How long does it take to make a crossbow

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by ericthered

That animal parts are used rather than plant fibers is a surprise, but in retrospect it makes sense.

You can use sinew, horsehair or similar animal materials to make bowstrings for crossbows but it's not a requirement. The big limitations are that the material has to be inelastic and capable of holding its strength while under constant tension. Depending on the strength of the bow, you could use a traditional linen or silk bowstring.

Originally Posted by ericthered

The town is currently awash in butchered animals, but they may have already sold all of the supplies they'd need.

That's a problem, then. Unless you have access to magic or similar, it takes time to properly dry and/or cure things like leather, rawhide, or sinew. Also, you need to specifically butcher the animal in a way that removes the sinews (especially the sinews along the spine) intact. Horsehair (from the mane or tail) or similar long, tough hair, can be used without curing, however.

PS (Rope making) or PS (Weaver) are likely skills for prepping the material.

Originally Posted by ericthered

From your description, it sounds like bow strings are not the most time consuming part of the process, but that they are a decently large part.

The bow and the lock are the most time-consuming parts because they're the "fiddliest".

But, if you have ready-made plans for a crossbow lock and metal stock which can just be cut or milled to shape, then it's a simple job for a Machinist. If you have a ready stock of pre-made parts, it's a simple job for any sort of Mechanic.

The same goes for strings. If you've got proper stock materials it's an easy task to make a proper string.

The bow part is a bit trickier and assumes an adequate supply of either properly cured wood (like hardwood) or metal with the desired properties (think spring steel).

If you've got a proven design, adequate stock, and plans and jigs made up, then the job becomes easy - especially if you have a master craftsman (i.e., Armoury (Crossbows) 14+, Administration 12+, Leadership 10+) to coordinate the work.

Originally Posted by ericthered

Bow wood is pretty much not available, though large and exotic forests are.

Quality of wood isn't as much of an issue for crossbows since you can use laminations to get the properties you need (speed of return after flexing being the main one). The big problem is that wood takes time - weeks or even months - to cure. Heat curing speeds the process, but it tends to make wood brittle under tension, so it's not desirable for bows. Of course, this is fantasy, so you might have wood that's useable straight from the tree.

Originally Posted by ericthered

They have a heaping large pile of fuel, and lots of iron. Both are sitting around in large amounts They won't have the specific steel though.

In that case, they can easily forge billets of steel (or whatever) to order but the runup time required will be longer (perhaps days depending on the size of the forge).

If they can make homogenous cold-rolled alloy spring steel, and metalworkers have access to metal breaks or saws which can quickly cut spring steel to shape, then making bows is easier.

If they have to actually forge metal bows by hand, much less make forge-welded laminated steel, that slows production by a lot. It takes the process from a basically industrial one to an artisanal project.

Originally Posted by ericthered

They have something of a factory setup rather than a workshop setup, though its really between the two. They've got big furnaces and forges. power tools really aren't available beyond a few lathes and presses. They've got access to a wonder metal that can go through steel like cardboard and another that can block the first metal, and their tools are made of these

Press + wonder cutting metal = metal breaks & stamping dies.

Lathe + wonder cutting metal = bandsaw blades, drill presses, and milling machines.

If those things haven't been invented yet, that's where Gadgeteer characters earn their share of the loot.

"They also have exceptionally light metals (think aluminum, but less finicky to work with)"

Those would be ideal for crossbow stocks.

Originally Posted by ericthered

In this case I'm thinking of early TL5, before large machines really start multiplying industry, but when you still have big furnaces.

Remember that, by mid-TL4 you had very large cannon boring operations and that by early TL5 you had industrial hammer and grinding mills. Obviously, steam engines aren't available, but you could hand-wave slightly more sophisticated machine tools.
Their metalurgy is rather custom, as seen above. I hope that helps. Yes, much of it is fantasy hand waving.

Originally Posted by ericthered

Ok, then how do I stat it? do I loose any spring from using a different material?

If properly made you don't lose any quality from a lower ST metal crossbow.

