mount the trigger mechanism, after which we tighten the bowstring. You can’t just tighten it, so you need to use a trial one. Next you need to draw the crossbow. When the bow is bent, we hang the bowstring. After which the trial is removed. That's it, the ancient weapon is ready. Here's how to make a crossbow at home using only basic tools.

Making a toy mini crossbow

For fun at home with children or for fooling around with friends, you can make a mini crossbow from scrap materials. What you will need for this:

Two wooden skewers.
Carpenter's chisel or knife.
Scotch.
Wooden clothespin.
Glazing bead.

Scheme, or How to make a mini-crossbow from what you can easily find at home

We take wooden skewers and cut off the sharp ends from them. After that we tie them together at the edges. This will be the crossbow bow.
We take a glazing bead and mark two segments on it equal to the length of the bow of our miniature weapon. Then we cut off these two parts and connect them together with tape. This is the crossbow stock. We tape the onion in front with tape.
After this, we pull the bowstring onto the crossbow.
We pull it back and see at what distance to install the hook. They will use a clothespin, or rather, its spring and one half of the wooden part.
We cut out the necessary grooves on the crossbow stock so that it replaces the missing part of the clothespin. Let's assemble our hook.
The crossbow is ready, press the clothespin on top, thereby opening it, pull the string together with the arrow and clamp it. To shoot, press from above again.

We figured out how to make a mini crossbow, and now we can go further and create a weapon out of pencils.

Create a crossbow from pencils

To do this you need to take:

Four pencils.
Seven rubber bands.
Ballpoint pen body.
Scotch.

Shall we get started?

First you need to take pencils and connect them two at a time. You can use rubber bands or tape. This will be the bow and crossbow stock.
In the front part of the bed we wrap the bow from below.
On top of the stock we tape the body from the handle, this will be a guide for the arrow. It can be made from the shaft of the same pen.
Now we put one elastic band on the ends of the bow, and tie their edges with thread or tape to make a solid bowstring. Now we grab the bowstring with the inserted arrow, launch it into the guide from the handle body and release it.

Here's how to make a crossbow out of pencils that shoots great.

Let's start creating a paper crossbow

This requires:

A4 sheets - 9 pieces.
Popsicle sticks - 4 pieces.
Scotch.
Durable nylon thread.

How to make a crossbow out of paper that will shoot pencils?

Place three sheets of paper lengthwise in front of you. We bend from left to right. Cut in half along the bend line. This makes six sheets, the width of which is 10.5 cm and the length of 29.7 cm. We divide them into two piles of three sheets each.
Using a pencil, roll one and then a second stack of sheets into tubes. Their length should be 10.5 cm, and their diameter should be slightly thicker than a pencil. To prevent them from unwinding, we secure them with tape.
We insert a popsicle stick into one end of the tubes a third of their length. We break off the protruding part. From the free side we insert a whole popsicle stick, also a third. These are the arms of the bow. Now you need to bend them in half in the center of the paper tubes.
We take five more sheets of paper, twist them with a pencil, this will be the crossbow stock.
We tie the arms of the bow to the resulting tube in front. They need to be evenly wound in front of the product bed. Here's how to make a crossbow at home from paper. Now he needs a hook, a trigger and a guide.
We tie the thread to the arms of the bow and pull it to understand where the hook will be. Having decided, we cut through the bed in this place. Then we cut off a piece of stick 3-4 cm in size and insert it into the hole so that it protrudes 5 mm from above and acts as a trigger from below.
And the final touch. We make a tube 3 cm long so that a pencil can pass through it freely, and tape it to the front of the crossbow above its bow. This is a guide for the stele. That's it, now you can tighten the bowstring, put, for example, a pencil in the guide and shoot.

Here we looked at creating a copy of an ancient crossbow. However, it was also interesting to create throwing weapons from scrap materials, as they say: on your knees. From paper, they even showed how to make a crossbow from pencils, and a mini-weapon that turned out to be quite powerful for its size. So you should look at the world more broadly and always improvise, this is the only way to achieve excellent results in matters worthy of admiration from the people around you.

Make a crossbow with your own hands, you won’t regret it!

A must read!

