I am building a trebuchet.

RdEoSg said:
Ah didn't think of a metal ring. Thats a good idea!

Hey this is a classy contraption, whats the big idea of trying to dirty it up with one of them Nikon things!?!?!?!

One more bit of advice, if the base rocks violently as the counterweight is falling try fitting wheels, like Edward II did, it will then recoil slightly rather than stress the frame
 
Jon Claremont said:
Send a fish two to three streets away with your new toy. Wait for people to start talking about how a fish ended up in their yard.

LOL! Kind of like the Yard-A-Pult from SNL! :)

A few years ago I remember seeing a web page of somebody who actually made one of these. I just tried Googling it and it's not obvious or not up anymore.
 
Here's one I saw last summer at the Fortress of Varberg, Sweden. It fired oranges and melons about a 100 meters (which was quite scary since some of the stuff landed outside the fortress and an unexpected orange to the head is no joke).

(Sorry, these are DSLR photos from my old trusty D30.)

/Anders
 

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Wheels! another good tip.. It does shake a bit.. unfortunatly I didn't get everything quite true and lined up. as I was assembling and such I seem to have made it off a bit.. Nothing I can do to it though. Trebuchet II will be better ;)

On another note. I have successfuly layed siege to my neighbors fence :D:D:D
 
There is a tv ad for alcohol running in Australia at the moment that features an enterprising group of people on the top of a city building with a very large trebuchet. They are flinging all the necessary ingredients, hops malt etc and some other rather odd things, into the clouds in an attempt to get it to rain beer.

The ad, of course, does end with it raining beer indeed and everyone is suitably blissfull. At one stage they fling a couple of rather attractive females into the clouds for ......... well who knows what, but I suspect the feminists had an issue with that and rightly so!

We take our drinking very seriously in this country. :D Strangely enough I can't remember what the brand of beer is that's being peddled but the trebuchet sure impressed me! :)
 
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rvaubel said:
I love the word too. In fact if I was to be reincarnated as a famous photographer, I would prefer to be named Henri Cartier-Trebuchet.

Rex Trebuchet

Ah oui! Better ze sree butchers zen ze one baker, n'est-ce que pas?

(My nickname for HCB is Henri-Boulanger-Croissant).

Seriously, I saw two "siege engines" at Les-Baux-de-Provence a few years ago. They were full-sized models built from the original plans. Pretty scary-looking. I have the negs somewhere, but it was a dull day, so the pictures didn't say "scan me."

Here's a picture of the Trebuchet at Les Baux:
http://www.tedsimages.com/text/trebuch.htm

There was also some kind of giant crossbow machine, about 4 pictures down on this page:
http://www.provenceweb.fr/e/bouches/baux/baux.htm

--Peter
 
That commercial is great!!!

Well. I have managed to launch baseballs about 30-20 feet. Not so great but I think its the limit of my off balanced trebuchet! Unfortunatly I don't have a good drill press so getting everything lined up exact is a bit hard. There is just too much vibration in it and I think it is losing a lot of the power as it swings...

Still. It was great fun to build!!!! I'll post a photo of the complete trebuchet in a bit ;)
 
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