Talk:Rapid fire crossbow

Merger proposal
I propose to merge the article Repeating crossbow into this one. The current title of this article is a bit misleading as it suggests a general category but the article is about one particular proposal, indeed one never implemented. The repeating crossbow is an example of the same idea and was actually used extensively in warfare. The two articles are about instantiations of the same general idea. I thought that this was obvious and therefore went ahead with the merger but someone apparently objects, though he cites no reasons.Bill (talk) 19:10, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Oppose The idea is similar, agreed. However the actuality is from two different continents, and nearly 1500 years apart. Leonardo's also is a quick-cocking crossbow, but does not have the automatic self-loading magazine of the Chinese weapon. Nor is there any indication of Leonardo's having been built, until recently.  So a merger seems inappropriate, and to merge the Chinese example to the more recently created and much sparser article about a weapon which only had half of the abilities and never even existed, seems particularly bizarre. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:37, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Rename proposal and Codex Loffelholz
I'd like to propose renaming the article, as it's somewhat misleading as it currently stands. First of all, "rapidfire crossbow" is not a correct translation of balestra veloce. The correst one is "fast crossbow". Furthermore, the term "rapidfire" invokes images of an almost machine gun-like device, implying that this is a crossbow with a magazine, firing shot after shot. But that's not the case, since the balestra veloce is not repeating crossbow, but a single-shot crossbow with a built-in spanning lever. It is also not a firearm, therefore it can shoot things, but cannot fire things (there is no chemical to light for the shooting process). Proof of this confusion is that, earlier in this discussion, Billposer outright confused it with being one and the same technology-wise to the Chinese repeating crossbows, despite the fact that the balestra veloce is a single-shot. The BV crossbow does not have a magazine that automatically reloads bolts after each bowstring spanning. It is merely a crossbow that is easier to span relatively quickly without the need for a separate spanning tool. I think it's necessary to rename the article either to "fast crossbow" or "fast-shooting crossbow" or Leonardo da Vinci's fast-shooting crossbow". Or something similar.

Finally, this is not the only late 15th and early 16th century European crossbow with this exact style of built-in spanning lever. The German manuscript Codex Löffelholz (p. 17) also contains a detailed illustration of a crossbow with the exact same design as the balestra veloce. I don't know if it was at all influenced by the Leonardo da Vinci crossbow, but regardless, a German-speaking manuscript featured the same design in the first decade of the 1500s. And similarly to the balestra veloce, a working replica of the CL lever-action crossbow has been made, by a research team in Switzerland. It is unlkely this one was any more common han the BV, but it did clearly exist at least as a concept.

--ZemplinTemplar (talk) 13:59, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Of note is that much of the article's current content, per the edit summaries in the article history, is WP:OR, which may explain some of the extravagant and inaccurate claims. ComicsAreJustAllRight (talk) 05:52, 26 January 2021 (UTC)


 * it's also completely unclear what this crossbow does due to no definition of "spanning" either here or linked 2A02:C7F:7AAE:500:ED3B:EC77:7A6A:A39 (talk) 21:57, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Original research
Article at this point is largely constructed from one anonymous-IP user's original research per the edit history, making much of its content about the mechanics of the invention dubious. ComicsAreJustAllRight (talk) 05:49, 26 January 2021 (UTC)