Crossbow

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Parker Crossbow Bolts 6pk. Show only Parker items. Some options are Prime eligible. Show only Tenpoint items. Previous Page 1 2 Free Shipping by Amazon. New Used Collectible Renewed. There's a problem loading this menu right now. Learn more about Amazon Prime. Get fast, free shipping with Amazon Prime. To shoot this design, a vertical rod is thrust up through a hole in the bottom of the notch, forcing the string out.

This rod is usually attached perpendicular to a rear-facing lever called a tickler. A later design implemented a rolling cylindrical pawl called a nut to retain the string. This nut has a perpendicular centre slot for the bolt, and an intersecting axial slot for the string, along with a lower face or slot against which the internal trigger sits.

They often also have some form of strengthening internal sear or trigger face, usually of metal. These roller nuts were either free-floating in their close-fitting hole across the stock, tied in with a binding of sinew or other strong cording; or mounted on a metal axle or pins. Removable or integral plates of wood, ivory, or metal on the sides of the stock kept the nut in place laterally. Nuts were made of antler, bone, or metal. Bows could be kept taut and ready to shoot for some time with little physical straining, allowing crossbowmen to aim better without fatiguing.

Chinese crossbow bows were made of composite material from the start. European crossbows from the 10th to 12th centuries used wood for the bow, also called the prod or lath , which tended to be ash or yew. Composite bows started appearing in Europe during the 13th century and could be made from layers of different material, often wood, horn, and sinew glued together and bound with animal tendon.

These composite bows made of several layers are much stronger and more efficient in releasing energy than simple wooden bows. As steel became more widely available in Europe around the 14th century, steel prods came into use.

Traditionally, the prod was often lashed to the stock with rope, whipcord , or other strong cording. This cording is called the bridle. The Chinese used winches for large mounted crossbows. Winches may have been used for hand held crossbows during the Han dynasty but there is only one known depiction of it. The Wujing Zongyao mentions types of crossbows using winch mechanisms, but it's not known if these were handheld crossbows or mounted crossbows.

During the medieval period, both Chinese and European crossbows used stirrups as well as belt hooks. The smallest crossbows are pistol crossbows. Others are simple long stocks with the crossbow mounted on them. These could be shot from under the arm. The next step in development was stocks of the shape that would later be used for firearms , which allowed better aiming.

The arbalest was a heavy crossbow that required special systems for pulling the sinew via windlasses. For siege warfare , the size of crossbows was further increased to hurl large projectiles, such as rocks, at fortifications. The required crossbows needed a massive base frame and powerful windlass devices.

Earliest European depiction of cavalry using crossbows, from the Catalan manuscript Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse , Late medieval crossbowman from ca. Early modern four-wheeled ballista drawn by armored horses His crossbow is drawn with a rack-and-pinion cranequin , so it can be used while riding. Pistol crossbow for home recreational shooting.

On display at Morges military museum. The arrow-like projectiles of a crossbow are called bolts. These are much shorter than arrows, but can be several times heavier. There is an optimum weight for bolts to achieve maximum kinetic energy, which varies depending on the strength and characteristics of the crossbow, but most could pass through common mail.

In ancient times, the bolts of a strong crossbow were usually several times heavier than arrows.

Crossbow, rifle stolen from hunter's locked truck

Modern bolts are stamped with a proof mark to ensure their consistent weight. Bolts do not have fletching , i. A highly specialized type of bolt is employed to collect blubber biopsy samples used in biology research. Most modern crossbow hunters incorrectly refer to the bolts as arrows, due to the similar appearance, but the physics of how a bolt finds its target are different from that of an arrow used in a vertical bow.

Even relatively small differences in arrow weight can have a considerable impact on its drop and, conversely, its flight trajectory.

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The ancient Chinese crossbow often included a metal i. Modern crossbow sights often use similar technology to modern firearm sights, such as red dot sights and telescopic sights. Many crossbow scopes feature multiple crosshairs to compensate for the significant effects of gravity over different ranges. In most cases, a newly bought crossbow will need to be sighted for accurate shooting. A major cause of the sound of shooting a crossbow is vibration of various components.

Crossbow silencers are multiple components placed on high vibration parts, such as the string and limbs, to dampen vibration and suppress the sound of loosing the bolt.

Crossbow, rifle stolen from hunter's locked truck

The earliest textual evidence of the handheld crossbow used in battle dates to the 4th century BC. The trigger nut also have a long vertical spine that can be used like a primitive rear sight for elevation adjustment, which allowed precision shooting over longer distances. The metal portions of the crossbow were also mass-produced with precision, with the bronze mechanisms being interchangeable and can be installed by simply dropped into a slot on the tiller frame.

Finally, the Qin and Han Dynasties also developed crossbow shooting lines, with alternating rows of crossbowmen shooting and reloading in a manner similar to a musket firing line. In terms of archaeological evidence, crossbow locks made of cast bronze have been found in China dating to around BC. A Western-Han mathematician and music theorist, Jing Fang BC , compared the moon to the shape of a round crossbow bullet. The earliest Chinese documents mentioning a crossbow were texts from the 4th to 3rd centuries BC attributed to the followers of Mozi.

