Over the past year or so, I have been concocting an idea in my head for a trebuchet using old broken computer parts. This week, with most people away at a conference, it was pretty quiet, so I put it together in the time I had between work.
Here's some pics... the projectiles I used were some spacers from old 4gig hard drives, one with a paper clip to attach to the arm, the other with a more plyable strand of cat 5e wire.
Side view of trebuchet, loaded and ready for action. The counterweight is a collection of magnets from those 4gig hard drives, nice and easy to add/remove weight, stuck to a screw in the end of the pencil. The base is a hard drive caddy with an old 40gig hard drive, with 2 56k modems as the uprights. 
As can be seen here, I have used a wooden stem cotton swab as the axle, replacing the screw driver I initially used. I needed the screw driver elsewhere. I rigged a firing pin using a paper clip and a strand of cat5e ethernet wire attached to the modems. Video clip of trebuchet in action... not very clear. The distance between the 2 benches is about 8 ft, and I consistently hit the same target area in the corner in my test firing.
Dave and Kyla Cassidy came to visit us at the cottage later in the week. The were fresh off the tail end of their honeymoon. We went to Dorwin Falls in Rawdon and basked in nature... anyways, that was our vacation. Maybe next time I'll post earlier so I don't forget wha happen'd... 