Making homemade weapons, in particular crossbows and bows, less often knives, are practiced, as a rule, by teenagers and young people up to twenty, twenty-three years old. Older people prefer buy branded factory-made weapons. However, there are exceptions.

For example, an older person may be keen self-made weapons at the hobby and collecting level. But most often his passion is to become closer to professional work, since it is not a one-time impulse. According to statistics, this site is visited mainly by young people from fourteen to twenty-eight years old (according to Yandex metrics). They are mainly interested methods and methods for making any homemade weapons.

However, with an unprofessional attitude towards the subject of interest and a lack of technical skills, creating homemade products can lead to unwanted traumatic situations that can harm the health and even, in some cases, the lives of young experimenters. Therefore, if you are interested in the idea, by all means purchase one of types of permitted weapons, then it is better to buy it in a store, or contact a qualified specialist. Of course, in this case certain costs will be required, but they are not as critical as it seems at first glance. That is, your health is much more valuable than a certain amount of money spent on purchasing, for example, a crossbow.

Naturally, not all young people have available funds for the purchase of weapons, and not everyone has the right to use it, even if it belongs to the category of sports, due to their age. Therefore, in specialized stores it can only be sold to a person who has reached the age of majority and has the appropriate document permitting the purchase and use of weapons for personal purposes.

Otherwise it will be the case with online weapons stores, for which it does not matter to whom the weapons are sent, and all surveys during registration are formal. But as mentioned above, teenagers under eighteen years of age rarely have their own income and therefore in most cases sporting weapon acquired with the knowledge of the parents and with their direct participation.

More details for fans of ready-made stock drawings

Please note that the crossbow is made from a bow. That is, whatever bow there is, the crossbow will be adjusted to its parameters, because each bow has its own unique parameters - tension force, length of draw stroke, length of arms finally. Further, the lock also meets the specified requirements, it has its own geometry and it may not always be suitable for the desired type of stock. So there is no point in such drawings and they can only be considered as an illustration for understanding the general principle of the arrangement of parts.

Some features of the manufacture of crossbow stocks deserve closer attention, allowing you to save material and nerves. When making a stock for a compound bow, please note that the groove in it for the intersecting sections of the bowstring must be extended towards the lock, since when tensioned, the ends of the bow with the blocks are bent back. Sometimes an incorrect cut forces a radical change in the location of the nodes, which entails a change in the design of the product as a whole, sometimes not for the better. Don't forget to leave at least a millimeter in reserve. By milling you can only set the initial shape, for example, of a key groove, and finalize it with the help of a small chisel and files with needle files.

A quick note about stock finishing

The question is often asked about where to get drawings of a stock; a stock can be made even from a chair leg, but the crossbow itself ultimately should not be just a constructor made of ridiculous parts, but should be a product made in the same style. For example, crossbows in the medieval style with a powerful bow, forged fittings, a rigid lock and a rough wooden stock look holistic and balanced; or a light and elegant sports crossbow with optics, a thin and sharp bow, and an anatomical stock; not to mention futuristic crossbows with polished metal surfaces, a laser designator, a cast titanium stock and an ultra-complex lock. In other words, the final finish depends on your taste, but do not forget that it will be judged by your crossbow.

More about guides

High-quality guides are the most important element affecting shooting accuracy, as they establish the initial orientation of the bolt (arrow). They can be made from any material, preferably with a low coefficient of friction. Although the guides carry virtually no load, they must have sufficient strength to maintain straightness. Therefore, it is a good idea to make them as a separate part, attached to the stock at points at its ends. This makes it possible to easily change it if necessary, for example, in case of damage or switching to another type of bolts; moreover, such fasteners allow you to “untie” the guides from the deformable stock. The longitudinal guide groove for the bolt usually has a depth of one third of the diameter of the shaft so that the plane of the bowstring coincides with the axis of the bolt. It is convenient when a narrow groove for the lower tail passes through the guide, then random needles when shooting in the forest, for example, will not interfere with the movement of the bolt.

