To make a bow.

Sat Jul 28, 2012 8:27 pm

The young Umtari, academy student as he was at the time, had long been thinking over how best to get an edge on his opponent. He knew that he wanted to engage his opponent whilst exposing himself to the minimum of risk, preferably something that would complement his inclination towards strike and fade combat and not be too energy intensive. A bow of some description was an obvious choice, though exactly what kind of bow was another matter. The traditional wisdom said he should use a longbow but Umtari was never a man to accept the traditional wisdom without question. After all the traditional wisdom told him to stand his ground and fight face to face with his opponent in honourable combat, a stupid idea if ever Umtari had heard one.

The crossbow seemed a more attractive prospect, modern designs were outperforming the more traditional longbow, it was easier to carry and instinct told Umtari that the crossbow would be an easier weapon to improve. However, an obstacle instantly presented itself, money. Whilst standard crossbows were quite commonplace they were still well beyond the power of the boy’s purse. After all he had no family here to support him, he just showed up at the village gates one day and has been surviving on their kindness and charity ever since. As such money was something he lacked. He was however, in possession of both time and determination and perhaps that would be all he needed.

The village library was well stocked, as you would expect any library attached to an academy to be. One text book laid out the fundamental principles of a cross bow and provided details on their construction. However, the text assumed a level of knowledge Umtari did not yet possess, it assumed the reader knew about carpentry and how to work wood. So Umtari’s first step was to work for the local carpenter. He would do this during his evenings and weekends when he was not busy with his studies. His wages were meagre but the kindly store owner agreed to let Umtari use the tools as much as he wanted when they were not being used for commercial work and access to all the scrap wood he could lay his hands on.

Umtari spent the next several weeks learning the basics of carpentry, learning how to use every tool, the varying qualities of different woods and so on. Umtari had something of a knack for the trade and after roughly a month he was able to make basic items such as chairs and tables. Umtari kept on working for the carpenter, saving every penny of his wages, but now he was in possession of the basic skills he felt confident enough to turn his attention back to his pet project.

The main body of the crossbow was easy to make, it was a solid block of wood with a grove in which the arrow could rest and be propelled along. So long as the grove was smooth, dead straight and wide enough to take the bolt without letting it be so wide that the bolt rattled about, then then that section of the bow would function perfectly well. Crafting straight lines, smooth surfaces and accurate dimensions were all skills imparted to Umtari by the carpenter and the boy had no difficulty applying this knowledge to his project. The arms of the crossbow though, they were much more difficult.

After all, they had to bend. But if they did not bend far enough the bolt would not fly with appropriate force, if it all. Bend too far and the arms would snap. To add complexity to this matter different types of wood would bend different amounts under the same pressure and some woods would snap after bending only a few degrees. Umtari knew that using hard woods such as oak would be pointless. It would take an ox to make them bend and they would sooner snap anyway. Instead he turned his attention to yew. Yew was the old go to wood for bows, strong, bendable, excellent at storing energy and durable. Getting a hold of the yew however, would be a problem. It was not a wood used for much else other than bows and since bows had long since fallen out of favour with the ranks of the ninja there was not much of it left lying around. In order to obtain it Umtari was going to have to find a yew tree, a task he set to at once.

Again, utilising the excellent library Umtari familiarised himself with the yew tree before setting off into the forest to find the all-important timber. The search was not particularly difficult, Umtari could move though these woods as easily as most people could walk down the street and he knew the area. Working off memory he swiftly found a tree matching the description of a yew tree and proceeded to cut off several thick bows and branches, as many as he dared before he thought he was going to kill the tree. Taking the gathered wood back to the carpenter’s work shop he set about making the arms of the crossbow. Around him lay the broken arms of some previous efforts where he had tried using lower quality wood. That practice had not been fruitless because, whilst every effort eventually ended in failure, he had been able to get the shape right, the gentle backward curve of the arms which in turn meant he would waste a minimum of his precious yew. Or so Umtari thought.

The first attempt snapped disappointingly quickly, the text books did not suggest that this should happen. Resorting to common sense and intuition Umtari decided to ease the arms into the high stresses that they would be required to stand. He did this by strining them and then hanging a weight off of the string, much less than the eventual draw weight. He would then let it hang like this for a while before adding more weight, and more, and more and then reversing the process to gently introduce the wood to the bending it would need to do. On one unfortunate occasion Umtari left the weights on overnight, only to return the next day to discover the wood had permenantly warped into that position and would not return. None the less, the principle was sound and when he eventually put some arms through successful stress testing he was left with a decent crossbow.

Many boys would have stopped here. He had just built, from scratch, a perfectly serviceable weapon. But Umtari did not simply want a serviceable weapon, he wanted a master weapon something any ninja would be proud to carry, not the weapon of some levy peasant. This required two things. One, the weapon needed to be able to fire father, more powerfully and more accurately than its more mundane counter parts. And two, it had to have certain features about it which made it more than just an excellent version of a conventional weapon and turned it into something unique, something revolutionary.