Just use the stats for a lower-ST hand-cocked crossbow, but with the feature that the bow is made of steel.

[Donny Brook]

It took homo sapiens something around 100,000 years.

[adm]

I would point out that wire cable will work for crossbow strings, if you have any. Takes a fair amount of time to make at your TL.

[Culture20]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

A couple of hours. For each treatment, usually two (not including initial forging and hammering, just annealing and hardening).

Annealing takes considerably longer than a couple hours for a prod sized piece of steel. The ashes can keep it warm overnight. You can get enough grain reduction with several normilizations which can be air-cooled (faster). You’ll also want a slow temper cycle or two at the end after the hardening unless the dwarves like having a malf of 6.
The smiths can hammer a lot of prods into shape fast, but they won’t be fully ready to use until many hours after they’ve been shaped (during which more prods are made).

But now I’m wondering about the fantasy metal they have available. Maybe it doesn’t require heat treats, or heat treats offer no benefit, like mild steel?

[Culture20]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

You can use sinew, horsehair or similar animal materials to make bowstrings for crossbows but it's not a requirement. The big limitations are that the material has to be inelastic and capable of holding its strength while under constant tension. Depending on the strength of the bow, you could use a traditional linen or silk bowstring.

...

That's a problem, then. Unless you have access to magic or similar, it takes time to properly dry and/or cure things like leather, rawhide, or sinew. Also, you need to specifically butcher the animal in a way that removes the sinews (especially the sinews along the spine) intact. Horsehair (from the mane or tail) or similar long, tough hair, can be used without curing, however.

You’ll also need animal fat to quench the prods unless they have petroleum; water is a terrible quenchant.

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by Culture20

You’ll also need animal fat to quench the prods unless they have petroleum; water is a terrible quenchant.

Tallow would work. You could recover some of your cost by making candles from it when you are finished.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Culture20

You’ll also need animal fat to quench the prods unless they have petroleum; water is a terrible quenchant.

Terrible, but still used throughout history on account of being able to get it in vast quantities. If you're aiming to make hundreds of bows at the same time, that means you need 50+ vats of quenching liquid. Easier to get that out of water than fats. Fats are expensive.

Is vegetable oil useable? Vegetable oils were used extensively as lighting fuel oils, so even sitting under a mountain the goblins might have quite a bit of it stockpiled.

If they're stuck using water means there's going to be a high percentage of failed quenches and lost work, and therefore lost time. Even higher with smiths not familiar with the particular parts they're making, and therefore the best ways to handle water-quenching them.

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

Yes. One on the bows, one on the 'hardware', one on the stock and one assembling. With some of them swapping off every so often (particularly the bow and hardware smiths, one job is a lot more hammer swinging than the other).

Craftsmen oftentimes worked in pairs, usually a master and his apprentice.

For smiths the two would split the grunt hammering, doing a 1-2 job with the hammering. In any craft shop the apprentice was also good for doing all the side jobs like fetching & splitting wood, stoking the bellows, cleaning up the scraps, etc. So, really, a lot of the work will be split up between many craftsmen, apprentices, or other hired hands (or slaves). This would be true even in a small town, where the apprentices are most likely the craftsman's children.

On really big projects (such as arming an army or building a castle) you might have several tiers of craftsman, with a grand master in charge and several masters in charge of many apprentices as well as unskilled labor supporting the craft shops.

[gruundehn]

In the original Connections TV series James Burke shows an early medieval water-powered hammering system - used for pounding flax as I remember. He mentioned that it was later adapted for other uses.

Such a system could easily be adapted for metal-work, thus reducing the time to create metal bows. Presuming you have running water of sufficient strength.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by gruundehn

In the original Connections TV series James Burke shows an early medieval water-powered hammering system - used for pounding flax as I remember. He mentioned that it was later adapted for other uses.

Such a system could easily be adapted for metal-work, thus reducing the time to create metal bows. Presuming you have running water of sufficient strength.

It was used for metal-work, although it was only really useful for producing the basic metal billets. Unlike a modern powered hammer, you can't control the rate (nor pressure) of the mill hammer dynamically.