As already mentioned, it is convenient to make the guides separately from the stock. The material can be metal, plastic or wood. The required thin longitudinal groove can be made with a thin jigsaw blade or by making a guide of two halves, which is also very convenient and has its advantages. A particularly important factor in manufacturing is maintaining absolute straightness and parallelism. Naturally, you will have to apply sandpaper or a hairy polishing wheel. The dimensions are not at all critical and are determined only by the length of the stock section from the block to the lock, corresponding to the running (landing) part of the bolt, as well as the diameter of the bolt shaft and the type of its fletching. The bolt should fit freely, but without play, into the guide groove; the feathering should not touch anything. The guides are installed in such a way that the axis of the inserted bolt coincides in the front part with the position of the string fastening (! nuance) on the bow, and in the rear part it passes through the filling cutout of the lock. The nuance is that the front part of the guide should be slightly higher than the specified plane, which ensures some sliding of the bowstring pushing the bolt. Naturally, everything should be within reasonable limits, and the wooden surface of the guide must be protected from abrasion by the bowstring with additional metal pads.

Lock

A lock made from a clothespin and a tin plate hardly deserves any attention. The crossbow lock is a very important part. There is an opinion that the simpler the lock, the more reliable it is, but I would interpret it somewhat differently - the better the quality of the lock, the more reliable it is. The manufacture of the lock must be treated with special attention, because convenience and reliability, as well as the clarity of operation, and therefore the accuracy of shooting, depend on its operation. A little about the functions of the lock. A good lock should ensure guaranteed retention of the bowstring on an equipped crossbow, as well as a clear release at the required moment of aiming. It is in accordance with the first point that additional blockers and fuses are introduced into the design of locks, and with the second, intermediate unloading levers and repeaters are introduced. The choice of lock design again depends on your locksmith capabilities and needs, and here you can exercise your creative inclinations to your heart’s content in upgrading existing models and developing your own. Personally, I liked the design of professional locks presented on one of the sites. The bicycle has been invented, but has it been invented yet?

To make it easier to embed the lock, it is necessary to try to give it the simplest possible shape when designing it. That is, locks with various cavities are unlikely to be neatly packed into the stock, while flat, rectangular locks in this regard do not cause any special problems when cutting into the stock. It is important to take into account that the locks must be securely fastened, without backlash, and have a maximum area of contact with the stock to relieve the load. What is often not taken into account is the simple fact that the lock bears the entire tension load. That is, if you are making a crossbow with a bow weighing 300 kg (probably for an elephant), then the parts of the castle will naturally receive all 300 kg of them + shock load and so on, but the stock should be able to handle it in its thinnest place (usually where it is weakened by the key groove), still survive 300 kg + torsion and other non-parallel loads. Again, in some drawings, the locks have attachment points too close to the edges or small diameter holes for thin bolts or screws. If this value turns out to be acceptable for metal, then for wood it is necessary to provide some reserve. So, summing up all the factors, we can conclude that the lock must have minimum dimensions, in particular width, have a maximum surface of contact with the groove, that is, fit its front surface tightly in the groove, and only be fixed to the stock with bolts. In addition, the stock itself must have sufficient strength in its weakest part when calculating the bow's tension load. So for monsters, it’s better to make a stock from a metal profile, and put linings made of beautiful durable wood on the body kit. I cannot give any special recommendations regarding the choice of wood due to my incompetence on this issue, although I personally prefer beech.

For those who do not live in the regions where this wonderful tree grows, I advise you to pay close attention to the old pianos of your acquaintances and friends. In them, beech is found in the form of massive power beams for hanging cast iron frames. At the risk of arousing the wrath of aesthetes, a piano these days is easier to find than a piece of good wood. Let's write off this barbarity as a by-product of art. For metal lovers. Excellent aluminum and alloy profiles can be found in office furniture. Rigid rectangular profiles are now commonly used in some machine tools. There is a wonderful thin-walled pipe made of blackened metal in.... a large inclined tablet like that of designers or draftsmen. I don’t know what the warriors have to do with it, but such a pipe can be used in powerful pneumatic and light firearms systems, as well as for fireworks mortars. You can also cast stocks from aluminum and alloys, followed by milling grooves and other things, but this is more a matter of technology and taste.

