Oh
this trebuchet business is difficult.
Hi it's Tod from Tod's Workshop and Tod Cutler here and today we're back with the trebuchet
again, but it's not throwing bowling balls or at least not just bowling balls. Today
we're gonna look at baskets of rocks, so the anti-personnel version of the trebuchet.
Well the thing is we all know them for being used in sieges against
fortifications, battlements and sending stuff into towns and that sort of thing,
but we've all seen the Lord of the Rings footage with the orc who steps to one side.
A big rock is quite a singular device for doing a singular job. Yes it might fragment,
it might bring some masonry down, but what it doesn't do is spread carnage over a large area.
Now I learn lots of things over the years in this sort of thing and one of the things that I
know is that trebuchets throw basket of rocks. Well do they do that you know? Do they throw
baskets of rocks? I learned it somewhere, but I don't remember where, so if you have a source of
that let me know, but the other thing is if they did throw the rocks how did they throw
baskets, because there are different ways of doing it. So what we're going to do today,
we're going to throw a bowling ball, get the range on it, we'll put some of my men targets out there,
the running knights and then we're going to throw, well a basket of beautiful bright
easy to find rocks at them and we're going to see what happens. One bowling ball, one knight. Nice!
Oh every time I shoot this thing the joy is the same.
So the disappointment is it went you know five, eight meters to the left of the guy,
but we're gonna move him and then we're gonna do the rocks. So here is our basket of rocks,
the first time I have ever done this and I don't really know what's gonna happen.
So my expectation is that they're going to start to tumble out as it flies through the air
and that means we're going to get sort of a sprinkling of rocks between here and the target.
Hopefully most of them on target, but these are much smaller than the bowling balls or or the
rocks for a real trebuchet and they're going to be more subject to wind resistance they're going
to fall shorter I'm pretty sure of that. Now our knights actually are out at bowling ball distance
so I'm thinking that they're probably going to land between here and there but I don't really
know what the spread is going to be like. What we really want is most of them, for me to be wrong
obviously because I've been wrong about so many things, for most of them to just carry on
in a cloud, coming down. That's what we want, but the thing that I definitely know is that that box
of rocks there is looking a little precarious in my sling and this is going to be a 'stand well
back and keep your eyes on it' because I don't know what's going to happen. Now I've got 18
projectiles to try and follow not just one, so it is a bit of a dodgy one this. Basket rocks! Loose!
Oh!
Lots of interesting things happened there. The first one is I said 'stand well back'
well as you can see, one rock and part of my basket two meters in front of me,
so that's not good, but the other basket, the rest of the basket is 30 meters that way something like
that and then all the rocks just sprinkled out. So we're going to go and walk over there we're going
to have a look at what kind of area it covered and whether it would be any good for anything at all.
So I'm out in the field now where the box is, the first few rocks fell and that is 30,
40 meters from the trebuchet but then spreading out going onward we've got about another 40 meters
of spread in distance and about oh 15,18 meters wide and that's in terms of hitting a target and
wanting to dump your hard-won energy of loading that trebuchet into one particular area, you're
not going to get it with this, you're just not. So the box broke apart on launch and I guess you
know trebuchet masters in the old days would know about that kind of stuff, so I'm going to build it
stronger. We're going to go again and we're going to see what kind of effect we get but in case
you're wondering... the dangerous life of a camera in Tod's world. I wasn't expecting the rocks to go
so far offline and unfortunately that one's just pointing the wrong way. Basket of rocks take two.
Oh oh much nicer, right look at this so you've got the box out of about 40,50 meters a really
nice spread beyond that. I'm gonna re-film this and try and catch them in the air but then look
at the depth, we've got 40 odd meters front to back maybe 15,18 meters side to side uh
and a long way shorter target and off target but that's the wind
so your trebuchet master is going to be... well life is complicated with baskets of rocks it
appears. Let's go again and see what we can do. This is the last loose now with an open box. Nice!
Oh love it
Love it. Love it. Love it. Love it. Now one of the things you need to understand about me
is I think about things endlessly. Weird little things like 'how do you throw a basket of rocks
with a trebuchet?' Now the go-to phrase of course is 'basket rocks' you think you know, open basket,
egg basket, wood basket. Put some rocks in, throw it, but that has as we've seen thrown rocks all
over the field. Really wide shot pattern; absolute rubbish. Short distance because now they spill out
way before getting towards target and now because they're lighter and smaller they're subject
to drag more so they fall shorter. So I'm now getting like 60/65% distance out of the trebuchet
of course that's absolutely rubbish because you've you know if you're a master of trebuchet you've
set it up at 95% distance, so you can get your rocks to hit the castle but you are as far away
from them as possible. So you throw a basket rocks that doesn't work, you can't guarantee a no windy
day and it's not that windy today but it spread the shot all over the field and quite a long way
offline again, that's going to be a real problem, so you can get around that and I think that this
is the solution quite simply that we make a basket of rocks the same as our big one, a big rock,
sealed. So now we throw the basket of rocks, loose rocks still, but when it impacts hopefully about
the same point as our bowling ball would, so you should get the distance it now, impacts onto the
courtyard, onto the the fortification, onto the tower and now it hits, the basket breaks open and
those rocks inside are gonna go everywhere. Now the thing is this is a ploughed field, so it's
not perfect for this experiment, but I think we'll get a pretty good indication of if it's gonna work
or not, so that's what we're gonna do. But before I carry on, don't forget to support the channel,
buy the t-shirts, go to the websites, check it out it's all good stuff you'll be interested I'm sure.
