h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm DEFINITELY going to quit smoking, if I've got to do this every time I want a roll-up!

ARGH! Quit smoking guys! It gives you man-boobs and I've found out that metal bra's aren't in fashion

It looks like a crossbow. What I don't get is having to crank it.

'But screw your courage to the sticking place...' Lady Macbeth

Paulh, some crossbows can have a "draw" of well over 150 lbs. I suspect the crank is using mechanical advantage to draw the string back into firing position. Some crossbows like this used levers. This one uses a wench.


I recently purchased my first crossbow. I've previously had a recurve and compound bows, but this is my first crossbow. I've never really thought much of crossbows before, but this one shoots toothpicks! If you want to quit smoking, have someone follow you around with one of these for negative reinforcement! Pull out a cigarette? FLING! POIK!

Oh, and here's a similar crossbow (full size with crank).

http://i.stack.imgur.com/omug7.jpg

Well-spotted! The Hoggetts have modern dart-firing crossbows. I have managed to destroy a fingernail with one - I was lucky it wasn't worse. You really have to watch hand placement.

" Some crossbows like this used levers. This one uses a wench." [Baron Grim]

So, even women used crossbows in the Middle Ages?

!

(They probably needed to know how to use crossbows when there were no knights available to rescue hem from abductors )

There is a very nice medieval German epic poem with a lady who has to defend her castle while her husband and the other knights are away. Just saying.

http://www.willehalm-und-arabel.de/pages/topics/arabel-giburg-eine-moderne-ritterin.php

Not that I could distinguish modern German from Medieval German (or whatever it was called then), but which period of German is the link written in?

The text on the page is written in modern German. The poem 'Willehalm' is in Middle High German.

I just thought you might like the picture.

I suppose crossbows were fired in anger rather than for defence/attack

ok! It's a

I do like the picture.

DAD! My pogo stick's broken

If this was what medieval egg-beaters were like, it's no wonder they didn't eat many omelets.