Wooden Trebuchet Kit by Oakland Ballistics

The kit came with all the necessary pieces to have trebuchet model. My 13 yo nephew put the kit together at first. He encountered challenges and was not able to get it functioning correctly, just throwing the ball directly into the ground 1ft in front of the trebuchet.I modified several things to get it working with a final result of throwing a small rock 73 ft! We replaced all of the wood pins attached to the throwing arm, using larger wood pins with a greater diameter. Was a very nice tight fit in the end with very little play. I completely replaced the pouch and used new strings to attach the pouch to throwing arm. The original pouch was not giving a clean release, and was the underlying cause of our issue (throwing ball 1ft in front of trebuchet). The other improvement, to take out the play of the wood pins, was a huge improvement and gave lots more distance, but did not solve original problem.Overall it's a great kit and helped my nephew learn alot about the math and physics of trebuchets. The kit has a few minor issues, which is a very good thing. I've come to understand that a trebuchet requires good understanding to properly setup and use. Working through the small challenges will give a person the info they need to really have fun with a trebuchet.If you are expecting to have a kit for a child as easy to put together as a set of Legos you will likely be disappointed. If you are looking for a solid kit that can teach a child (and an adult to help) how to build and operate a trebuchet you will have a fun bonding experience, a really cool toy and a great reason to buy 20 bouncy balls. I highly recommend this product!!!

Went together well and with little or no trouble in assembly. One part was missing but I simply made my own as I do a lot of wood working and model building. Retired now so I have the time to actually throw things and with a bit of adjustment and some extra effort it works a charm. So far I've reached out to 45 feet and I think I can get more out of it.For what it's worth I did replace the main pivot dowel with a length of oak that I found and all bearing surfaces were bored out and I used brass tube from my local hobby shop to act as bearings.I also used 1/4 inch dowel to hold all joints together rather than just rely on glue or nails. I found that reinforcing the joints on the weight box was needed and for that I used 1/16th in dowel as I thought that nailing into plywood wasn't a great idea.I use 1lb ingots of plumbers lead for counter weights and so far the box will hold 3 lbs in total and all seems well. But two would be more reliable and not stress things out too much. ( I hope)The only other things that I did was to add a brace to each side upright to the main pivot and as that seemed a little on the weak side to me. Then I added some wheels and cross members to the front and rear because somewhere i read that allowing the "treb" to move back and forth when the weight drops eases the strain on the entire framework. Some say it also increase range to a degree but this I cannot say for certain.My wheel were made simply enough buy cutting them from a piece of old 3/4 pine I had laying about with a 1 1/2 inch hole saw and my drill press. The diameter doesn't seem to matter as long as it lifts the machine itself off the ground. Hard surfacesrecommended. I could go on forever here but I did use flat washers to evenly space out the nylon/plastic spacers on the pivot for the main arm to keep it centered.Next will be the trigger as I really don't care for the eye hooks. Do some research online and you will find that most full sized as well as other models use a different type of release mechanism. But keeping it simple is also a good thing if that's what you want. All in all I was very satisfied with the model and for the price it gave me a lot of enjoyment assembling it.Recommend using a really good carpenters glue that you can pick up at your home builders supply. I use Titebond II because it's weather proof but any decent wood glue should suffice.I hope this helps some.

I'm still fine tuning this model. In the out of the box and assembled configuration the ball does not launch. The arm swings around with an impressive whip-like speed, then the ball just falls out of the vinyl sling on to the table and rolls away. I'll keep playing with it to see if I can get it to work.Incidentally the one I received did not come with instructions, but they are available on the manufacturer website. The wood also needed sanded and the holes re-bored to fit the dowels on the pivot arms, and bushings to make the dowels snug on the basket arms.ADDENDUM - After some tinkering, improved results have been obtained. Some photos of this item show a small slit in the sling near the throwing arm, that allow the eye-ring trigger loop to pass through the sling, allowing the sling to lay flat. After adding this slit, and insuring that it is wide enough to not impede the release of the sling strap when firing, the sling releases correctly, and the projectile launches instead of falling on the table.When using fishing sinkers for the counterweight basket, a 2.5 cm ball bearing(aka a Pinball) will leave a 5mm dent in a plaster wall. Excellent.

Daughter just did a catapult in school, so we thought building a trebuchet together would be fun.The building of it was fun, however one of the base pieces was so warped as to be unusable. At least 1/4" out of square. Had to make my own replacement piece in the woodshop. Overall, the quality of the wood and cuts is pretty low. Pieces are out of square, pre-drilled holes very rough inside as well as not lining up well because the holes weren't perpendicular (hard to make perpendicular holes when the block you're drilling isn't square).One of the answers on the product page says "The more weight that you put in the basket will increase the distance of the throw." So I filled it with fine grain lead shot. Broke the main axle on the first throw.I'll be taking some measurements off this model to build my own. This was $26.65 I regret spending.