The catapult’s power comes from a skein of rope that you must loop back and forth. Attach a panic snap to the top of the rear crosspiece, in the center. I used 5-inch casters mounted to the front and back crosspieces, but if you choose, you can forgo mobility and opt for solid wood blocks instead.Īttach a screw eye to the throwing arm and pound a 2-inch finish nail in the center of the arm’s top. Place a piece of foam padding on the top crosspiece to cushion the impact of the throwing arm. To attach the angled support pieces to the upright pieces, you’ll need a couple of 4 ½-inch and a couple 5-inch lag screws. Use 3-inch lag bolts to connect the frame to the crosspieces with at least two screws for each connection. Catapult Perspective William Gurstelle/Popular Scienceīuild a sturdy wooden frame, using the drawings as guides. I used good-quality cedar because it weathers well and looks authentic, but any type of softwood will be fine. The catapult perspective drawing shows the quantity and dimensions of the wooden pieces I used to build the catapult’s frame. However, that’s okay because this is a DIY project-tweaking it is part of the fun of making it. The drawings and instructions that follow will provide you with important pieces of information, but quite likely you’ll still need to figure out some of the dimensions on your own. You have a lot of leeway as to how to build your catapult. (As it turns out, baseballs and burritos work well as ammo, but full cans of beer? Not a great idea.) My tactics may not have won any battles against the Romans-but I had a lot more fun. I didn’t use my catapult for warfare, but I did try flinging baseballs, burritos, and even beer cans. The longer the loop, the farther a missile will fly. Try attaching a cord to the projectile and then looping the other end around a peg in the top of the throwing arm. Too late, and it plows into the ground in front of you. Let go too early, and it shoots straight up. It disconnects easily because its latching mechanism is separate from the load-bearing structure.īut even with a good trigger, hurling the ammo properly can be tricky – something you learn early on when figuring out how to build a catapult. A little mechanical device called a panic snap, available at hardware stores, makes a fast, controllable trigger. The powerful spring also makes it difficult to quickly release the throwing arm. Without the pair of cross-braces I added, the machine could implode when the spring is tightened. (The ancients used linen and horsehair, but I found that natural fibers like hemp and sisal, which stretch less than nylon rope, are also excellent for catapults.) When it’s fully wound, the rope places immense stress on the entire structure, so it’s important to build the wooden frame solidly. The power behind this catapult’s arm is a spring made from twisted rope. It’s fairly authentic, although I did use modern tools and materials. I looked up books by original Roman and Greek catapult engineers on the Internet, then designed my model. While reading about the bad old days, it struck me that a replica Roman legion–style catapult might be just the thing to bring excitement to my neighborhood block party. And the Mongols invoked an early but gruesome form of germ warfare by tossing plague-infested corpses over the walls of castles they were besieging. The Romans preferred to throw bags of bees at their foes. The Carthaginians put poisonous snakes in clay jars and then launched them at enemy ships. Long before the invention of gunpowder, ancient armies used siege engines to hurl all sorts of terrible, yet creative, missiles.
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