Trebuchet / First firing, July 16, 2002

Click on photos to enlarge.

Transporting the trebuchet to the firing range, in style.

Just pullin' a trebuchet through the cornfield, ma'am.

Shoveling sand from the bobcat into the counterweight barrel. Note John's dad standing on the back of the Bobcat to keep it from flipping over. For this test, we loaded the barrel only half full.

Our creation ready for testing, pointing phallically into the sky.

The perpetrators. Note the pile of victims in the lower right hand corner (milk jugs standing in for pumpkins).

Pulling the arm down. This is the "hard way" to do it. At this point we hadn't finalized the design for a better system of pulling the arm down.

The machine is cocked and we're setting the trigger.

Results of the first toss.

The cows are watching you...

Reid playing "human safety" on the trigger while John lays out the pulldown rope so it won't get tangled on firing. One thing we learned during the testing was the extremely sensitive nature of the trigger, resulting in a few frantic jumps to get out of the way of the pulldown rope...

Emptying the counterweight barrel at the conclusion of a successful day of testing. Shown here is Method 1, Banging On the Barrel With Shovel which was very slow; Method 2, which worked better, was Climb the Machine and Dig Out the Sand.