The Greatest Weekend Ever?

treb·u·chet - n. - A medieval catapult for hurling heavy stones.

... and that's how it began. We had the idea, we had the motivation, we had the farm (thanks to Rudy's parents), we had the supplies (again, graciously supplied by the Eigenheer's), we had the weekend, and of course, we had the insanity.

The planning was pretty much done on the fly, so first up was a trip to the woods to get the necessary lumber using jungle math and hauling them back to the workshop. Saturday night consisted of Dan, Patrick, Rudy, Jeff, and I deciding what log gets used for what, and the building of the first half of the frame. The night wound down with a campfire complete with super campfire sandwiches. After that, I roughed it by camping... in the basement of Rudy's parent's house.

On Sunday, the goal was set out to complete this project. The odds were against us, as we were down one man and some snags were hit thanks to our goal of making do with what we had. (The picture to the right is just to prove that, yes, I did manual labour too). Our goal was to have the treb ready to fire by 5pm. Well, 5pm came and went... and while we had the pieces of the frame out in the field, some fine-tuning needed to be done... namely, we needed a firing mechanism, and a way to make sure that it actually stood up.

Well, a firing mechanism was attached, and our structure was sturdy when it was all put together. So, we had our completed trebuchet, we had our projectile and counter-weights, we had our supporters, and we had our hecklers. All that was left to do was to fire that badboy. Our collective breaths were held, and we got clear out of the way waiting for something to go horribly wrong, pulled the pin and fired. And fire we did! We launched a 5lb rock 151 feet! On our very first try! Our elation was only surpassed by our shock of being so successful right out of the gate. After trying some other weights and counter-weights, we wound up with our longest shot being at 252 feet with a 5lb rock. Throughout the firings, our structure held together perfectly, with the only exception being the axle of the firing arm, which started to severly bend with each attempt (see picture at right). We called it a day when we figured another toss may collapse the entire structure.

We finished feeling satisfied in a job well done, and quite proud of what we were able to build in just half a weekend. We also left with a resolve to return with a more solid axle and with more new and exciting projectiles. Could a sequel be in the works? Perhaps "Trebuchet Weekend 2: Revenge of the Gourds"? For another report on Trebuchet Weekend 1, go read Dan's Blog.