Hello, this is Jack from Historical Artry and today we're going to be looking at a Qing Dynasty Chinese repeating crossbowler reproduction. There's a lot of videos online about these and you can see a lot of variants but there's very few videos that actually talk about the history of Chinese repeating crossbows and I like to take this opportunity with my reproduction. The first archaeological finds are from the 4th century BC during the warring states. It's a specific archaeological find that it's about this small size repeating crossbow with a double magazine and the action is not levered so instead of doing this you're actually doing an action where you use two hands to push and pull so you're shortening the amount of time it takes to reload. So unfortunately there are very few replicas of that specific design today. We're not too sure how effective they really were. In fact I personally think these warring states repeating crossbows were you know a novelty thing to protect nobles. These kind of crossbows with the long power stroke with the three piece triggers this is your military weapon so we don't have any evidence during that time period of the warring states period where they use repeating crossbows for the military. These are really the Chinese crossbows for military meanwhile these are more of a niche weapon or self defense weapon or sometimes just a toy. So keep that in mind. Now I do want to mention it's thought that someone with last name Qin has invented these during the warring states period. We're not entirely sure if it's actually made by this person or not and then later on during the hand dynasty around 180 AD we do have military writings of using repeating crossbows for military use. That being said these seem like very heavy versions and it's also used for rebel forces. A rebel force typically has less armor so it makes more sense to use these on them but even then it seems like they're drawn by wheels some kind of mechanism and they're likely not light weapons like these because this has about 50 pounds of draw weight but the power stroke is so short of about five inches so you're looking at equivalent to about a 10 pound bow at full draw. So this is really not a weapon in this dimension you could beef up the draw weight or you could beef up the power stroke to make it more of effective weapon. Something for example a hundred pounds with a ten inch power stroke then it can be more of a weapon used for an armored person. So just keep that in mind. Now later on as after the hand dynasty you have writings of Ming Dynasty crossbows and this is the first time I see them being mentioned by Zhu Goliang which is the modern name for them. Romanization of Zhu Goliang which is Chukkunu. I'm sure a lot of you guys know the Chukkunu and this is where the name comes from from Zhu Goliang which is during the three kingdoms period. Perhaps he invented this specific design with lever action. I'm not too sure but it's certainly the repeating crossbow ideas not invented by him because we have literal archaeological evidence dating back to the fourth century BC. So and then in the Ming Dynasty these were occasionally used but it's more of a niche weapon and you know around the same time the Korean during the Imgun War they actually used these and for naval battles but you can see there's as much larger than this and I got a much larger power stroke and it seems to have a horn prod or at least a recurve prod. So it's a pretty decent weapon for an armored soldiers and perhaps you can penetrate some light armor with those specific repeating crossbows. The authors also mentioned using poison at least for the Chinese ones using poison for the bolts likely because of the low power because the biggest limiting factor of these lever action ones is that the power stroke can't be too long if it's as long as a hand dynasty crossbow this would be this would be a massive repeating crossbow. Perhaps they were made but your arm is only this long so there's a limiting length of how long that draw length can be with the lever action design. With the warring states design theoretically you can have a much longer power stroke because you're using your arms to be pushing and pulling it it perhaps they were more effective because the power stroke is much longer at least you can make them much longer than with the lever action because this is your limiting power stroke. Remember the archaeological find from the warring states period is a burial crossbow so perhaps the actual ones were much longer we don't know for sure because they're so scarce these finds so just keep that in mind but during the Ming dynasty you get these more simplified versions and these you can mass produce somewhat much more than those intricate warring states period ones and you can see how easy these are considering the fact that you look online on youtube today and see how many do it yourself repeating crossbows there this is a very rugged and simple design that anybody can make during this Qing dynasty you see these during box rebellion and during the Sino-Japanese war so it's just interesting how they were used even at the same time period of bolt action rifles so that's very interesting but keep in mind by that point during the Qing dynasty these are likely held by militia and not regular infantry but also they would have been used as toys during the Qing dynasty and that's how they were preserved today this is really the longest living mechanical weapon in history a mechanical in the sense that it has a mechanical device not mechanical vantage because technically at a lot of our spear thrower they they're using you know mechanical vandages but you know what i'm talking about mechanical weapon i'm talking about something with a mechanism this is the longest you know repeating weapon in history that we know of the biggest difference compared to the historical Qing dynasty one is i put lashings on it and it's because the the bow is very close to the ends so there's a very thin piece of wood holding it in fact that piece of wood fell off so i had to re-gluet so now it's relying on the lashings to secure it and we know from European crossbows that these lashings would hold much more draw weight than with this 50 pound bulk in handle so now it's secured nice and it's the string is made of dachron but you can use hemp or silk or natural materials if you want but and if it's the same as every other late European crossbow is that it has a push pin and this pin is just pushes up similar to African crossbows similar to African crossbows where it has a push pin design as well and the Scandinavian ones where it just pushes up these are all in the same trigger family the easiest way to make this more powerful is to have a much longer draw power stroke and to do that you can maximize your your seat when you pull all the way here you actually have a lot more than that you can actually go all the way here and then go all the way there to maximize your power stroke but this one it only goes up to here so if you want a much longer power stroke you want something designed all the way there so let's look closely at the action and you can see the brace height is set here which means when you pull it to to here now the string is supposed to catch onto that lash this one the brace height is a little low but if it's high enough it'll catch and then you pull it all the way but we're not going to dry fire this because you pull it all the way that pin at the bottom was just push the string up when it's drawn to its full draw position that pin will push up the string because the pin hits this portion of the stock and that's how the repeating action is done on these later variants the earlier warring states trigger mechanisms is a lot more complicated than this when it comes to the magazine it's a fixed magazine no you don't have to touch for magazines that was not an idea back in the day and I hope you enjoyed this educational video