Doing Da Vinci

[Badger]

   We also had a little problem with the steel ratchet for cranking, it was stripping the teeth of it. The teeth were 1" wide and 1" deep. We coudn't crank it to full power as it would have failed.
Zen, I wanted to go with the cup as ou discribed also. it would have worked great, almost like a muzzle.

[Justin Snyder]

Goodness Steve, you are a miracle worker. You managed to get the bow done without any huge fights. They doubted your bow skills, but it managed to be the strongest piece on the machine. 

[Gordon]

That was pretty cool. Good job scaling up your bow making skills!

[Badger]

   Gordon, I ran all the numbers past Woodbear ( David) he is real sharp engineer. They were pretty close to mine so I went with them. If we would have been further apart I would have trusted his numbers more than my own. Steve

[Dane]

Steve, I just rewatched the show (here I am working at 2:30 AM, but taking time for important things lol). I wonder what the team actually thought of the performace of that machine. The academic fellow seemed really psyched, but I didn't view it as much of a successs, other than they got the Davinci sketch into a workable form. As a war weapon, it seemed a total failure. Not because of your contribution, but because the design was not very good.

What did they actually learn from this project?

Dane

[Tom Leemans]

Good effort by the team, but I've never been impressed by any of DaVinci's designs where weaponry is involved. The giant crossbow he drew was doomed from the get go. I wanna see the Primitive Archer designed giant crossbow.

[Badger]

Tom, none of his weapons were practical or viable. They were angry when I told them this huge machine was proably only capable of 1# balls and that the throwing arm set up was worthless. I suspect that Da Vinci pledgerized his ideas and then attempted to make them look original. aspects of them were brilliant while other aspects defied logic. Steve

[Dane]

Steve, I'm glad to hear you say that. Not worshipping all things da Vinci seems almost sacraligeous, if you know what I mean. That professor who kept saying it looks medieval probably was one of the parties that was not happy with you.

I wonder if they addressed to you why Da Vinci is designing these kinds of machines in the face of real military technology of the time. I wonder why he bothered in the first place? The Greeks had already been doing giant crossbow like machines around 300 BC.

Dane

[Badger]

Dane, DaVinci was employed by the king as a military engineer and felt presssure to come up with new designs. He was very jealous of Michael Angelo at the time and I always have suspected this jealosy may have led him to do things less than ethical in an effort to gain favor over Michael Angeleo.
I built a couple of 1/8 scale models and changed the throwing arm to a trebuchet, raising it higher  so I could drop the arm further and it worked very well. We are throwing potatoes with it close to 100 yards on a good shot. Steve

[Dane]

Thanks for the info about Da Vinci.

Those models sound really neat. Any chance of posting some pictures of them? The little ones sound like they far outperform the big one made for the TV show.

These machines are a lot of work. I've been laboring for the last few days building a newly designed stand for my 2" catapult. It's mostly planing the legs and cross pieces and chiseling the mortises, but lots of fun. I like any excuse to use my mortising chisels. The idea is that the components break down easily for deployment and transporation on a Roman campaign.

Dane