Let me remind you that the tension force of the bow acts on the lock! This means that the lock must withstand heavy loads without loss of functionality, so tin as a material is immediately excluded. The proposed millimeter steel, after processing is already 0.8 mm, can only be used on crossbows of small power, otherwise the lock will simply be deformed. The details of the castle are also worth taking a closer look at. The main hitch is under full load, so use stronger steel and a thicker axle. Depending on the design and lever, a lesser force acts on the release that releases the hook. Other parts can be made based on their purpose and the load on them, without forgetting the margin of safety and wear resistance. Gunsmith designers have a technology for constructing the mechanisms of real weapon locks “on pins and needles”, this is when the contours of the intended parts of the lock are cut out of cardboard, pinned at the points of their axes to the plywood. At the same time, it is possible to immediately see the interaction of parts with each other, correct them, and then translate everything into metal. In principle, all that remains is to choose a suitable lock; further modernization can be achieved by using high-quality steel, some modification of the trigger and equipping the lock with additional devices, adjustments, etc.

Structurally, locks with a so-called “nut” or a similar hook design are more suitable for crossbow sniping. The hook rotates freely on an axis close to the center of mass, resulting in a very soft, jerk-free descent. Such locks will appeal to lovers of high-precision shooting and the fairer sex (there are such in this business!), but the Hollywood-style clanging and clicking aggressive locks will be more useful in systems of a threatening militaristic or medieval style of execution. In one of the “pro” locks, the design of which I took as the basis for mine, there is a safety lock and a lock that prevents the bowstring from being lowered without a threaded bolt, which is quite thoughtful for preserving the bowstring. By adding a slot in the upper part of the hook, it was possible to ensure shockless interaction of the bowstring on the butt, the rear end of the bolt, in common parlance, the “butt”.

Block

Designed for attaching a bow or its limbs directly to the stock. The block works under very intense conditions and experiences shock loads, so it must have a significant margin of safety. Made from aluminum casting or metal, calculated depending on the bow used. The block for separate bow limbs is subject to more forces with different vectors. When designing pads, it is necessary to wisely use various bevels and triangles, which allows significant savings in weight with the same rigidity of the part. The block can be removable to reduce the size of the crossbow when carrying. There is a certain peculiarity in the method of attaching the bow limbs to the block, which is that it is preferable to use threaded clamps rather than rivets, but it is better not to weaken the bow limbs with holes at all. (!) Pay special attention to the fastening of the bow limbs, take into account the rule of leverage, which, together with the tension force of the bow, adds up to an immodest amount. It is most convenient to make a block from thick sheet steel, bending the workpiece like origami.

The bow is the main part of any crossbow

Structurally, it is easier to use a monobow made of durable and elastic steel, but some plastics are also suitable. The simplest thing is to use ready-made bows for sports shooting. Can be made from any elastic spring steel, such as springs. We used a powerful spring from some relict hell trap. A compound bow, consisting of a package of strips, has enormous friction losses between the strips. Even if you lubricate the stripes with something like “ER” to reduce friction, using such a bow is not advisable. If you want to make a removable bow with latches, then I advise you to secure the bow tightly to the block, but the block itself can be made tightly fastened to the stock. In general, analyzing the physics of a bow, it can be noted that a bow with developed shoulders, which have some narrowing towards the ends, is better. Such a bow, bending evenly, accumulates a lot of energy. However, larger bows require a longer stock due to the increased draw stroke, which is unacceptable. Ancient crossbows, judging by the sources, fired at 200 steps. So they “beat”, knocking the riders off their horses, but for a longer firing range you already need perfect sights, and even now no one shoots from machine guns at a longer range, there is no point. We'll talk more about firing range in the paragraph about bolts.

If possible, you can forge a bow from a suitable metal, and it is better to immediately provide places for fastening the string on the block. Again, it is better to make a block pattern if the bow has a lot of power.

The block brackets, the blocks themselves, work on the tension force of the bow + the compression force of the bowstring + shock loads. Blocks can be machined from a material suitable for strength, but it is necessary to relieve the bow's arms as much as possible. In most cases, the choice of aluminum as a block material is very successful. For those who have difficulty making blocks, I recommend looking into old reel-to-reel tape recorders. In some models there are wonderful blanks for aluminum alloy blocks; you just need to cut off the excess. To lighten the blocks, holes are drilled in them or windows are cut out. You can also look into old receivers, where the venier is based on a cable system. The warriors have a lot of old radio equipment with such units. There are small blocks on ancient dental burstanki. On professional crossbows, the blocks are oval-shaped. This is due to the fact that the block rotates only at a small angle. I think that the fact of some gain when using a block scheme versus a conventional, recursive one is obvious, but a further increase in the number of blocks gives less and less results. So there is no point in assembling a garland of 6,8,10 blocks. Even a child can draw a four-block crossbow. I note that a compound bow works more softly than a recurve bow, which improves shooting accuracy, and besides, the force to break the string is less, apparently due to the loading of the string with blocks.

