Getting Medieval on your arse.

So, the trebuchet was a HUGE success. It took us about 14 hours total to build, planning all along the way.



Left to Right: Matt, Rudy, Me, and Jeff built this sucker with special consideration going to Patrick for helping before the hard work started. Jeff (Master of the Chainsaw) worked his wizardry on the forest while Matt (Jungle Math) calculated all the angles and lengths using a stick on the ground in the forest. I was there, obviously for my good looks, but mostly cause I was bigand could carry heavy stuff. Rudy supplied the farm courtesy of his wonderful parents, and miscellaneous girls provided food and criticism. We used trees for the frame, I think they were mostly elm, and used "Ironwood" for the swing-arm. My contributions were the concept for the firing mechanism, which worked wonderfully, and building the sling. I made the sling out of a scrap of carpet, attached it to 7ft of rope on either end and gave it a custom sewing job for strength. The counterweight was provided by the tractor weights, 100lb aprox each, which we slid on as we went.

We got 6 shots off before the thing almost busted (notice the bend in the axle in the top picture). Here's the details in order. (shot #, projectile weight, distance, and counterweight)

1 - 5lb - 151ft - 400lb
2 - 20lb - 32ft - 400lb
3 - 20lb - 68ft - 600lb
4 - 5lb - 252ft - 600lb
5 - 11lb - 166ft - 600lb
6 - 11lb - 215ft - 800lb

*note that there was one throw that was stricken from the record for being tremendously anti-climactic. The baseball was much too light for our setup and barely got out of the sling.

It was quite something to watch the thing take off, as it was quite quick and very smoothe. Probably the most remarkable part was the spin that the rocks had when they left the sling. LEFT is a pic of the crater left by the 20 lb rock on it's first throw. It only went 32 ft forwards, but it was probably 150 ft in the air. The hole it left was at least 6 inches deep. All of our shots were quite accurate, the first 4 landing in a straight line from the trebuchet, and the other 2 deviating slightly due to the bend in the axle.

Good times had all around and great anticipation for the day soon to come, Pumpkin throwing at Halloween... I will post videos if I can figure it out.