Medieval Crossbow Spanning Devices - The Gaffle and the Wooden Lever 

you are back

welcome back Andereas! we had to wait a while but the new video is fantastic! finally some attention also for the southern part of the Holy Roman Empire! I also have a reproduction crossbow made in Italy, but to be honest, using it gives me a little discomfort on the cheek with its squared profile, I feel more at ease with the rounded profile of the typical Central European crossbow.... greetings from Liguria!

Thank you so much for covering the goat's foot! I wasn't expecting you to, but I'm glad you did, as it was very informative. I always loved the design (in both senses of the word, visually and mechanically) but I understand that it was probably a late invention. The wood spanning one always looks so awkward to use, but I totally understand it as a simple crossbow spanner.

3:39 up until today, I had only seen that type of goats foot lever on books. I believe this is the first video on RU-vid of someone actually using it 😮

Thank you for sharing!

Your crossbows are awesome ! As well as the quality of your films !

Beautiful!, I do love your intro :)

Windlass spanned crossbows ("arbalète à tour") were likely known at least as early as 13th century. Book of deeds of James of Aragon, (supposedly autobiographical, so written no later than in the 1270s) tells us about one of those being used during the siege somewhere around 1230 - Saracens dug counter tunnel and stormed the tunnel of the besiegers - but someone carried the crossbow in there, and shoot trough two Saracens and their shields at once. It clearly had to be very powerful crossbow, and likely a war machine, not personal weapon, but still portable enough to be carried to the tunnel, even if with great difficulty. Probably some kind of huge wall crossbow. Kinda surprising that all those levers are more Renaissance than medieval, since they are very handy. But I guess belt with a hook was just way less cumbersome, since if it was at your waist, you didn't have to worry about carrying it. And with sufficient strength and training, allowed to span pretty powerful bows, likely.

Gute Videoqualität und Präsentation. Zudem sehr schön gefertigte Armbrüste. Grüße aus dem Bgld

Welcome back

Ausgezeichnete Arbeit, wie immer!!!

Is there a detailed documentation of how you make your horn bows? There's a great YT channel called @McClawin. He shows how he does it but I would be interested in how YOU do it. I'm especially interested in what kind of horn you use and how you acquire it as well as how exactly you process and apply the birch bark. I got a copy of Holger Richter's book "Die Hornbogenarmbrust". It is an invaluable source of information on the topic but it is unclear about a few details of the making process. Unfortunately I was not able to get the latest edition - which is sadly no longer available. Do you have some sort of online article about how you do it? Maybe pinterest, instagram or the like? And is there a chance we will see videos about the making process in the future? :D Thanks for your great work and the best wishes to you.

Do you know when the gaffle first appears in the written sources? At least with armour, it's very rare for something to show up in the art before it shows up in the written sources, and sometimes written sources can predate the visual record by more than fifty years.

I sub'ed purely on the channel name 😆

After my knowledge the earlyest depiction of a goats foot leaver is from Diebold Schilling anno 1478-1483!

How common were sinew backed crossbows? Were they ever used just wood and sinew or always horn, wood, and sinew? I have access to a lot of juniper which performs very well sinew backed.

die armbrust bei 5:00 , hast du Maße des bogens für mich?