Springs are sometimes used as a propellant on some exotic models, but they have a large weight, volume, short stroke and enormous energy, which in turn entails a more complex design and requires high-quality steel for locks. A compressed car shock absorber spring can easily tear off a person's arm or leg. A shot from such a spring into a bag of compacted cement pierced it, and the spring itself flew off behind a row of neighboring garages. A very dangerous and inconvenient thing.

Bolt - crossbow arrow

The bolt is the damaging element of this type of weapon. It has a greater (emphasis on the first syllable) stopping effect than a bullet(!). Kevlar body armor also loses its effectiveness against such hello from the Middle Ages. So it would be appropriate to once again remind you of compliance with safety rules when shooting from a crossbow, despite the fact that the article is devoted to a slightly different topic. A bolt wound can often be fatal! The death of a victim can even be caused by just the sight of a bolt protruding from the body!

So, bolts. They are made from any durable material that is lightweight and has sufficient elasticity. It can be made from suitable pieces of straight-layered wood, and the layers of wood should be arranged longitudinally, which gives the arrow flexibility. It’s difficult to do without some mechanization in the form of at least an electric drill. The bolt must have a perfect shape, the center of gravity is usually located between the first and second third of the bolt, and already assembled (!), however, it is possible to vary this parameter at your discretion. You can change the mass of the bolt by selecting different materials for the shaft, sizes and materials of tips and toes. To protect against moisture, wooden bolt shafts are impregnated with protective compounds and are usually stored in a horizontal position. Great bolts can be made from sections of broken fiberglass telescopic fishing rods. They have great strength with low weight and are not afraid of dampness. Please note that all bolts should be as close as possible in weight and size, otherwise a surprise will await you with each new shot, especially when shooting at maximum range. In general, the crossbow itself allows you to shoot quite heavy arrows, even with welding electrodes, so it is quite difficult to clearly determine the optimal bolt. When selecting experimentally the mass of bolts for your crossbow, do not forget about the golden mean: a light bolt loses speed faster, and a heavy bolt does not fly far. Instructions for making bolts yourself -.

About the firing range

A crossbow is a crossbow. A bolt, like an arrow, is launched with a relatively low initial speed, has a fairly high air resistance and a small mass, so that physically it cannot fly very far, one must be realistic. There are firearms for such things. By the way, looking back to ancient times, the crossbow was valued precisely because it was used exclusively for the destruction of heavy cavalry at medium distances, having a short and heavy arrow in its arsenal. I consider articles that mention shooting almost a kilometer away to be purely humorous.

Bolt ends are made based on the task at hand for this type. Hunting bolts are generally equipped with creepy-looking four- or three-bladed harpoon-like tips. Almost any hard material can be used for sports shooting. When shooting at hard targets, bolts often break. It is better to make the tips with a recess for mounting on the bolt shaft. Tips attached to the cut of the shaft usually split it when it hits a solid obstacle. Rubber tips don't make sense. The diameter of the tip may exceed the diameter of the bolt if the shaft is longer than the guide.

Bowstring

A good bowstring with proper care will last a long time. It is made of steel (cables, strings), polymer wood or woven from silk. I don’t know about the latter, there are now a huge amount of synthetic materials. Kevlar for making a bowstring should be used as a material with high tensile strength. For powerful crossbows, you can use a thin steel cable for the bowstring. Found everywhere in motorcycles and automobiles. I note that a braided bowstring can more easily withstand breaking loads due to the fact that part of the energy is spent on friction between the woven threads. Protect the bowstring from abrasion on the stock with special metal or plastic pads.

