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Our neighbor downstairs randomly gave me this crossbow today
(thelemmy.club)
Which is really ironic, as my late father is the formal registered inventor of the Folding Crossbow.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US4926834A/en
No, this one isn't a folding crossbow, but it does seem powerful enough to potentially be deadly. It's raining today so I'll have to wait for a good weather day and find an old used slab of wood for target practice.
I assume that your neighbour didn't know about the patent (wouldn't be ironic otherwise). Did you grow up firing crossbows, or did younger you just think of it as some weird hobby your dad had?
She surely had no idea my dad invented that. I recently made her name Naomi out of coathanger (look at my most recent post history, https://lemmy.world/post/47145754) so even though she had no idea of that, she does know that someone taught me some creative arts and crafts..
Younger me as a child while he was getting his patent registered, I wasn't allowed to use it, but I was totally allowed to see it and watch him use and test it. I had accidentally shot myself in my right arm when I was only 3, with a loaded BB/pellet gun, so daddy played it much safer around me, until age 10.
That's when he took me out for target practice and gun safety training, plus I was allowed to try his crossbow out a few times. His prototype used old Volkswagen leaf springs for the actual bows, but as it turned out, the final result wasn't extremely powerful, but was powerful enough to demonstrate the concept and grant him a patent.
Daddy would actually use his prototype indoors and shoot at the walls though, to kill cockroaches, (sad) LMFAO!
Uhm what?? With bolts? Or something more likely to hit a roach?
He had originally made 4 arrows for it, 3 with blunt end tips and one with a razor sharp arrow head meant for hunting. He never actually took it out for hunting, it simply wasn't powerful enough for that, but he would shoot those blunt tip arrows indoors at cockroaches (those big waterbug type roaches) whenever one would pop up. It wouldn't even penetrate the walls, it would just leave small dents, but it was his house and he didn't give a shit LOL!