Historical Weapons

Longbow.
There are many myths around the 180lb pull of the longbow, and with the Mary Rose, we find they did indeed have a 180lb ability...
But expected to fire "How many" per minute?..



How about for a finale, Mons Meg....
Thats that bloody big cannon on Edinburgh castle.
Was it a ranged weapon, or, was it a breaching weapon?...
They reckon now it may have been a tow-it-to-the-wall method of creating a new door in the side of a castle.

The point of the longbow question is, even if you can find someone who can draw the 180 to 200lb [higher 200lb is still "Allegedly"], that person must have a huge upper body strength to do so, and repeatedly?..
It is alleged they may have been given a "bucket" of arrows, maybe in the ten dozen range, and expected to keep up a barrage for quite some time.
Could someone with a 180lb bow manage that long-rage fire power for any extended period of time, and then, for how long?.
That someone would have to be a trained power lifter and archer at the same time to do that kind of rate wouldnt they?..
So the question is, COULD they?..

And as we dont have many of that kind of huge upper body strength "Viking shape" blacksmith strength people hanging about the place, has that ability been lost to time?.



On Mons Meg, You said it, it would have had to been "forged on site".
It was built much like a barrel, strips of iron bound by heavy rings.
How the hell do you forge one of them in a "Mobile" black-smithy?.. sure they had mobile smithy's that did the Swords and blades and such, but cannons?.. that kind of huge ironworks?..
Would they have forged the iron on site from plundered ironworks along the route, or, would they have done a kind of IKEA flat-pack of iron rods and plates from elsewhere shipped to site and just the final assembly?..
Or did they just plunder what they could find from surrounding towns?.

It is also alleged that the things were not exactly state of the art, kind of light the blue touchpaper and
>>>RUN LIKE FUN >>> In the general direction of away.
Some of them we just a huge bomb waiting to go off, so they were towed as close as they could just in case they did go that way and hope the blast damage still did something?..

If one DID fail, spectacularly, and just went foom, would an exploding cannon cause serious damage to a wall, how much, and therefore, was it at all necessary that it was directional?.
Or was it just a HEY-YOWGE early grenade bomb type thing with some possible directional damage?.

Skeletons recovered from the Mary Rose indicated that archers had deformed arms, indicative of having heavily muscled arms. This is not surprising as longbow men were professional archers who trained constantly. Even if they were not professional soldier's, which some clearly were. And trained from a very young age. Indeed one reason the crossbow became popular in Europe, and later the musket, was because you didn't need to constantly train in order to use them effectively.
You'd be hard pressed to find anyone today who could use a 180-200lb bow, let alone come close to matching the level of skill shown by English archers of the medieval period. But then we have compound bows and no need for such skills today.

At Agincourt the archers seem to have been carrying 100 arrows each, twice the normal number by Royal Decree. But there were stockpiles of additional arrows available; Arrows were made in bulk at the Tower of London for the army in advance (we know this as not only were highly detailed records kept, but those records have survived). Archers were also quite capable of making their own arrows in the field and carried the tools to do so.
It is unlikely that rapid fire was used for more than a minute or two, as by that point an advancing enemy would be engaged with your forward lines. After that archers probably used independent fire at a much lower rate. Volley fire itself was used to break up advancing troops through weight of fire, so was most likely done with simultaneous fire at the slowest acceptable rate of fire; that 10 shots per minute requirement. This would give at least five minutes of continual fire, ten at Agincourt, more than enough for fresh supplies to be brought forward. Indeed, at Agincourt it seems the archers got involved in the melee not because they ran out of arrows, but because the troops were too close together to be able to effectively target the French troops.

Arrows were usually placed point first into the ground in front of the archer on the battlefield, which again is what is known to have been the case at Agincourt.


