Vampire Slayer Style Crossbow
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is one of my two favorite TV shows, the other being her companion show Angel. While watching the shows I became fascinated by the crossbows they use. I decided to try to duplicate them, and this is my first, and I believe duplicates the type used first by Buffy.
This is a pistol style crossbow you can shoot while holding with just one hand. With its tough plastic stock and fiberglass bow, it only weighs about a pound and is very easy to shoot. It has a 50 pound pull so cocking it does take some effort. There is a very convenient cocking handle built in to make cocking the crossbow very simple and foolproof. The stock is 12-1/2 inches long (including the chrome cocking handle) and the bow is 17 inches across, with a string about 16 inches long.
I made wooden stake arrows to go with the crossbow. When I first tested them in my basement I was amazed! They fly so fast that they were hard to see, and really slammed into the target with a solid THWACK! I shot into a cardboard box and at a piece of plywood. The arrow (called a "bolt" when used in a crossbow) easily penetrated the box, but it bounced off the plywood with no damage. Then I took the outfit outside to see how far it would shoot. Again I was very surprised. The bolts flew 150 feet, and with a fairly flat trajectory. (The flatter the trajectory the easier it is to hit targets at longer distances.)
The original crossbow came with 5 plastic bolts, six and a half inches long, with steel points. I've made several types of bolts for the crossbow. The basic one is simply a pointed wooden stake nine inches long. The better, more accurate version is the nine inch pointed wooden stake with fletching vanes to make the flight more accurate. The vanes are like the feathers used on normal arrows but the vanes are much sturdier and can take more abuse than feathers. They are also brightly colored fluorescent green and fluorescent orange so you can see them while they fly and find them after they hit. Three fletched bolts with wood points are included with the crossbow in this auction.
The optional deluxe bolts have steel points added to the standard fletched stake bolts. Both sharply-pointed "field points" and flat-pointed "blunts" are available as optional extras. Add $4.00 for a point of blunt-pointed steel-tipped bolts and $5.00 for a pair of sharp-pointed steel-tipped bolts.
Add $3.00 for four optional basic model pointed wooden stakes, nine inches long
This crossbow requires some assembly (see photos).
The instructions recommend having help when first stringing the bow. This really is a 50 pound bow and you don't have much leverage to bend it because it is so short. I did string mine by myself, but it did take some effort.Packaging, Shipping and handling will be $7.00, in the USA only.
Pictures
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