The first problem he concerned himself with was range. Again his mind turned towards the yew longbows of old. They had increased their power and range by using younger, more supple wood for the inside curve and older, harder wood for the outside. The outside would have to bend less than the inside and so could afford to be slightly less flexible. The old wood was indeed less flexible than the young wood, but it held more power when drawn back and so granted more power to the arrow when released, though it did increase the draw weight somewhat. Umtari opted to emulate this approach in his cross bow arms with some success. The difference in power and range was not vast but it was noticeable, the problem came in binding the old wood to the new wood. After all, they came from two separate trees and if they came apart the crossbow could half snap half explode in your hands. Simple super glue was a good start but it needed more. Umtari also attempted to tie the bow together with sturdy string but this proved to be little more than a token effort, a slight change in environmental conditions and the strings would become too lose. He needed a substance which would expand and shrink with the bow, but which could remain tight. Again he turned to an old solution, treated animal sinew. The sinew was not hard to find, Umtari knew how to gut and butcher an animal carcass and he knew how to make the carcass in the first place. This proved to be an excellent solution in the short term and his compound crossbow held together, but as time would go on and Umtari made ever more complex bows, not even animal sinew would stand up to the task.

His construction of old and new yew was a step in the right direction but not enough. Umtari wanted to sap every inch of power out of the arms that he could. This meant more than just having two different types of wood, one for the inside and one for the outside. It meant splitting the arm down into six, seven, maybe even eight different layers and picking the optimal materials for that thin strip. Ideally Umtari wanted to pick something for the outermost layers that would barely bend at all. But as his plans for the arms got ever more ambitious the draw weight grew higher and higher. Umtari swiftly realised that soon he would be unable to draw the string back quickly. In fact it looked as though he would have to use both hands and a foot stirrup the way things were going, after all he was not the strongest ninja there had ever been. Having to draw the string back via this method was unacceptable, it was slow, exhausting and near impossible if he happened to be up in a tree or anywhere else that was not solid ground.

So, alongside developing incredibly strong arms Umtari had to devise some method of drawing the string back. He considered all sorts of methods such as a wooden lever he could press on repeatedly, each press drawing the string back slightly and then catching the string in wooden teeth to prevent it snapping back prematurely. Whilst this would allow him to draw the string back with one hand it would still be quite energy intensive and unforgivably slow. Another possibility was to attach the arms or string to thin ropes or cables which fed to a hand crank on the side of the weapon. Using different sized gears the user’s strength could be amplified and every turn of the crank would draw the arms back some considerable way, further more by angling the teeth of the gears Umtari could prevent a premature snap back. Whilst this was still not an idea solution, as doing so would inevitable throw of his aim if Umtari was attempting to his the same target twice as well as being still a tad slow, it was the best option currently available to the young student.

This solution was mechanically simple, but still Umtari wanted to practice. Drawing up plans on the chalkboard after classes had finished for the day he worked out the optimal gear ratios and made a detailed sketch plan of the design. Umtari would have left the plans up there to surprise his teacher with the next day but Umtari was something of a suspicious, if not paranoid boy. He did not want his classmates to know what he was doing, certainly not the details, lest they try to foil his plans now as a boyish prank or use the knowledge to best him latter in battle. So, after making a paper copy of the plans, he destroyed the work on the chalk board and set off to the carpenters to make the gears. Ultimately the gears would be made of metal, in order to better stand up to the demanding stresses. But for now all Umtari needed was a working model

With his skills creating the simple gears was the work of a few minutes and assembling them and attaching them to the yew crossbow was also a simple task. Once all the parts were in place it was time to test the mechanism. Placing his hand firmly on the handle Umtari turned the crank, it was more energy intensive than he had been expecting. He occasionally had to let out a grunt or hiss of effort even with the gear ratio helping him. But, after a little while, the string was drawn back and ready to go. The wooden gear mechanism had taken some damage and was creaking under the strain, but at least Umtari knew the system worked. The problem was it did not work well enough. Even with metal gears he knew it would be too slow and too labour intensive. Plus the crossbow shook and jerked around as he cranked it, making hitting the same spot twice near impossible.

It was at this point that Umtari realised that he would need a fully automated system to draw back the bow if he were to achieve the desired results. This was a daunting prospect, to his knowledge nothing of that sort had ever been achieved before. For the next few days, after classes and outside of his work at the carpenters, Umtari could be found hunched over his desk, feverishly working on plan after plan. He would sit, bent double like some old hag in the dark, the sole illumination a sputtering candle as he scribbled like a mad man. As the days past he would start to mumble, talk to himself, gradually growing more and more frustrated as the solution eluded him.

His first thought was hydraulics but that idea was swiftly thrown away, the valves and tubes would be too large and in order to move the pistons whilst having the fluid at a sufficient pressure he would have to create some sort of motor or generator which he would strap to his back. This was clearly a nonstarter as the weight would become too great and the space taken up would be unacceptable.

His mind kept on being drawn back to mechanics, to gears, cogs and wheels. After all, the hand crank had been the best solution thus far. Surely if he just build on that idea then everything would be fine but he kept on arriving at the same stumbling block time and time again, power. Some how he had to power the automated mechanism and the task seemed impossible. But Umtari was stubborn as well as patient, and though the frustration was starting to madden him he would not give up. He kept on working, the obsession was growing unhealthy. Sometimes he would go for prolonged periods without food or sleep, he would become so engrossed, so obsessed that he simply forgot to fulfil his basic bodily needs. It started to affect his head, things botherd him that never bothered him before like the tick tock of his clock. Tick tock….tick tock…tick took. Why wouldn’t it just shut up!

