Desktop Trebuchet

by RLT Industries

Product Features

• Made from all hardwood, natural string and real leather.
• Computer controlled precision manufacturing for guaranteed-to-fit parts.
• Half-lap and reference-notched joinery make precision assembly easy! No measuring required.
• 10 inches long, 9 inches wide and 11 inches tall.

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 10 x 9 x 11 inches ; 1.5 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• ASIN: B001AF2PNE
• Item model number: 10421
• Manufacturer recommended age: 10 years and up
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #49,977 in Toys & Games (See Top 100 in Toys & Games)
  • #13 in Industrial & Scientific > Science Education > Physics Classroom Supplies
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)

Product Description

Defend your desktop! The mere presence of this striking machine on your desk will induce fear and respect among your peers. Take charge and besiege your opponents with a fully functional, genuine trebuchet for your desk! It really works! It takes about two to four hours to assemble, which is a joy in itself with the hand selected wood and computer-controlled, precision cut parts. The professionally designed kit and fully detailed instructions - 10 pages of descriptions and tips, with of photos of every step - makes assembly a breeze. All you really need is some glue and a pair of scissors. For a more refined look, a little sandpaper and a small, round file would be helpful, but are entirely optional. Performance! This mighty desktop artillery is capable of hurling the wooden ball projectiles (included) over twenty feet! Just load-up the counterweight bucket with about 150 pennies and you

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fun and educational, January 7, 2010

By 

Bruce Warrington (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Durability:5.0 out of 5 stars  = Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars  = Educational:5.0 out of 5 stars 

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Desktop Trebuchet (Toy)

This was fun to build, and educational. The functional differences between the Trebuchet and the Onager (the two main classes of catapults - gravity powered vs. torsion powered at the simplest), their strengths and weaknesses, and basic construction of both, can sound more difficult than they really are, if you can just see how the two of them are built and play with them for 5 minutes in scale form.

Building this was not that difficult, but don't be expecting a snap together construction kit to build quickly. You provide the carpenters glue and clamps (to hold pieces together while drying) in order to put this together. Some sandpaper, and a couple of different sizes / shapes of files allow you to clean up some spots nicely and make the parts fit well.

While it might have been possible to put the entire kit together in under an hour, I spend some extra time sanding and filing to clean up some joints and make parts fit correctly, round the part where the sling slips off the end of the arm so it works smoothly, and so on. I also only had a half dozen of the small and medium size spring clamps to hold wood together while the glue dries, so I found some logical stopping points where I could let one part dry for 20 or 30 minutes so the glue was setup strongly enough before I started gluing and clamping another part of the kit. With the extra work cleaning up some rough parts (and just making some look better for cosmetic reasons), along with those 20 minute to half hour breaks for glue drying to re-use the clamps, my son and I spent a late afternoon and evening building this, for an overall time of around 4 hours total. If you had some other reason to go pick up more clamps at Home Depot, or you do other woodworking projects and just happend to have a dozen or more clamps available to keep working on more sections at once, you can easily cut that time in half.

Be prepared to spend a little time experimenting with different weight projectiles, and slightly different lengths of line on the sling to see how it differs in launch angle and throw distance. The specs given to build it work out OK to get it firing and start some testing work. But you can see how varying the counterweight has little impact on distance, as long as it's much heavier than the projectile. Heavier projectiles come out of the sling at different launch angles, which varies the distance. We tried testing a marshmallow, the wooden ball that comes with the kit, and a slightly larger superball as test projectiles. Outdoors would be best, as even this small scale kit can launch harder projectiles like the wooden ball fast / far enough to cause problems with walls and furniture indoors if you're not careful.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars well manufactured and fun to build, January 6, 2009

By 

ChemSciGuy (Midland, MI USA) - See all my reviews

= Durability:5.0 out of 5 stars  = Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars  = Educational:3.0 out of 5 stars 

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Desktop Trebuchet (Toy)

The Desktop Trebuchet was purchased as a gift for my 14 year old son - an activity for the real world to pull him from the virtual one. The trebuchet is ingeniously manufactured. A single piece of wood has been machined with a numerically controlled router to leave all pieces attached by only a thin veneer. Separating the pieces is easy and the precision of the pieces made construction a breeze. It is a wooden kit and time is required for wood glue to dry, a foreign concept to the virtual generation. Simple tools like an X-acto knife, glue, drill, and a saw were used. Once assembled, the trebuchet works flawlessly and looks pretty cool. I see limited educational value, this is just for fun. Overall, a pretty good project and result.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great fun and easy to assemble, March 27, 2010

By 

Robert A. Gold Jr. "RobG" (DC Metro) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Durability:3.0 out of 5 stars  = Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars  = Educational:5.0 out of 5 stars 

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Desktop Trebuchet (Toy)

I put this together overnight since I wanted the glue and finish to dry before putting on the sling and trigger. I found the kit to be well crafted and easy to assemble. The main reason for less than 5 stars is because I had to ad lib a little bit in the end. The gap between the two main structures was too small and put too much pressure on the spacers so the arm wouldn't rotate freely. I pinned the two sides apart just enough to free up the arm by CAREFULLY driving a nail down through the structure on each side into the shaft on which the arm turns (actually, I drilled a pilot hole first to decrease the amount of pressure I put on the structure). You can't see a gap between the spacers and the arm but the difference in resistance of the swinging arm is noticeable.

Besides that, the fit and quality of the kit is excellent. Get yourself some good wood glue (not school glue), a knife, some sandpaper (the parts needed to be sanded a bit in some areas), and some rub on polyurethane for a finish and you'll have yourself one nifty looking and performing model trebuchet.

Note the pieces must be cut from the main board slab - they are cut almost all the way through except a few thin attachments which hold the pieces into the board until you're ready for them. The little tabs left over must be neatly trimmed flush with the surface of the piece for best appearance.

Once it's working, the little wood marbles really do fly 20 feet. My kids love it but we need to get permission from their school before I'll let them take a model weapon in with them.