Tod's Workshop makes very accurate copies of medieval weapons, film props for shows like The Witcher and we shoot lots of longbows and crossbows - There is no bull, just straight talking, entertaining reality - after all real history was interesting enough without having to make it all up.
Many of the films are about what we make and you can find our items for sale at our two sites.
For highly accurate budget historical replica knives, daggers and other todcutler.com
For museum quality custom knives, swords, scabbards, crossbows todsworkshop.com
Why don't you adpot this magazine system to a medieval crossbow? I think high powered crossbows with built in magazines and drawing cranks were the next evolution in crossbow technology, however firearm technology caught up and superseded crossbows making them obsolete before such development was made. Yes there are chinese crossbows with magazines but they are rather primitive and do not have a trigger mechanism. Making such an advanced medieval crossbow would be an interesting what if case.
When Tod asks everyone to come to a conclusion @41:19-41:24, there is one conclusion that nobody mentioned. Yes the plate armor did what it was supposed to and did very well, but through the attrition of multiple shots by Joe we began to see structural integrity failures: the shot that penetrated the articulated forearm armor, the nasty bite on the breast region, and the shot near the temple. This was just from one archer who shot maybe 25 arrows. Imagine a battle line of 5,000 archers shooting 6 arrows a minute for 30 minutes. The beginnings of structural integrity failure for the plate which we saw from Joe's shooting would add up fast in this context. One could imagine that the plate armor through repeated hits fails at key points, the head and the forearm seem like the best examples we have from this episode, and the knight is maimed or killed. tl;dr through attrition of arrow fire French plate armor would develop structural integrity failures fatal to the knight Other wise a very interesting example of battlefield archeology.
I generally agree with your conclusion. Perhaps the best use would be a few for quick defense against raiders or bandits, where a few able bodied people could injure or give pause to a disproportionate number of ruffians. But in standard warfare, I don't see how this system would outstrip the capabilities of well trained archers. But... Also, it would be awful fun.
17:20 I think when a king can command everyone train every Sunday, you'll get a lot of Joe Gibbs level accuracy, distance and draw weight. And that boe strength will be useful in war. Teaching people to use an auto loading crossbow makes more sense when labor is more valuable such as today.
My comeback to that would be that it takes a lot of training to get an archer shooting even reasonably quickly. With the instant legolas you can have them shooting the same speed in an hour. While maybe not essential in medieval England, how about the other countries without longbow traditions? France...
Not sure they needed much help, but would this have use as suppresive fire for, say, peasant uprisings? Lots of shots all at once to discourage any more advancement.
You could tell the curator wanted to buy it for the museum. Better to have a copy on display than the original in case of thieves or climate change activists. 98% of the population won't know the difference either. A bit of bending on the handguard and some tarnishing all over and it will exactly like the real thing.
Now you have to test how much closer archers in the ground level has to be to be able to shoot in top of the battlement. The distance difference for the archers up compared to archers ground level is more than 30 yards because archers on ground level can not shoot on the top of the battlement 270 yards away from the battlement.
I think the only real advantage of the crossbow is that you only need 1 day for getting used to the weapon and youre ready to fight, unlike a regular bow that you need years of practice
Also, added rate of fire (shooting in this case) is nice, but in a world where your ammunition takes a non-trivial amount of time and craftsmanship, it's probably not as useful as people seem to think.
For the loading wouldnt they just do what they did with crossbows? 1 guy loading while the other fires? Im sure if they could keep up the fast firing while doing that they might have a use case
i think in niche applications, bodyguards, border reivers, highwaymen, police etc, they would have loved them, there are a great many weapons that are useless for war, for hunting and for target shooting, imagine a blunderbuss in any of those applications? a nobleman travelling quickly with a light retinue might have favoured such a device, obviously not the large warbow, but the sort range 45lb for multiple assailants would be invaluable. i agree that the instant legolas wouldnt have changed warfare dramatically, but i absolutely think it would be a known and feared weapon.
I wonder if stuff like this wasn't actually tried in the middle-ages and never caught on for the reasons explained. It gave me the idea that the saying "Build a better longbow" could have been used the same way we say "Build a better mousetrap", as a reference to something that's already basically perfected.
I think in its own way a longbow is perfect in that it is a great combination between simplicity and power, but actually a composite style steppes bow or a Manchu bow or similar is ultimately a better weapon, but at the cost of a great deal of complexity
I'm inclined to believe that had the instant legolas been invented back then, archers and the way bows were used in warfare would have adapted to suit it. Imagine each archer using one bow whilst another archer reloaded a second one, ready to swap bows at a moments notice. For suppressive fire, that would have been formidable. Even better, when the first archer gets tired, he and the loader can swap places. Fewer archers shooting at any one time, but actually launching more arrows per minute, and for twice as long.
I still really, really want to see a seige version of this. A larger magazine, heavier weight bolts and draw, maybe drawn back by a lever mechanism or windlass device. With one loader recharging magazines and one gunner firing, I wonder how effective it could be at putting seriously unpleasant things down range?
I'm surprised the UK still allows bows and catapults. Probably a matter of time before the woke fascists ban them too. In Denmark, knives longer than 5 cm are banned without a permit.
Tod just watched a video on a very small armoury in a village church in Mendlesham Suffolk not far from Ipswich it contains an yew long bow along with plate armour etc. The video is on utube and worth a look if you have not seen it Obviously not a patch on the Royal Armoury but a fascinating insight into local militia.
28:46 Errr funggus spores. That almost makes it a bio chemical weapon. The fungus might have burned to death by the time it gets in your lungs but it would still be nasty. Also fungus's are really tough, not all of the spores would die. I wouldn't be surprised if they deliberately sought out anthrax spores.
Submachine guns are stupid, until you have 200,000 men that don't know how to shoot recruited and in the field after 2 weeks of training. I would assume the same use case would apply here. A properly trained man is always better, but you don't always get a properly trained man. In that case, England's "Everybody has to own a bow and know how to shoot" policy does indeed mean they would have no use for it in context of the times. I am sure every other country that didn't have that policy would benefit, though.
I think, the lower poundage would not have been a true issue, IF they had invented the Instant Legolas back in the day - with proper and sufficient training, they would have been able to shoot heavier bows. Either by adjusting the bow setup, or by getting their muscles used to that particular work. No doubt, the complexity of the mechanism would have been a true problem. Very interesting and entertaining video. 👍👍☀️
If it were deployed regularly on the battlefield, a speed loader (or packet loader, or clip loader) likely would not have come with it immediately. But, just like the evolution from the French Lebel and Krag-Jørgensen's single loading to the Mauser stripper clip and Mannlicher en bloc, it very likely may have come along after a few iterations and permutations. A point often made on your channel is the ingenuity and cleverness of medieval peoples. I have faith that if such a mechanism were made and utilized for warfare, they could have and would have made it work at scale.
As a kid, we tried all day with various flammable materials to get flaming arrows to work, and they always blew out. Gas, diesel, tar, lighter fluid, cloth, cotton, all went out. This was using a recurve bow too, so nothing super fast. It's great to see that they did in fact work...