About to snap Umtari rose and strode over to his clock, picking it up to throw it upon the ground and smash it into oblivion when he suddenly stopped, inspiration had come. Clock work. More specifically the highly wound coil springs. Those things could keep a clock going for decades and they were low powered. A larger spring, made of a denser material and wound to the point of shattering could easily power the bow, or so Umtari reasoned. The next day he went to the library again, and obtained a book on the essential mechanics of clockwork. He had no intention of manufacturing the clockwork parts himself, he lacked the time to develop the metal working skills as well as the wood working ones. He was however, going to assemble the parts once constructed. Once he had read how to properly place and control coil springs the rest of the plans seemed to fall into place almost too easily. He had the odd hiccup here and there but soon he hit upon something workable. Once it was done he looked upon the drawings for the draw system with a small sense of pride. His solution was elegant in it’s simplicity.

The eventual final design for the automatic drawback system on the cross bow was a complex collection of springs, magnets rods and spools. Sitting in the centre of the mechanism lay a spool capable of taking all the cable which was connected to the main string and which drew it back. Through the centre of this spool, on the horizontal axis, ran two rods which meet at the middle. On the other end of each of these rods were coil springs. These rods have teeth which lock in to both the centre of the spool and the spring mechanism. The springs, as they naturally want to uncoil themselves, rotate the rods which in turn reel the spool back which draws in the cable and brought the bow into a firing position. When the arms are drawn back and the cable on the spool at its tightest the process stops as the springs have no further ability to uncoil. For safety purposes the spool was covered in an outer shell of slanted ridges into which a safety catch neatly fitted. Due to the slanted nature of the ridges the spool was able to reel in freely but could only be released when the catch is removed.

When the trigger was pulled a cable attached to the trigger pulls the safety catch back, however the tension in the springs would still prevent the weapon from firing. Two other cables attached to the trigger lead to magnets which satt in neat channels, held at the far end of the channel by a weak spring. As these magnets are drawn back they draw parallel with the coil springs attached to the spool. The rods connecting the two are made of a magnetic metal and are drawn towards the magnets. This disengages the rods from the spool meaning it was now free to act. The tensions in the bows arms are now finally released and they snap forward, propelling the bolt. In order to prevent the coil springs totally unwinding when they are disengaged from the spool the magnets were also attached to small plates which press tight against the spring when drawn back, preventing the spring from unwinding.

When the trigger was released the safety catch falls back down and the weak springs push the magnets back up. The rods, which were slightly weighted at one end, slid back into the spool, the springs drove the spool and the whole system resets. This process was designed to occur in just a few moments and was mechanically quite reliable. The only weakness is the springs which would eventually tire and lose their energy. However, the coil springs can be well made and tightly wound similar to a clockwork watch and have roughly the same lifespan, meaning the springs in this mechanism could last for years before needing to be replaced.

The design was good, the design was sound. Now it simply needed to be tested. Again, Umtari turned to the carpenters workshop. He eagerly crafted the all the components he could, with a sparkle in his eye and a high zeal you might expect to see in child on Christmas morning. He was close now, he knew it. The coil springs were harder to get a hold of. For now Umtari did not need high quality springs but rather something cheap and low powered. After all Umtari was only going to be testing on wooden components and with low stresses, he just wanted to make sure all the components would interact as he hoped. Ultimately he sourced these springs by children’s windup toy and taking them apart to get at the springs. Once that was done it was a simple matter of constructing his wooden mock up with little more than a twig to stand in as the bow arms.

Once the model was built he started to test it. Much to his delight all seemed to go well. True there were some slight problems revolving around the magnets which were drawn back to withdraw the spool rods. But after some minor tweaks where the magnets traveling grove was made smoother and the weighting of the rods was altered all seemed to function well. Umtari made careful note of the alterations to his plan and then resolved to order the constituent parts from a local metal smith, but not quite yet. Now Umtari had found a way of pulling back the string without manul effort it meant he could greatly increase the draw weight of the bow without having to tire himself out in combat.

Returning to the designs for the arms of the bow Umtari broke the structure down into several more layers and researched, in depth, some of the ancient techniques for constructing bows of note or legend. Of course a lot of this related to chakra being channelled into the wood but Umtari dismissed those for now, they were lessons for another day. For the moment he was interested in a more mundane, mechanical construction. Umtari readily hit upon a very promising start. He discovered that, in addition to graduating from hard wood to soft wood it was advisable for him to have a thin layer of horn on the inside curve of his bow, followed by a layer of low fat sinew soaked in animal glue. These two materials curve quite well and can hold a huge degree of force. Graduating away from the wielder soft yew followed by hard yew could still be used but more woods could also be added to the mix for improved results. Maple could be used towards the outside and even a very thin layer of near rock hard oak. In some extreme cases a thin layer of steel was used as the final working outside layer. All this would be bound by animal glue but Umtari also resolved to literally weave the pieces together with a thin steel thread to lend extra cohesion.

