johnridley | Trebuchet complete

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...