Sights

Actually, it's a matter of your taste. The use of certain sights depends on the range and nature of the crossbow's shooting. Optical sights for weapons at a hundred meters or less are generally somehow ridiculous, although a crossbow with optics looks quite predatory. They have a large mass and prohibitive cost, require a standard mounting bar, and are convenient for shooting at a static target. Installing collimator sights in this case is more justified, and it also becomes possible to shoot offhand. Even simpler and better for crossbows are simple diopter sights, and the simplest open sight is not difficult to make at all. I’ll keep silent about optics for now, but you can stop at making open or diopter sights. The fact is that there is some difference between the axis of flight of the bolt and the axis of the crossbow, not to mention the hinged flight path of the arrow, so for sights it is necessary to provide for the possibility of fine adjustment using the appropriate screws. To do this, the mounting of sighting devices is done with oval holes that allow some displacement, or adjusting screws with fine threads are installed in the body of the mounts, which shift the sight itself when rotated. It is best to zero in sights indoors or in calm weather. In this case, the crossbow itself is fixed on a massive fixed base, for example, with clamps. Next, test shots are made with one standard arrow. The difference between the aiming point and the actual point of impact of the bolt at a given distance is adjusted using the adjusting screws of the sight. Then the shooting distance changes and the process repeats. This way you can calibrate any sight for any shooting distance. Corrections for wind are entered in the same way (frontal against the wind, at an angle towards, at an angle downwind, at a side, downwind).

Tensioner devices, such as various “goat legs”, can easily be made from a suitable metal, changing the dimensions of the data to fit the geometry of your own crossbow, however, such devices are rather necessary for cocking very powerful crossbows with recurve bows or are simply a convenient excess, since compound bows are even of considerable power can be cocked by hand, albeit with gloves.

This completes the theoretical part of the instructions on how to make a crossbow, see the photo and explanations below:

To make a crossbow we need a wooden stick and a piece of iron

The stick is made approximately according to these dimensions

One spring plate 650Х100Х8 was taken. Using a grinder, we slowly separate out what we need. The dimensions of the arch in the middle are 35 mm, and at the edges - 18 mm.

Using sandpaper, we narrow the shoulders, evenly from the center to the ends until we reach 5 mm. in thickness. We stretch a steel wire (cable) onto the arch in this form. We clamp it in a vice. We will insert a round timber strictly in the center so that it does not interfere with the arch when bending. We tighten and at the same time check the force and tension distance. We will dance from these parameters in the future.

As in “The Golden Calf”: we take a weight and saw. And this is what happened. The most important part in a crossbow. Hook or crampon.

But to make a normal lock, we need a sear and a trigger. A hole is made in the upper part of the pin so that the bolt of the strip spring falls into this hole and fixes the pin from moving.

Let's start making the lock body

We carefully try everything on and drill holes for the pins.

Let's start making the trigger guard. We take a wooden stick and try it on.

Hollowing out a place for a lock

Inserting the lock

To attach the rear sight we make a dovetail. And solder it. I did it with PSR, but it can also be done with POS. It all depends on how we will burnish (what temperature it will be).

In the arch we drill two holes at the edges for attaching clamps. Many people ask whether it is possible to drill a spring. I answer - freely. Pobeditov drill adjusted on a diamond wheel.

Grinding the rollers

Grinding the rollers

We adjust the clamps to the required size. Let's start making the arch mounting clamp.

Making a stirrup

This is how I seal the ends of the bowstring. Do not hit, but press with a lathe chuck.

In production and finished form

Finished look

Let's begin a very serious operation - bluing. I specifically show the unsuccessful bluing.

Here's some successful bluing

Take a stick and make a channel for the guide

Glue the plank

Now let's take the butt, but be careful with the tools

We remove unnecessary things. The stick I took is a wild cherry. Birch, walnut, etc. are suitable.

Varnishing. But here who gives preference to which varnish.

Excess. But, in my opinion, it is pleasing to the eye.

It is important that the gap between the bowstring and the stock is 2 mm. The calculation is simple - the middle of the bolt diameter.

Bottom view

And I put shrink film on the arch. And it gives the appearance and protects it from fragments in the event of an arch breakage.

Finished look

After 40-50 shots the bowstring burst.

I decided to add 2 more videos.

To facilitate the design, the rollers were replaced with caprolon ones. With a distance of 30 cm from the string to the hook and a force of 85 kg. with the addition of rollers, the force on the arch decreases and the speed of the arrow increases.