This would however, be a complex process and quite time consuming in the manufacture and even longer in the preparation. The arms would have to be hung to dry for months as they strengthened, but once done they would be superb so long as they had been properly constructed. Sourcing the materials would be quite an interesting process. The horn and the sinew would be quite simple. All Umtari would have to do was find a stag and kill it. The yew to would be easy. Previously he had been willing to use slightly lower quality yew, taken from the branches but for this serious effort towards the finished product he would require the best section of wood possible, from the trunk. He was willing to chop down a tree or two for this effort. Oak would also be simple, it grew locally and was readily identifiable. The maple and steel though would be different. Umtari would have to purchase both. Umtari had been saving his wages from the carpentry job in order to fund this bow making project and he had also obtained the odd ryo here and there from a number of sources, all of which went into the pot to buy components that he could not make himself.

The kind carpenter was good enough to offer his services in purchasing the maple, he could get a discount from most of the local traders and the man had been wanting to use some new woods lately any way. The steel though, that was an altogether different prospect. Umtari wisely chose to avoid the local foundry, a sprawling complex designed to outfit the military, major industry and mass produce common shinobi tools such as kunai which were being consumed by the hundreds if not the thousands. Instead Umtari turned his attention to small, private enterprises. One local smith had a decent enough reputation for making quality metal but he was known to be surely and disrespectful, particularly towards snot nosed young ninja who he saw as little more than pond life, lord knows what he would do to an academy student. But Umtari was not about to be dissuaded by a simple blacksmith who needed to be reminded of his place.

Proceeding smartly to the smith, ryo readily to hand and very specific instructions in his pocket, Umtari presented himself at the man’s shop. After a short wait the blacksmith presented himself. He had an appearance to match his reputation, tall, muscular, blackened with coal dust, hands red raw from hard work and an expression of pure loathing on his face.

“What do you want kid?” Barked the man. Not rising to the bait Umtari calmly replied.

“I have here detailed instructions for the creation of a slightly curved steel plate. As you can see it’s dimensions and the stresses it has to endure have all been laid out in detail.” Umtari produced the note and handed it over, adding. “I would appreciate it if you could put your best efforts into this work. I am approaching the culmination of what must now be a years work and I require three copies of this vital component.” The smith almost laughed his response.

“Get lost kid. I don’t have time to make your toys. I don’t know if you noticed but I’m busy making weapons for real shinobi, jounin, ANBU and the like. I have no time to spend on some pathetic mewling whelp barely out from his mother’s skirts.” Again Umtari refused to rise to the bait, calmly replying.

“Let me assure you, this metal will end up in a weapon of a high calibre, a weapon which will rest in the hands of a shinobi worthy of the name. Besides, I have the funds and you should not be concerned with much more than that.” The smith seemed unsure as to how to respond to this argument so instead he simply reached down, grabbed the plans and the money saying gruffly.

“I’m putting this on the bottom of my pile kid, you’re not worth anything much so don’t expect this job to be finished anytime soon.” Little did the smith know that time was something Umtari had plenty of. So, satisfied with the outcome, Umtari simply gave a curtious nod of his head and strode off towards his lodgings to continue his work. The construction of the arm would have to wait until the steel was ready but in the meantime the young student had plenty to be getting on with.

Some days later Umtari was still pondering on how to improve his weapon design. He was still obsessed with fire rates and keeping the weapon as steady as possible. The best way to achieve this was to automate as many functions as possible. Recently his attention had turned to creating an innovative loading mechanism. Turning his attention to solutions from history Umtari learned that crossbows had been magazine fed in the past, they were crude, unreliable affairs where the weapon was top loaded and the bolts came down due to gravity. This solution was completely unacceptable, top loading would make taking accurate aim near impossible plus the old method was prone to jamming. But Umtari sense there was something in the magazine solution. Perhaps the weapon could be fed from the bottom, that would certainly solve a number of problems.

Turning to his recent success with springs and magnets in the automated drawing mechanism Umtari decided to use the same methods again. Ideas flowed more freely now, he knew how to power his components and how to move things freely. The difficult part was getting the arrow into the base of the flight grove. The magazine could not be placed directly beneath the base of the grove as this would mean that a section of the grove would have to slide out of the way every time a bolt came up and then come back in underneath it. Not only would this have been difficult to achieve but the inevitable discrepancy between the moving part of the grove and the non-moving part would throw accuracy way off, even if the deviation was a few millimetres. Repeating the process of a wekk or two earlier, but without the maddening frustrated obsession, Umtari drew up several plans, all aiming at moving the bolt around but the difficulty lay in getting the device which would grab or push the bolt back into the original starting position. For a while Umtari skirted around the shape of the answer, he knew he was in roughly the right area, magnetic repulsion and attraction. The problem lay in getting the magnets poles to flip when Umtari wanted the bolt brought forward or back, especially since electro magnets were out of the question. Eventually though he hit upon a solution he was happy with, though there was no great Eureka moment this time around.

The final design for the automatic loading mechanism worked on similar principles to the drawing mechanism. At the base of the magazine was a plate with a spring, gently forcing the bolts upwards. On top of the magazine was a block of wood with a magnet embedded in it towards the stock end. This prevented the bolts springing up at an undesired time. Some way behind the block, concealed within a hollow chamber inside the stock, lay another magnet. This magnet had a nonmagnetic rod running through it which was attached to a coil spring which was prevented from unravelling by a small metal plate. At rest these magnets were aligned north to north, pushing the block which could run freely on runners in a small grove, away from the stock. When the trigger was pulled the plate holding in the coil spring is momentarily released, flipping the poles on the stock magnet. This drew the block back allowing one more bolt to be pushed up from the magazine. When the trigger was released the spring uncoils a little further, resetting the poles and driving the block forward, covering the magazine and pushing the bolt in front of it into the base of the flight grove, ready for firing. Again the spring was to be so tightly wound as to last years.

