Building a Yew Crossbow from Scratch

This week I’m mixing it up with a recurve crossbow build. We’ll be using an old board and a junk piece of Pacific Yew left over from building a longbow. With just scrap materials and hand tools we’re building a yew crossbow from scratch. Although I’ve build hundreds of selfbows, longbows and recurves, this is the first crossbow I’ve ever attempted. It was a fun project and definitely not the last one I’ll build. Anyone with basic woodworking skills and a few simple tools could build a simple crossbow like this in a day. I’m pretty impressed with the performance of the wooden crossbow. The cast and penetration on a foam target isn’t nearly as good as one of my longbows but for hunting at close range on small to medium game, it should work just fine. Heck, I may even build one and take it hog hunting this winter. If you’re into gaming, you might see something similar in the games Elden Ring or Albion online (I have no idea what that is but it’s a pretty popular search ter