Customer Reviews

Desktop Trebuchet

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This thing is a beast to build. It is high quality and very big. Much bigger than I thought it would be. If you have seen one of the ones without the wheels which has a paper basket, this one is probably about twice as big. I had a bit of a hard time with the twine and I wish there was more of it, but most of it is decorative anyway, so I guess you get enough to do the job. I had a lot of fun building this and my son has a lot of fun launching things from it.

I ordered this kit for my 14-year-old son. He is fairly handy and was able to assemble it within a day with minimal help from my husband.

I came home that day to see items being flung across my living room - it was a big success!

I gave this to my brother for Christmas and was greeted the following week with a projectile launched from across the house as I walked through the door. Be sure not to overlook that it s a kit which requires assembly and some basic hobby tools. The trebuchet is a great toy for kids 8 and up, and has a good amount of educational value as well. But at the end of the day, it's just fun launching projectiles at your siblings.

My 12 year old son and I put this together and used it for his science project. The kit is fantastic and directions easy to follow. I would recommend this to anyone reading this review. The trebuchet is sturdy, easy to build and fun to use. We launched quite a few different types of projectiles and one type launched 50 feet! The wooden balls that came with this kit were safe enough inside not near windows tvs or glass. We went to a baseball field to test the other objects for launch as we didn't know what to expect.

Length:: 0:18 Mins

This is a well-done product. I decided to take my time to build it instead of rushing. I sanded down all the extra bits, actually read the instructions, things like that. It still only took my and my 9-year-old daughter about 2 hours to build. Building it was a good educational experience for both of us -- in history craftsmanship, engineering and physics. When it was all done our first launch worked perfectly. No adjustments necessary, though we've had a lot of fun adjusting the weight and trying to hit targets since then.
This video shows me firing it with a little weight in the box. It is .5 speed (60fps originally).

this was purchased for a physics project. It was easy to assemble and very accurate with is shots..

Bought the trebuchet as a gift so Im not too sure about it but it came in as described and defiantly works