The design was magnificent, or so Umtari thought. He had struck upon a workable solution and one that no one else in the world had come up with. He felt a little swell of pride as he surveyed the plans and checked and rechecked his maths. There was only one major problem left, so far as Umtari could see, magnetic strength. The magnets had to be strong enough to do as he required but not so strong as to interfere with other nearby magnets or the bolts themselves. The latter was not too great a problem. The magnets were all some distance away from the bolt head and none of them were ever going to be ridiculously strong. Even if the magnetic fields did overlap with the bolt head the colossal force stored in the bow’s arms would be enough to readily overcome this obstacle and throw the bolt forward with minimum difficulty. The former problem however, was a little trickier.

Umtari investigated the concept of finding some way to insulated certain components against magnetism only to find such a thing to be near impossible. There was no substance which blocked magnetism out right or greatly dampened it in a manner similar to lead and radiation or wood and electricity. His studies suggested that there were ways you could use some substances which attracted the magnetic field lines away from other components, but this approach seemed nightmarishly complex and may even result in Umtari having to expend some chakra in order to do it properly. That was unacceptable, this weapon was supposed to be entirely independent of chakra. That would allow Umtari to use it in a much wider array of situations, do so without tiring him out and mean that he could keep on going for longer in the event he was forced into a straight fight.

This left Umtari with only one other course of action, choosing his magnets very carefully. Building the whole bow, secreting the magnets in various places and then seeing if everything worked would be a time consuming nightmare, as well as possibly being very costly. So instead Umtari turned to an old companion of the magnets that has fascinated children everywhere, iron filings. By working out the relative positions of all the various magnets, a task completed simply by glancing at the design sketches, and then laying the magnets out on a table, Umtari could then place a tray of iron filings on top of the magnets. As the filings were attracted to the magnets Umtari could see where the magnetic fields were, and how the overlapped. He would then swap out magnets, increasing and decreasing their strength as necessary, until he was happy with the distribution of magnetic fields. This process took a long time, days upon days of trial and error but with almost every alteration Umtari moved towards the optimal solution. Many of his fellow students would have given up in frustration after only a few hours, declaring the task impossible. Umtari was however, a patient soul and persevered. True, he would occasionally get massively frustrated to the point where he would have to stand up and pace off his anger but he never gave up. His resolve eventually paid off and he had an excellent combination of magnets which would not interfere with any components they were not supposed to.

Umtari had now overcome the greatest obstacle to his success, he had solved the two major design problems. Again Umtari had to construct a crude wooden mock-up of the loading mechanism and cannibalise a spring from a children’s toy but all the parts were working as intended. There was the odd minor hiccup here or there as some moving parts caught on each other but sanding things down and making teeth and groves more distinct where needed soon solved that problem. Umtari was now confident in his design. All he needed now was for someone to make the metal parts needed for this plan which Umtari could then assemble himself. Furthermore he needed to source the springs, come the real thing a pocket watch spring or the spring from a children’s toy was not going to cut it. He needed something much more powerful.

The rods and cogs were easy, Umtari simply commissioned the same gruff smith to make the parts and several spares in the event of an accident or the weapon requiring maintenance. The springs were hardy to come by. Umtari was forced to consult a local watch smith and obtain from him the supplier of his springs. Watch makers only ever employed the highest quality springs, so Umtari knew the manufacturer was good enough. Umtari would simply have to commission a special order from them. This would likely be the single most expensive investment and bleed Umtari near dry of the pot of money he had set aside for this ambitious project. But it had to be done, and so long as the manufacturer got their money and detailed specifications they were happy to oblige. They thought they were building the springs for a town hall clock or some other similar building, not a cross bow, but that did not matter. They delivered to standard and on time.

Still though, Umtari had to wait a while for all of this to come together. During this time he turned his attention to an element of the design that had so far gone neglected, the stock. Even though this was a crossbow it was still going to kick like a mule and if Umtari wanted to land accurate shots at long ranges he needed to be able to brace the weapon properly. Traditionally people had just tucked the base of the crossbow under their arms, only recently had people started to brace against their shoulders and so stock designs were still quite crude. Umtari took careful measurements of his shoulder and planed a piece of wood to match. This would mean the stock could snuggle neatly into his shoulder, but the kick would still be hard and if the wood just bounced off of the bone of his shoulder accuracy would be affected not to mention the intense discomfort bordering on pain. Umtari needed a way to cushion the blow, springs were the first thing to come to mind but their bounce back would be slightly uncontrolled and whilst the discomfort would be lessened accuracy would be unacceptable low. Instead Umtari turned to rubber, a thin layer of hard rubber on the inside curve of the stock should readily deal with the problem, comfort would still suffer a bit but Umtari could stomach that just so long as accuracy remained high.

