Trebuchet complete

[johnridley]

well, mostly. Everything's built. I need to adjust some stuff, I need to buy some rope and make a sling, I need to buy some more hardware to really secure the weight box. The throwing arm needs to be trimmed and some hardware added.

I had these ridiculous ideas of having some people just pull down on the sling to get the thing ready to fire. WRONG. We dry fired it with no weight in the box, and it took three of us to pull it down, and I was nervous about that. I could hold it down myself without too much trouble, but it's awkward to pull down, and the whole time you're thinking "if someone lets go, this is going to tear up my hands and hurt me."

Luckily I did buy a winch for this project. I will need to find pulleys too. Lowes only has really crappy 200 pound pulleys that I put back on the shelf, I don't trust them. I don't think I'd even trust them with their rated weight.

Ah, I see Harbor Freight has decent-looking double-pulley blocks rated 300 pounds. One more reason for a trip there tomorrow.

Oh well, this wouldn't be a berzerker project if I just showed up with it ready to rock. There'll be plenty of participation with this project.

For your enjoyment...

Comments

[ann-totusek.livejournal.com]

I can hardly wait to play! And we're bringing our 7-year old- ordnance? As long as we give him a crash helmet and parachute? :) Seriously, I know that madtechie2718 usually blows up a watermelon- what say we get some more of them and launch them?

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

I've already heard suggestions of throwing a watermelon with a bomb in it. That would only be really cool if it blew up in mid-air. That might be a good thing to try once we're really sure the thing is repeatable. We'll want to wait to launch until the fuse is short, but we won't want to do it if the thing is throwing stuff backwards, or straight in the air, etc.

[erikvolson.livejournal.com]

A long trigger line is important, in case the fuse is too short.