Siege cannons were build in camp, using local resources including local blacksmiths, by blacksmiths attached to the army. In this regard they were little different to earlier siege weapons.
Like all siege weapons intended to break walls they were designed to be able to throw a projectile from beyond the range of the defenders own projectile weapons, or at least at a range where such fire was not going to kill the crews. There is no way an exploding cannon would have caused any damage to a wall at such a distance. If it did then either the wall was so fragile you wouldn't have needed a cannon to start with, a brisk wind would do the job. Or the amount of force needed would wipeout the entire besieging force at the same time.
The most an exploding cannon would do is kill or maim those close to the gun.

look, instructions.

hellfire is not a fly through windows missile. hellfire is fire and forget tank buster.

and a better comparison to Mons Meg would be the Mother Of All Bombs

Old Moses sounds right.

Its been a while since I noted this but all myths need to keep the following in mind;

The average time to film an hour of TV is 7-10 days. Take this as the maximum time MB have to do everything in an idea. The shorter the better.

Conversely ideas have to be able to support around 20 minutes of air time. Ideally ideas should be capable of being expanded or contracted somewhat depending on the need of individual episodes.

Ideas have to be 'visually interesting'. Translation; TV is a visual medium, so where possible myths and stories need to be told visually and in an interesting way. There is a reason MB never did cypher or maths myths.

Cost wise; MB have never said how much money they have per episode, let alone what the budget for the new series will be. However it is best to assume a minimal budget.

Safety; Anything suggested has to be able to be tested in a manner that is safe not only for the cast and crew but everyone in the area.

I don't know about the old forums, but I've seen this in history books.

Obsidian is cheap -- as of the last time I went shopping for geodes, the store I was at was also selling chunks of unworked/unpolished obsidian at around $5 per pound.  I don't know if anyone in the new team is a flint knapper, if not they'd have to bring an expert in to make the blades.

The real problem is that there are no surviving Aztec-made macuahuitls in existence, so we're counting on the Conquistadors to give us accurate proportions in their drawings of the weapon.  OK, that and the question of whether the new team has anywhere to store a mold for a ballistics-gel horse head/chest.

Onwards from obsidian, I have recently invested in a set of ceramic blades for kitchen work.
They are quite good... except bad handling by one of the kids left a chip out of one of the edged.
No problem, I can sharpen a knife, right?..
Nope.
Ceramic blades are bloody tough.
This one has resisted my ability to re-shape the blade by sharpening quite a bit.
I have gone past the usual sharpening tool, on to the grinding wheel, on to the bigger wheel, and yet its stubbornly refusing to re-profile...
I am now going to try (Gently at first) the angle-grinder with the side of the Stone cutting wheel to see if that helps.
(I am slightly obsessive about keeping razor sharp blades on knives...)

Note to others, if you have one of those sharpeners that has a set of non powered wheels that interlock to sharpen, do NOT use them on ceramic blades, they will chip the blade, this is how my Kid damaged the blade, not really his fault, how was he to know?.

On the art of cutting with a knife like that, and maybe this macuahuitls Obsidian blade, would it be used to hack, or would it be used to slice?.. if it is swung with the intention of slicing a wound, thats going to cause a lot of damage.

This also asks a new question...
How the hell do you sharpen a blade like that?.
May I suspect the old treadle stone grinding wheel in a trough of water trick?.
Shame I dont have my Dads old one here, I swear that used to put a better edge on many blades we had.
[that and I could have added a small electric motor to it by now...]

So again a new question...
Non Steel Blades, were they ever sharpened?...
Flint, other stone, Obsidian, Basalt, pick a rock, even when napped right, after a little use it would dull, did they ever try to sharpen a blade by drawing it across a flat stone and would that work?.
And how well would it work?.

I suspect that they would wear down pretty fast, hence the almost constant need for new ones, but did they keep them sharp or just throw them away when they went dull?..
As far as I can work out, due to the lack of large blades in working order just dull, that we have NOT found in ancient middens, they were not thrown away.
Did they re-sharpen the blade by napping or did they sharpen the blade by drawing across a block.?