Can you build me a ....

[Jules]

Which kit, JOOI? I was just looking at a few the other week.

My boy's got a science project thing coming up at school and is doing stuff with catapults (seeing how varying the throwing arm affects the distance of the projectile or somesuch), so he wanted to buy a kit. But then there's no fun in that for me ;-)

There's nothing but fields and trees behind our house for miles. If any telegraph poles ever fall into my lap... :-) Ever seen the "full-size" one at Warwick castle? Pretty impressive.

I'll see what I can do when I'm nearer finishing - I was just prototyping yesterday and trying to see which of the rope (for the onager) I had handy was workable. It's only going to be about 5" high and 10" long, but seems to be able to deliver a heck of a kick even then (I wouldn't fancy getting a finger in the way of the arm!)

I'm keeping it pretty simple (the frame's all 1/2"x1/2" stock) because I want to take it to bits afterwards and copy the parts so I can make a 'kit' that the lad can then build - but I'm very tempted to make a more "period" (and slightly larger, maybe 12" high) one afterwards.

cheers

Jules

[Jules]

I've got no padding on the prototype's cross-bar at the moment and the arm's making a heck of a dent in it.

I like the ratchet mechanism on the winding drum :-) The winding drum and trigger's the next thing I need to mess with - will have to see what I have in my junk pile.

Oh, I found there's currently a lot of lateral movement in the arm on mine

- as much as 1/2" either way against the cross-bar. I've only got a bit of

3/8"x3/8" square stock in there right now though which will get swapped for round, and I think that might improve things a lot (the torsion rope will 'cup' it a little better and hopefully keep it more in line)

As per other post I'd like to build a better one afterwards - a little larger and more in-keeping with an original like yours (rather than something that looks "kit-like"). That probably means wooden pegs and tied joints for the frame and all the rest of it...

Shame there's no "siege weapon olympics" :-)

cheers

Jules

[Jules]

Eek - I'll have to look into that. I can't stand Flash stuff (and even worse I can't get anything past Flash v9 on this box without some major OS tweaks, and a lot of stuff insists o v10 these days before it'll work, even when it's not doing anything fancy)

I think I was looking specifically for an online photo album type thing a few years ago, but I wanted one that supported captions below the thumbnail photos, and there really wasn't a lot to choose from - at the time Picasa seemed like the best of the bunch (maybe flickr didn't do captions on the thumbnail page at the time and that was why I ruled it out, dunno for sure though)

cheers

Jules

[Andy Champ]

There's one on Loch Ness at Urquhart Castle too.

of different photo sites!)

Andy

[John Rumm]

unless they second hand... then he will need to PAT them...

[Jules]

That's a little bit smaller than Warwick's:

but also a little bit more portable! (I'm actually not sure how faithful Warwick's is to any historical design - whilst I know they had engineering cranes back in the day with "hamster-wheel" winding gear like that, I don't know if that was true of trebuchets)

cheers

Jules

[geoff]

Unless the posties are all on strike ...

[John Stumbles]

Did that pre- or post-date the piano fling on Northern Exposure?