I have been working my new brush pack to the bone and maybe playing a bit too much Assassins Creed Unity
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Cool painting!
With a rifle from the time when crossbows were even more accurate than firearms, but they were too unwieldy and too heavy in the end.
Michelist
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Cheers @Michelist - I suppose rifling wasn’t developed until dog-locks!
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Now I’m stumped, I know what matchlocks are, I know wheellocks and flintlocks, but I don’t know doglocks.
Michelist
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Yeah It was a term I didnt know until researching this. They are a bridge between match and flint… I was wrong about the rifling though apparently in barrel grooves have been found in weapons from the late 1400’s… So what made them less accurate than crossbows?
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Without knowing exactly, but having had a sound education in mechanical engineering design, I would guess that it was the inaccuracy of longer bores.
I have learned that really precise bores have only existed since about 1830, and so the twist imposed on the projectile by the rifling will certainly have increased the precision, but the rifling tools always follow the direction of the bore and if this direction fluctuates during the course of the barrel, the inaccuracy arises.
I imagine this as follows. The bore angle in the muzzle area of the bore determines the exit of the projectile, and if this deviates only a tenth of a millimeter (or less) from the sighting direction, which can only be the cause for me, this inaccuracy results.
Incidentally, I can’t explain why the crossbow bolt, which was only guided in an open channel and had fins made of feathers at the end, was so much more accurate, whether this was due to the stabilizing effect of the fins? However, according to reports from the time, trained crossbowmen (I suspect even specially trained like snipers today) are said to have hit a target with a diameter of 10 cm with an accuracy of up to 200 m, something that custom-made sniper rifles are said to have only been able to do from 1650/1700. Mass-produced weapons for the common soldier only achieved this in the course of the 19th century, according to what I learned at school.
Michelist
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That is savage accuracy for the time!!! I think that makes sense - there is so much that needs to be right for the rifle to be effective, and it would have been alot easier to make a perfectly straight wooden dowel for the bolt of the crossbow to be effective, jot to mention the sheer time they would have had to perfect the design in comparison to these newfangled rifles.
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