After fashioning the rearmost section of the stock Umtari paused slightly, he still had to wait for the metal work to come in before he could set about building the main body of the bow. So, for a little while, he just kept on working at the carpenter’s shop to earn some extra money and put more time and effort into his conventional studies. After a few days however, it hit Umtari that he had forgotten something. He would soon have a bow capable of propelling bolts great distances and accurately but he had no way of taking good aim. He needed to be able place shots accurately, beyond what the human eye was generally capable of. Thankfully the technology to achieve this already existed. Telescopes and binoculars were quite mundane items, all he needed to do was adjust that technology to work well on a weapon. Were he in a better position financially Umtari would just commission the construction of the scope. This however, was no longer possible, his funds were meagre and he was already dreaming up yet more work for the metal smith. He would have to create the scope himself or steal telescopes, binoculars and the like, cannibalising them. The metal parts were simple they could be handed over to the smith for little to no cost. The skill, and therefore the primary expense, would be the lenses.

Again Umtari turned towards an old ally of his in this quest for his signature weapon, the library. The principles behind telescopes and binoculars were clearly laid out in a book entitled “practical optics” which served as something of a how to guide for lens makers. Taking several days to read the book through carefully Umtari made another detailed sketch, outlining how his scope would function. It was an intimidating mess of lenses and mounts but the principles were surprisingly simple once you knew how light behaved. Starting at the far end of the scope would lay a clean, flat piece of glass. This would simply serve to protect the more delicate inner components from grit and the like. A little way behind that would lay one thick and one thin lens called the ocular assembly. These would focus light towards a pin hole about one third of the way along the shaft. This would in turn feed to another double lens construction, but a smaller one which would flip the image again as the light approached the first focal plane reticle. However, just before the light reaches the first focal plane the light must pass through a seemingly pointless lens which is connected to a small knob on the side of the scope so as that it can be adjusted. This addition to the design allows for the correction of the parallax problem. This problem, first identified by sailors with their telescopes, would cause the cross hairs to appear slightly off centre when resting on targets at long range if the eye did not lay dead centre on the reticule. As the user corrected for this he would in fact move off target when previously he had been on target. Finally the light would flow towards the objective assembly lens and into the eye via a flat piece of glass at the back of the scope, again simply to prevent grit and dust getting inside the construction.

Thinking further on this plan Umtari pondered on two things, first if he could make the magnification variable and secondly if he could find some way of correcting for wind, movement and drop. The most obvious way to solve the first problem would simply to swap out lenses, causing the light to move in a different way. Whilst this solution would be simple to achieve if you had a little while to slid out the old lens and insert a new one it would not do if more rapid action was required. Ideally the user would just have to flick a switch or twist a knob and the magnification would be altered. Umtari sat and stared at the designs for some time, tracing his finger of the path of light and tapping it at every point where the light focused. He knew the focus points were the key, again he could feel the shape of the answer but not quite hit upon the solution, like a man fumbling for a door knob in the dark.

He couldn’t change the lens, not quickly. But he could move it. Umtari was staggering closer to the way round this problem. But moving any lens other than the parallax lens would only interfere with the image. But he could insert a new one. With this thought in his head Umtari fell upon the sketches again, theoretically inserting lenses at random points throughout the design and seeing how that affected the course of light. There were only a limited number of options and so it took but a few hours for the boy to brute force his way through the options and strike on something that worked. If he inserted a concave lens in between the ocular assembly and the second focal plane he could magnify the image. The closer the lens to the ocular assembly the smaller the magnification. It would be a simple enough task to get the lens to move, mount it on well-oiled rails and attach it to a small rod protruding from the side of the scope which could move along a narrow grove. The second problem, correcting for wind, movement and drop, would have to wait. For now Umtari could see no solution to that conundrum. But he had more than enough to be going on. With good, working plans for the scope drawn up Umtari proceeded to check and recheck his maths, forever adding to the list of decimal places he would count to and always reducing his margins for error. This process took a surprisingly long time. Evening after evening drifted away, the maths was not easy but not nearly as hard as Umtari was being on himself. Umtari needed to get his calculations for the lenses perfect first time, he would not have an opportunity to correct his mistakes and so he was driving himself to distraction to make sure he was right.

Eventually though, even Umtari became satisfied with his work. He knew what he needed and he drew up a detailed list of the lenses he would require. He then sat and wrestled with his conscience for some time. There was no way Umtari could obtain the lenses legally, not in the timescales available to him. If he wanted to get this scope he needed to resort to crime. Specifically he needed to break into the shop of a lens maker, a vendor in town would do fine, he made telescopes, binoculars and glasses. Once inside Umtari would have to located the lenses required and steal them before making good his escape and covering his tracks as best he could. Umtari was going to have to break the law and steal from an innocent man. But Umtari refused to let himself be stopped by these petty concerns. If Umtari did not go on the bow would never be complete, long range accuracy would never be as good as it could be. Enemies would survive attacks they previously would not have, these enemies may kill Umtari or do significant harm to the village. If the price of preventing that was an old man a little out of pocket then Umtari was willing to make him pay it. Besides, Umtari had worked too hard to stop now. So setting out in the deep of the night the student went about his business.

