I’ve wanted to build one for a long long time.
Serious enthusiasts are advised to get Sir Ralph Payne Galwey’s book, “The Crossbow”. It has numerous plans in it, including trebuchets. Very nicely detailed trebuchets! RPG’s book also has a number of period illustrations with observations and criticisms. “The Crossbow” is the ne plus ultra book on the subject.
Recently I saw “The Two Towers”. The siege scene, while not actually showing trebuchets, clearly indicated their usage as huge stones were effectively hurled across a river.
The trebuchet hound in me said, “Cool! Trebuchets!”
I will build one someday. (good idea for a 2003 resolution methinks.)
Here’s some plans. Of course, they’re all wimpy small versions, but it shouldn’t be too hard to scale them up to a decent size. I heard an interview with the guy who built the trebuchet after he published his book on building a catapult. He said that basically the reason he and his friend built the catapult was that they were bored! Ah, to have the money and time to do such things. chique you’re a woman after my own heart. Somewhere around here I have a Scientific American article by the guys on building the trebuchet, great stuff.
We built one for throwing snowballs when I was about 12 ears old. (We being my father and older brothers.) Design was not a traditional one though, was kind of a mutant cross between a spring catapult and a trebuchet. (Instead of a weight at the end of throwing arm, we used a length of old bike tire.)
Must have trebuchet. Must have trebuchet. Just sent plans to word working friend of mine and he says YES! he can build me one. I suppose my 12 year old son is going to want to borrow it…he’ll probably shoot his eye out.
I remember reading that article back in 1998 or so. I even dug it back out in 1999 when the company I was working for decided they were going to use the “Trebuchet” font on their new notepad PC.
According to the SciAm article, a rocking-counterweight trebuchet could hurl an automobile 80 meters. (They had to take the engine out of the car first, though.)
They built a car-hurling trebuchet in the last season of Scrapheap Challenge (the UK version of Junkyard Wars). Fantastic thing … unfortunately, they used a massive steel girder for their throwing arm, and got their sums a bit wrong, so it twisted out of shape before reaching the point of release … so the trebuchet flew to bits in a most spectacular manner …
There was a trebuchet in the movie, The Last Castle, with Robert Redford. Gee, it was so conveniently located in a corner, not too conspicuous, but easy for the convicts to get to. And it worked perfectly the first time, too. What are the chances of that?
Some day, I will get to teach Intermediate Mechanics, and I will make my students prove that a trebuchet that is allowed to roll on wheels can throw a load farther than one that is fixed to the ground. (Nice bit of basic mechanics, that.)
I actually designed a trebuchet and headed up its construction by our school science club. It used to have a 12’ throwing arm, but because of some…incidents (hehe)… I think it got shortened to around 9. We never officially measured how far it would launch a pumpkin, but suffice it to say, it’s a LONG way. It also has a 200-lb concrete counterweight capable of turning fingertips into pulp (hehe, I found that one out the hard way).