Building the Unredy Combat Crossbow

Part One

The Prod.

The prod can be made from almost any solid fiberglass 60 inch bow in the 30 to 40 LB range, so long as the limbs bend equally from the center) and the bow is without a molded in shelf or cut out.

About half of the bows I’ve built use the Bear 60 In, 30 to 35 LB recurve (cost between $40-50 new) youth bow with the rubber handle cut off and the limbs cut down to 48 inches and renotched. (Note, the cut and renotched ends will need to be sealed with either polyester resin or epoxy) With a four-inch brace height this should give about 55 to 60 LB at 20 inches. Subtracting the brace height this give a starting IP of 880 to 960 IP. The other half of the bows where built using whatever came to hand in the 30 to 40 LB range with either the draw adjusted to give the desired IP or a rawhide ballistic cover applied.

A properly applied rawhide cover will add between 100 to 200 IP to a prod. For rawhide I use a large rawhide dog bone from Petsmart (about $10). Try and find one with no visible holes. Soak in water of several hours, untie the knots in the end and cut into 3 inch by 50+ inch strips (should get 3 per bone). Cut a hole 1-inch from one end in the center of a strip, sized to slip over one bow tip. Stretch the hide along the face of the bow as much as you can and mark and cut the second tip hole. Slip the second hole over the second tip. The rawhide should be under moderate but not extreme tension. Now fold the hide over to the belly of the bow and trim it so that the edges are about ¼ inch short of meeting in the center. Stitch the edges together using a baseball or herringbone stitch and drawing the edges together. Resoak the hide and bow to keep it easy to work as need while sewing. Lastly fold the end flaps over and lash firmly the set the bow aside to dry for at least 24 hours. When dry the rawhide can be decorated with any dark ink and sealed with shellac. If this is done right it will remove almost all of the set from the bow and as I said add 100 to 200 additional IP to it at the same draw.

I’ll try to get some pictures posted soon but for now if you examine the pictures Lord Greywolf has posted you will see a rawhide cover in use.

We have found that most bows are left strung all of the time and will lose power over a couple of years as the prod takes a set. Building the bow without a cover at near the power you want will allow you to add the cover after a year or so of use and bring the power back to where you want it without replacing the prod. Should the cover add a bit to much power just raise the brace height to bring the power back to what you want.

Should your Kingdom limit crossbows to 600 IP just don’t cut the bow down this way by adjusting the brace height you should be able to get very close to 600 IP. With the standard design tiller and easily switch between 600 and 1000 IP depending on which prod you mount for any given day.

Again referring to Lord Greywolfs photos you will see the prod is mounted to the tiller with U-bolts. This is done for ease of disassembly during travel. A few taps with a drift and it’s apart. The U-bolt are held together with a piece of armor grade leather across the front between the two U-bolt which are then double nuted with the top nut being self locking.

Another option that I use on my personal bow is to use line lashing around the cross pin used for the U-bolts and across the front of the bow. This still allows the pin to be drifted out for breakdown and once the knots are not under tension they are easily untied to reuse the line at the event. If you are comfortable with line and knot work this is a better-looking option.

This document may be freely copied and distributed so long as credit for the original material is given to the author.

Dana the Unredy