Re: trebuchet

["Donald E. Simanek" <dsimanek@EAGLE.LHUP.EDU>]

My American Heritage Dictionary has a small picture of a trebuchet, and
with a magnifying glass you can see a lot of details, including the pulley
stringing method for cocking it.

A friend of mine built what he calls a 'small' trebuchet with a 100 pound
counterweight which droped 3.5 feet. The sling and throwing arm measured
11 feet. It threw a 5 pound rock 69 feet from the pivot, a mass ratio
of 20 and an efficiency of 59%. Not bad.

Other references:

Barcio, Bernard. Catapult Design, Construction & Competition. Available
from Pompeiians, Inc., 6026 Indianola Avenue, Indianapolis, IN 46220. It
was $10 in 1980.

Payne-Gallway, Ralph. The Crossbow. London, 1903.

Many books on the "history of machines" discuss catapults.

        -- Donald

.....................................................................
Donald E. Simanek
dsimanek@eagle.lhup.edu                 http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek
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On Thu, 11 Feb 1999, Pete Joenks wrote:

> Does anyone have any plans to build a small scale Trebuchet catapult?
> Most of the pages I find on the search engines are for huge machines.  I
> kind of want this to be a class project for all my class or if managable
> enough a project for small groups.
>
> Thanks
>
> Pete