The raid was surprisingly easy, Umtari knew that whilst the town was patrolled by shinobi they were looking out not in, plus petty thieves tended to operate well beneath their radar. Combine this lack of sufficient attention with the fact that Umtari was a practiced stalker and it near guaranteed success. The locks on the shop’s back door were crude and primitive, no real obstacle for an experience thief let alone a ninja approaching the end of his training. After obtaining entry the boy was able to move freely throughout the store. He was light on his feet and the owner lived in a small flat some distance away, the chances of being disturbed were minimal. The store was well kept and by the light of the moon Umtari started going through the immaculately kept draws. There were hundreds, maybe even thousands of lenses here. Going through it all took time and the longer Umtari spent here the greater the chance of detection. After about an hour and a half of searching however, he hit upon the right combination. He then stole a few other random ones and misfiled others all to confuse the tracks just in case some bloodhound of the detective got the case. Looking at the cash register Umtari waged another brief war with his conscience before looting it. He did not need much of the money but it would help confuse that tracks, turn this targeted burglary into a run of the mill break in. Umtari then left and took a circuitous root to a dark alley on the far side of the street. From here he threw a stone though a window of the shop, no self-respecting shinobi would do that to break in, this further confused the trail. All of this done Umtari slowly slunk away.

Umtari stashed the lenses and cash in random, well hidden places. He did not want to be seen anywhere near anything of that description for a few weeks. He did however, craft a wooden working model of the scope with all the housing for the lenses, so when the coast was clear he could properly test the system. But it was not as if these days of lying low would be marked by inactivity. The surly and uncooperative smith had at last finished the curved steel plates needed to construct the arms of the crossbow. Upon collecting his order Umtari immediately returned to the carpenters and began work on the arms. He was going to make three copies, just in case there were mistakes or imperfections in the manufacture of one which would lead to bellow expected performance or breakages.

He had the materials all to hand, now it was just a matter of combining them in the manner he had prepared. Consulting his plans one last time in order to refresh his memory Umtari set to work. In moments past he had attacked his work with a boyish enthusiasm. Now however, his attitude was more controlled. Still enthusiastic to be sure but measured and reigned in, his brow furrowed with intense concentration. Every now and again Umtari would suddenly stop, seemingly without explanation, this was to steady a hand that had never been shaking or control breathing that ahd never gotten out of control. His mind was starting to make problems that did not exist, this task was too important to muck up but it was as if his mind was actively working against him. Crafting the wood and horn into the appropriate shape was easy, Umtari had plenty of practice at this, and it all fitted snugly into that final piece of steel that the surly blacksmith had carefully created. Umtari made a mental note to use the blacksmith again, what he lacked in manners he more than made up for in technical skill. The only real challenge came in the tiny steel thread. Umtari had to bore almost microscopic holes in the wood to pass the thread through and then loop it back further on. He was stitching wood but it would work. The holes were so small as to have no impact the ability of the wood to stand to stress but would bind the pieces together more strongly than even the animal glue could. Still though, the process was nerve racking and slow. It took Umtari about tree days to make each arm but when it was done it was a thing of beauty. Once the final arm had been completed Umtari stood back and surveyed his work for what might have been hours. They were going to hang here for months as they dried but even with such a long delay Umtari had a building sense of anticipation. These arms were probably amongst the finest and most complex ever constructed. Even the old carpenter was mightily impressed.

Despite the moths Umtari would have to wait they would not been entirely marked by inactivity. Not only did he continue with his studies, but after another two weeks the rest of the mechanical components were finished. Before collecting them Umtari recovered his stashed lenses and money. Returning to his lodgings he placed the lenses in the wooden mock up and tested to see that all was well with his design. Fortunately it was, everything seemed to work perfectly, even the magnification worked well. This was excellent news, Umtari did not want his criminal activities to be for nothing. But this also meant he could pass on the specifications for the housing to the metal smith, who could create the scope proper. This Umtari did, though without explaining what it was for, when he picked up the rest of his components. At the same time Umtari purchased a number of small metal plates that the smith had going spare. Much like the carpenter had scrap wood the smith had metal that was surplus to requirements and he was happy to part with them for a small price.

With everything he needed Umtari returned to the carpenters, a broad smile on his face. He knew how these components would fit together; they were an exact reconstruction of their wooden counterparts. The springs had also been recently delivered, every mechanical component could now be put together. There was only one real difference. In order to protect the components from external damage Umtari had decided to encase them in metal boxes. These metal boxes would have holes bored in them or sides left open where cords needed to feed through or bolts be passed out but otherwise they would be encased. This was why Umtari had bought the extra metal panels. These panels would be held together with a weaker glue which could readily be dissolved with the appropriate solvent. They would also be screwed together but nothing more substantial than that. This would allow for the boxes to be readily disassembled in order for maintenance to be performed but ensured they would not fall apart accidentally. All the tools needed to achieve this were readily available at the carpenters, after all no extreme heat was needed now.

The assembly was quick and simple, Umtari was so familiar with the design by now that he could almost do it in his sleep. Umtari then set about constructing the main body of the bow, all the way up to the stock. This took a little longer, he had to cut and plane the wood. Thankfully though there was plenty of wood to choose from and he did not have to worry about stresses anymore. Umtari chose to use some of his excess oak this time around, a little heavy yes but durable. It could stand up to damage well and was even abnormally resistant to fire for a tree, it even resisted warping due to heat and damp. It took Umtari a few days to properly craft the body of the bow, lovingly attending to every detail. He paid particular attention to the flight groove ensuring it was smooth and true. He did not want to throw off his accuracy because of something as elementary as this when he had put such work into every other feature of this glorious weapon. Umtari also had to leave open recesses to slide the metal boxes into and connect up the parts as needed.