This source refers to the use of a giant crossbow between the 6th and 5th centuries BC, corresponding to the late Spring and Autumn Period. Sun Tzu 's The Art of War first appearance dated between BC to BC [24] refers to the characteristics and use of crossbows in chapters 5 and 12 respectively, [25] and compares a drawn crossbow to 'might.

It's clear from surviving inventory lists in Gansu and Xinjiang that the crossbow was greatly favored by the Han dynasty. For example in one batch of slips there are only two mentions of bows, but thirty mentions of crossbows. After the Han dynasty, the crossbow lost favor until it experienced a mild resurgence during the Tang dynasty, under which the ideal expeditionary army of 20, included 2, archers and 2, crossbowmen.

During the Song dynasty , the government attempted to restrict the spread of military crossbows and sought ways to keep armour and crossbows out of private homes. The "romantic young people from rich families, and others who had nothing particular to do" formed crossbow shooting clubs as a way to pass time. During the late Ming dynasty , no crossbows were mentioned to have been produced in the three year period from to With 21,, taels, the Ming manufactured 25, cannons, 8, small guns, 6, muskets, 4, culverins, 98, polearms and swords, 26, great "horse decapitator" swords, 42, bows, 1, great axes, 2,, arrows, , fire arrows, 64, bow strings, and hundreds of transport carts.

Military crossbows were armed by treading, or basically placing the feet on the bow stave and drawing it using one's arms and back muscles.

During the Song dynasty, stirrups were added for ease of drawing and to mitigate damage to the bow. Alternatively the bow could also be drawn by a belt claw attached to the waist, but this was done lying down, as was the case for all large crossbows. Winch-drawing was used for the large mounted crossbows as seen below, but evidence for its use in Chinese hand-crossbows is scant.

Other sorts of crossbows also existed, such as the repeating crossbow , multi-shot crossbow, larger field artillery crossbows, and repeating multi-shot crossbow. The native Montagnards of Vietnam's Central Highlands were also known to have used crossbows, as both a tool for hunting, and later, an effective weapon against the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War.

Montagnard fighters armed with crossbows proved a highly valuable asset to the US Special Forces operating in Vietnam, and it was not uncommon for the Green Berets to integrate Montagnard crossbowmen into their strike teams. Crossbow technology for multi-proded crossbows was transferred from the Chinese to Champa , which Champa used in its invasion of the Khmer Empire 's Angkor in China transferred crossbow technology to Champa.

The earliest crossbow-like weapons in Europe probably emerged around the late 5th century BC when the gastraphetes , an ancient Greek crossbow, appeared. The device was described by the Greek author Heron of Alexandria in his Belopoeica "On Catapult-making" , which draws on an earlier account of his compatriot engineer Ctesibius fl. According to Heron, the gastraphetes was the forerunner of the later catapult , which places its invention some unknown time prior to BC. The lower was a case fixed to the bow while the upper was a slider which had the same dimensions as the case. Other arrow shooting machines such as the larger ballista and smaller Scorpio also existed starting from around BC, but these are torsion catapults and not considered crossbows.

The late 4th century author Vegetius provides the only contemporary account of ancient Roman crossbows. In his De Re Militaris , he describes arcubalistarii crossbowmen working together with archers and artillerymen. The idea that the arcuballista was a crossbow is based on the fact that Vegetius refers to it and the manuballista , which was torsion powered, separately. Therefore if the arcuballista was not like the manuballista, it may have been a crossbow. Some suggest it was the other way around and manuballistas were crossbows. According to Vegetius, these were well known devices, and as such didn't make the effort to describe them in depth.

On the textual side, there is almost nothing but passing references in the military historian Vegetius fl. His decision was highly regrettable, as no other author of the time makes any mention of them at all. Perhaps the best supposition is that the crossbow was primarily known in late European antiquity as a hunting weapon, and received only local use in certain units of the armies of Theodosius I, with which Vegetius happened to be acquainted.

Arrian 's earlier Ars Tactica , written around AD, does mention 'missiles shot not from a bow but from a machine' and that this machine was used on horseback while in full gallop. It's presumed that this was a crossbow. The only pictorial evidence of Roman arcuballistas comes from sculptural reliefs in Roman Gaul depicting them in hunting scenes. These are aesthetically similar to both the Greek and Chinese crossbows, but it's not clear what kind of release mechanism they used.

Archaeological evidence suggests they were based on the rolling nut mechanism of medieval Europe. References to the crossbow are basically nonexistent in Europe from the 5th century until the 10th century. There is however a depiction of a crossbow as a hunting weapon on four Pictish stones from early medieval Scotland 6th to 9th centuries: The crossbow reappeared again in as a French weapon during the siege of Senlis and again in at the siege of Verdun.

The crossbow superseded hand bows in many European armies during the 12th century, except in England, where the longbow was more popular. Later crossbows sometimes referred to as arbalests , utilizing all-steel prods, were able to achieve power close and sometime superior to longbows, but were more expensive to produce and slower to reload because they required the aid of mechanical devices such as the cranequin or windlass to draw back their extremely heavy bows.

Usually these could only shoot two bolts per minute versus twelve or more with a skilled archer, often necessitating the use of a pavise to protect the operator from enemy fire.