200lbs Assassin's Crossbow - LET'S TEST IT!

Oh, I just got my roof! Hi, I'm Tod from Tod's Workshop and Tod Cutler, and I'm back today with an

assassin

's

crossbow

. So this lovely little number, all steel, also called a balestrino. I've done a video on this before, but our methods have changed, the way we approach things has changed, so I'm actually coming back to review this. Now, this particular bow, this

assassin

's

crossbow

, weighs 200 pounds, 90 kilos, so it has some power, we would think. But let's go back to the beginning of the story, could this be used to murder people? Well, in 1545 Venice banned balestrini, so they banned what we know as the assassin's crossbow;

Well, you know, it's a reasonable thing one would think, but then in the 17th century, it actually became a capital crime, so having one of these killed you for it. But it wasn't just Venice where this was a problem, because in Elizabeth the first time two conspirators, Richard Williams and Edmund Yorke were talking about poisoning her using a small steel crossbow like this, I'll put the quote in the notes. Now the question is if they meant that the bow was made of steel or if it was all steel. We really don't know. No doubt these two gentlemen spoke of murdering Isabel with a steel crossbow;

Was this the kind of thing they were talking about? Were they full of bragging and talk or had they actually used one of these things or did they just hear about it? So the first question for us has to be: "Can, could it kill? Could this be used to kill people?" So we're going to run some

test

s, see what we have and we'll talk about it because that's what we need to know. I'm at my miniature shooting range, with my miniature bow, wearing my tactical t-shirt, Tod's Workshop tactical t-shirt, how appropriate. You will find them on the merchandising shelf.

These incredibly rare Balestrino, there are only about 18 in existence, but they all function more or less the same, even if they look quite different, they have a screw jack here and a firing mechanism here that is advanced and then pulled back by the screw system. So I'm going to slide it forward, the trigger is now in, I'm going to hold it closed and then you're going to wind it up. Now, like I said, this is a 200 pound weight, so you know it's hard work, you know doing it over and over again and it's not particularly fast, so you would wonder if you're a killer and you'd like for a second shot, You'd have to ask your target to stay and wait a minute, but here we go, five meters away, a pig roast, let's see what happens.

I completely missed it so there may be a few of these because it's not the easiest target to tackle. Oh, lovely, lovely, that was nice, right, let's see that one. Well, scaling here just measuring against another bolt, so what is that? 55/60 mm, so two and a half inches have entered the meat there at a distance of five meters. Ready to work again at five meters. Completely better again. Well, try again. The nature of how it's fired makes the whole thing a bit

test

y, it's not like a pistol which of course keep in mind they could have used a pistol (there were plenty at the time, good as wheel locks too).

Well, I killed the target, but that's not what I wanted. I'm going to try again, but luckily my victim has kindly decided to stay put while I reload and shoot again. Okay, one more, one more. It's really annoying that in this test I only managed to hit the target, but you know, that's a story in itself. However, these are here on a wooden door and they're, they're in, you know, they're in enough that I wouldn't want one to shoot me, but, again, interestingly, these are going at about 44 meters per second, so 150 feet per second something like that and they actually have 6.7 joules of energy which is half that of a paintball gun for those of you that know so there's really not a lot of energy in this thing but it's a 200 pound bow, maybe I'm lying?

I'll put a little movie right at the end weighing in on this same arc and you can see it for yourselves. Next, can our assassins crossbow shoot through clothing and into the flesh underneath? Because, of course, there is no guarantee that you will hit something exposed. I have a Tudor jacket lying around, wool and linen, let's try it. Oh it's good. So that's definitely in my favor and against all odds, I may have hit the pig again, in fact, put my clothes back on for the last time. Well, let's take a look. Here's the one on top, it just went into the foam and we've got uh... 45mm sticking out the back, so inches and three quarters, and then the other one here didn't really reach the pork, which is a shame , but Here it acts as a brooch, so it's gone through three layers of this.

So yes, it will suit someone wearing a jacket like this. Now let's test this remotely. I'm not talking about the maximum distance because it's not a sniper rifle, you saw the accuracy, you know you're going to miss it, but what is its effective distance, so I'm going to go out, I'm going to shoot it from afar against this wooden wall and then I will shoot next to her again. That's interesting because originally the one I loosely based it on is the Royal Armory and their information card says you can shoot at 300 meters; Well, let's find out, see what we do.