Still though, the task was simple even though it took a while to do. When Umtari slid the boxes into the recesses he sealed them there with a few dabs of the dissolvable glue, this mean he could remove entire boxes if he had to. He then placed these wooden facades over the holes where the boxes had been placed and screwed the facades down. He then fixed the rear most section of the stock to the main body he had already created. As things currently stood the only clues that there were complex mechanical goings on under the frame of this weapon were a small cable protruding from the upside of the main boy and which would eventually be attached to a steel drawstring and a small hole just in front of the stock from which bolts could appear as if by magic.

It would still be some time before the scope was ready and even longer before the arms would be ready for use, Umtari decided to fill some of this time by creating a good number of the magazines he would eventually be using. For the moment he created fifteen, though more could readily be constructed. He did not see himself needing all these magazines quite yet but it was always good to have the capacity. They really were very simple, a wooden box designed to click into the base of the crossbow with a small metal plate in the base of the magazine with springs beneath. Considering what Umtari had done so far this was the simplest of tasks. This done though there was not much to do but wait for the two remaining components to be finished. He filled the time studying as ever, working on his fitness, his jutsu, all the things a student should work on. He also spent the time disposing of some of his ill-gotten cash. He set some aside for a crossbow contingency fund but the rest he got rid of, partly to make sure the crime could not get pined on him and partly to at least go some way to patching up the damage done. He could not give it back to the shop keep of course but bit by bit Umtari gave the money away. He would pay for items in struggling shops with too larger notes and then leave before being given his change, he would drop money in collection boxes and donate scraps to other charitable causes. He had not stolen that much money in the first place but he wanted to put as much of it as possible to good use.

Eventually though, the scope and arms were ready. The scope was simple to assemble, he just had to slide the lenses in then lock the metal sections of the scope together. The parallax nob worked well and the little protrusion which controlled magnification ran along a grove which was otherwise sealed with rubber, preventing grit from entering. It could also be locked in place to stop it jostling about. Umtari spent the next few days ranging the scope in, picking objects where he knew their size and distance, scoring off magnification points on the side of the scope. Similarly he worked out the appropriate parallax adjuster marks and noted them on the knob that controlled it. He also created a tiny plastic overlay which he folded into placed on top of the eye piece and tucked into a tiny little fold in the metal. This overlay had a carefully drawn cross hair upon it complete with tiny regular markings on both the horizontal and vertical axis. This was a recent creation of Umtari’s the thought only just having occurred. He reasoned that wind, movement and drop would all cause the bolt to travel a certain distance off centre. With practice Umtari could identify in what ways certain factors could throw the bolt off and then compare that to the markings, using that to adjust his aim. Once that was done and the overlay was in place he mounted the scope and turned to the final step, mounting the arms.

A wave of fear, excitement and anticipation ran over Umtari, this was a fateful moment. His hands nearly trembled as he guided the arms towards the body of the bow, slotting it neatly into place with a satisfying click, further sealing it there with animal glue. He then covered the join with a wafer thin layer of wood, and he did the same to the arms. These would in no way affect the bending of the arms, their impact was less than negligible. What they would do though was protect the animal glue which could occasionally falter if it was allowed to get too wet. This layer of wood prevented against that. It also disguised the truly complicated nature of the arms, the master work that went into it. It made it look like a single piece of wood, almost mundane. Umtari was going to paint the whole thing in a camouflage colour scheme, so he could blend in as well as possible but he had to fire the weapon. He could not put it off any longer. There had been years now, years between the first though occurring to Umtari and this moment, when he held the functioning weapon in his hands. Filling one magazine with normal bolts he took it down to the academy training yard and picked a practiced dummy to victimise. His fellow students, even instructors were looking at him in disbelief. Where had he gotten this weapon from? He had never mentioned it to them, and now here he was, ready to fire.

Bracing the weapon against his shoulder Umtari took in a deep breath and pulled the trigger. To Umtari time seemed to slow almost to a standstill. What happened in a fraction of a second seemed to take hours. The click of the trigger and the tock of the catch, the snap of the bowstring and the tiny rustle of fletching on wood. The hiss of slicing air and an almost imperceptible double thunk as a new bolt was passed up and a sound almost like a zip as the string drew back, followed by the rip of the straw man. The bolt went right through the target and embedded in the wall behind and all of this was followed by a few moments of stunned and slightly apprehensive silence. Umtari wanted to be sure the reload mechanism had worked so he pulled the trigger again. This time everything seemed to pass at normal speed as the bolt hurtled forward, tore through the straw man’s head and lodged deep into wall again. Taking a few moments he removed the magazine and the bolt that was currently sitting ready to fire before holding the weapon in front of him and smiling with pride.

“I made you” He whispered, just loud enough for everyone to hear. “I made you.”

((Please note these events took place in the recent past.))

Sat Jul 28, 2012 9:44 pm

Approved, nice job

To make a bow.

To make a bow.

Re: To make a bow.