The Curiously Strong Trebuchet: A Pocket Sized Medieval Siege Engine

Step 9 Assemble

Now that you have all the parts ready, it's time to assemble. First, we will need to glue the tee nuts into the case with epoxy so that the flat edges of the nuts face the outer edges of the lid (if this doesn't make sense, look at the first picture). Be very generous with epoxy to make sure they stay in. All the weight of the trebuchet and rubber band is focused on these two tee nuts, so they need to be structurally sound. After I applied the epoxy, I used small spring clamps to keep the nuts in place. Next, insert the end of the hook into the 1 inch section of tubing. Screw in the 2.75 inch screw into the other end of the tubing. I found that using a cordless drill to do this made it much easier. The hook and screw assembly (from now on, I will call this the arm) should now look like the second picture. Now screw the arm a little less that half way into one of the smaller holes on the wood block. Put two nuts onto the 1.5 inch screw, then screw that a little less that half way into the hole opposite the arm. You should now have something similar to the object in the third picture. Then, screw the couplers on to the 3.5 inch rods so you can still see through the drilled holes. Screw both of these into the tee nuts protruding through the top of the case. Finally, feed the screw through the first coupler, then the 5/8 inch piece of rubber tubing, then the arm assembly with the wood block, then the other piece of 5/8 inch tubing, then the other coupler. Put a nut on the end to ensure that it won't come apart and hook a rubber band around the bottom of the container and then in between the two nuts on the arm assembly. You should now have the completed trebuchet (picture 4). When you disassemble this, you don't have to reduce it down into individual parts: you can keep some things together, as long as it fits in the container.