I'm outside 30 meters away, I'm going to see if it can penetrate that wooden wall, in fact I'm going to see if I can hit the wall.... hmm..... Oh, I hit it, but it bounced off. I'm going to try a second chance to see if we can get it to stay right. Oh, I just got my roof! I've gone down to 20 meters, let's see how it goes. Beautiful and it's in, it's in and finally a good shot. I'm going to do a comparison test now and obviously at a very close range, at point blank range, but it's just to really see how much energy is being lost at that distance, at that 20 meters.

Well, this one above was the one that shot from a distance. 23 millimeters of head stick out and the one at point blank range 18 millimeters, so a considerable amount of energy is lost, because of course the head is expanding, so yes, it loses energy very quickly, 300 meters? No way. Returning to answer our fundamental question about the assassin's crossbow, what was it really for? Can kill? Well, we saw it go into the flesh really well, we saw it go through the fabric over the flesh, at 20 yards it went pretty deep into the wood, all of these things look good and it shot clean and well, all of these things say "yes." It could with poison, it could." Its energy is very low, so the beam itself, the seven gram beam, is not going to be the thing that kills someone unless you have an extraordinarily lucky shot, so it's not that.

It's poison; but the question is did they? Because you saw the accuracy problems I was having, it's a really difficult thing to handle, the top trigger is not intuitive like a gun is and speaking of guns, they, of course, They had wheel locks at the time, they had wheel lock guns, fantastic things that you could have hidden in your clothes, you could take them out, you can photograph them and then these Yes, you can have them hidden just like the Leeds Armories card says, the. information card, you can have them on your clothes, hidden, but they don't have a bolt clip.

If you don't have a bolt clip, you have to take it out, then put a bolt on it and shoot it. It doesn't say that to me, it doesn't say killer, because They knew about bolt clips, they could have put one in if they felt I needed it and boy did I need one. Another fantastic alternative to something like the Balestrino is much cheaper: it's your dagger. This is a nice left hand dagger, main gauche, available at Todcutler.com, it has the same date as the ballestrino, all the knights used it, everyone at court had a dagger, it is cheap, it is not traceable, it is reusable, you don't have to wait to reload and shoot again, the blade is bigger, it does more damage, you can poison it if you want, many other options besides this one.

So what is it? What is it, because I don't think this is a killer arc, I think so more than before, but I'm still not really convinced. I think it's just an executive toy for adults, it's a lovely gadget that you can impress your colleagues with and entertain yourself with after dinner. We've probably loved the devices for a long time, but look at this safe from the same vintage type as these, the whole locking mechanism is absolutely beautiful and shows off, it's not necessary. You know, we love to see this kind of stuff and we love to see gadgets like this and I think this whole Doge who forbids these things, the Doge of Venice who forbids these things, is probably one of his drunk, lazy son's friends who told him He shot the Doge in the One day you stay or something like that and boom, these things are prohibited.

I think that's what it was about and you know, it's fun, it's fun. You can put an apple at the end of the table and you can shoot them, when the servant comes in you can shoot them too. How funny is that? It's not going to kill anyone and I think that's what it is. But like any cool gadget, you need to impress your friends with it, so let's break this down and take a look inside. Like any good assassin gadget, you want to be able to remove them so there's a keyhole here, hold a pin, pull it out, the screw comes out and then the whole mechanism comes out, the pins come out and there we have our trigger components. .

If you want to know more about how I did this, there is a thread on a great chat room site called Myarmoury.com. I'll put a link in the notes, go there and check it out, check out the whole site. It's amazing, but if you like what you see there, tip them a dollar, a euro, a pound, whatever; Keep that place going because we all need it. But also don't forget to visit Todcutler.com for great knives and daggers like this Main gauche here. But as a final point, let's put this aside forever. Is this a killer bow?

I'm definitely going to answer that. Yes. No, maybe. See you next time. I have the ballestrino bow here in front, I have a crane scale and we are going to wind it. I have verniers here with the draw length marked all ready to go so now they end up showing in pounds yeah so I should be drawing I think this arc is about 195 which is about right so If we do that in kilos, 90 kilos. So it weighs 90 kilos.