Potato field artillery: Part one

Isn't the Games Workshop Trebuchet ridiculously small?


Yes it is. And too expensive for my taste too.

I always wanted to build a warmachine from scratch, and trebuchets have a charme that is undeniable. Trebuchets (from the french verb "trebucher", to "fall over") appeared in both Christian and Muslim armies around the Mediterranean in the 1200s. It could throw 140 kg projectiles at high speeds into enemy fortifications. Nasty things such as "greek fire" and disease-infected corpses were flung into cities.

Anyway, here's the first part (of 2 or 3) that follows my progress through the construction of such an awesome device... at a 1:35 scale, that is.

(My trebuchet is just a model that is aiming at looking more realistic than the GW version, but it won't actually fire chewing gum balls across the room.)


Concept sketch.

The base. A 1m stick of balsa wood costs around €0.30. With 2 pieces (and a little effort) you have enough to make a whole trebuchet. That comes A LOT cheaper than buying the GW model at €30!

I figured gluing the beams in place would not be solid enough. So I made a little "hole and pin" system to allow for more solidity. After all it is a wargaming miniature, and will be touched/moved around quite a lot.

The 2 first beams and the throwing arm are in place. The arms moves around a "toothpick" axis.

I added some green-stuff details (such as shields). In order to make nails, I just made green stuff "sausages" which I cut into thin slices. The slices can be glued onto the model to simulate the nails used by bretonnian engineers to build their trebuchet. I also cut out streks of cardboard, which will serve as the metal braces that hold the beams in place.

This is as much as I got so far. Now i will have to add the couterweight, the sling and the cranking mechanism. Stay tuned ;)