Speaking of campfires...

[JacksonCash]

On my camping vacation this summer some friends and I decided to make something a bit bigger than a bow.



We built a trebuchet. There was very little planning that went into it. Me and one other guy were the only two in on it before hand. Plan was to make it out of materials we had there, or could bring in our limited luggage. I packed 3000 feet of twine, 50 feet of rope, some canvas and some hand tools (hatchet, hand saw, chisels, pocket knife). We did some crude joinery on the posts, then wrapped them with a ton of twine. We did end up throwing a couple of nails into a few key areas, but nothing that was very key. Mostly just to keep the logs from rolling as we tied them up.

Here's a few of us getting ready to fire it


And, here it is all torn down and put into storage, hopefully for use next year.


We christened it Jim (there were some urging for Gwendolyn, but as the guy who carved the name into the arm... Jim was good enough). Its axle sat 9'2" off the ground, and the arm was about 19' above the axle. It was bigger than anticipated. The next generation will have a similar weight, but a smaller arm, so it can be swung a bit easier.

Oh, and here is a link to a video with the last thing we threw. It was a beer. Into the water. I was told "hey, throw me a beer... with the trebuchet" by my cohort in planning, so we did(not me in the video however). This was our last can, and ended up being our farthest throw. Enjoy!
http://youtu.be/DXc5PmLN5to

[Thesquirrelslinger]

holy **** cow. that is amazingly, freakingly, insanely, carppity smacking awesome.

[JacksonCash]

Heh, thanks! It was a lot of fun to build, and didn't fall down when we tried to shoot it, so I call it a success. Now we can work towards throwing farther.

[Parnell]

That's fun.  I build one with students here at work two years ago.  Interesting!

[Marks]

That's a nice one.

Many moons ago in boyscouts we built a smaller one at a camporee. Each troop was build something using only lashing and wood. The troop next to us built a tower with a rope bridge. Naturally we built a trebuchet to bomb water balloons at the tower. I think our arm was only 8-10'. Later on we moved our attack to a police car parked nearby. The officer had to roll his window up but he was a good sport. We got pretty accurate with that thing. We just made a pocket using twine in the fork in the end of our throwing arm.

[JacksonCash]

We just made a pocket using twine in the fork in the end of our throwing arm.

How well did the fixed pocket work? We spent a lot of time fiddling with the length of the sling to get the shot we wanted.

[Marks]

It worked well enough to bomb the neighboring tower about 30-40 yards away. I'm sure we didn't get the power that a sling would get but we were just kids . We built a stop on the bottom side of the arm so we would get the same release point every time. Ours was also man powered instead of counterweighted like a true trebuchet. We used a rope and pulley to pull the arm how ever hard we wanted from behind.  That way you controlled distance by how hard you pulled instead of how much weight.

So it sounds like we may be comparing apples and oranges. The sling=power while the pocket=consistant release point. Both=fun

[JacksonCash]

I was wondering about the hardstop. We are thinking about building a torsion powered catapult of some kind next year with a fixed release point. Our sling got pretty beat up over just a couple of days and nearly came apart, so at the very least we need to make a better sling!

[Thesquirrelslinger]

yep- a sling can double if not triple the range of a big trebuchet.
nice job.