Basket of rocks, version two. Here we go. Sealed basket of rocks.
Oh stay in one piece... perfect! ah
This trebuchet business is difficult. Sorry I stopped that last filming really abruptly,
I'd had enough, it wasn't working out, but we're going to come to that in a minute,
but right now I'm just back on a different day, different 'tash and we're going to shoot
another ball again to get the trajectory make sure everything's in the right place
and then I'm going to explain what's up but just in case it hits. Here we go! Loose!
oh will it
Oh
Frustratingly we missed our guy yet again, but this time by a meter, just a meter.
If it had his friends, he was looking a bit lonely, if he had his friends, one of
them would have had it. But the thing is I've been thinking about the accuracy of trebuchets
and actually I thought at the beginning you have gravity. Gravity never changes,
it does the same cycle, that doesn't change, everything will be the same, super precise.
It's not and It's frustrating me for film after film and I think I've come to the conclusion
that there are so many little differences, so many little variables, shot on shot, the moisture the
temperature, because that changes rope lengths and elasticity, the weight of the projectile itself,
how the projectile is in the slide. All these little tiny things can compound,
some on one shot, some on another, but out at the other end you get a massive difference.
So fortifications, big rocks brilliant. Super precision hitting something,
it just doesn't do it and you know trebuchet owners out there come and tell me, but I think
what I was expecting from a trebuchet with accuracy is not possible. This inherent inaccuracy
of the machine brings us exactly back to this whole film here, baskets of rocks, because when
you have a basket of rocks of course it doesn't matter where one rock goes you've got 100 of them,
sprinkle them over the whole area something will hit something. Great. Without a lid that was my
first attempt, I kind of thought it wouldn't work because it did exactly what I thought it would do,
tumbled through the air, they all fall out somewhere between here and target. Rubbish,
no good at all. Next approach, find your basket of rocks put a lid on it, hold the rocks in place
and I thought 'genius idea, perfect', because the thing is you don't learn everything from history,
they don't tell you what they used to do, so you have to interpret and I think that
they put a lid on their basket of rocks if they did it at all. That holds the rocks in place,
gives you a projectile that same kind of weight as your single rock, same kind of
area surface area, should go the same kind of distance. It didn't and I think coming back to the
accuracy problems, what it is it's just another layer of chaos, because this is getting tangled
in the sling and that is the problem and it just wasn't working. So what I've done is I've made a
box of rocks with a lid and this time it's got its own tether cord, no tangling in the sling should
be clean as you like and we're gonna test it right now. Basket rocks mark three! Loose! Oh yes
That was almost really good, that's the phrase of this film. So it stayed in one piece, now
it's gone on to a soft field, that kind of doesn't matter because it would not behave like that with
50 kilos of rocks instead of six, it would not behave like that on a courtyard or a tower,
but it stayed in one piece that's what we want and it didn't go as far, but it went a
lot further than the earlier mark 2 version, so I think we might be onto something here I really do.
I'm gonna go check it out. Well here's our basket in one piece which I think is a really good thing
because the thing is the reality of this with 10 or 15 times the weight of these shot would have
spread everywhere especially on a stone courtyard or on battlements, so this is a fantastic
anti-personnel weapon if you can get it to go the distance. We're 30 meters short and strangely
we're 10 meters offline which the earlier shots with the other boxes were doing as well, so this
machine is incredibly sensitive to payload, the accuracy just changes utterly when you change
what you throw from it and that is no good for a weapon system at all, so I'm coming more and more
to think that a trebuchet is a a one thing device it throws a big rock and it throws it really well.
Don't mess about with anything else, big rock that's where you want to do it. So I'm going to
go one more attempt now where what I did notice is that this tether was acting a little bit like
a tail and I'm now going to put no lid on the box and see if the shot just stay in this time if it
can, if the tether can just orient the box enough that the rocks don't tumble out. Maybe they will,
maybe they won't. So basket on a tether with no lid. Loose! Oh now we're talking.
Oh that's the one, so some spread out as it went through the air, most stayed there, I think about
five came out, the rest of them stayed in, the other 10, 11, they stayed in the box, they'd spray
around. Let's go and have a look. Well this is a brilliant result, because all of those together
that would have landed, they would have just gone absolutely everywhere in the vicinity, but
also it's dropped five or six stones in front and behind so they've come in as a cloud absolutely
brilliant anti-personnel, superb, everything great about that and I got there in the end. However.
Still short of target, so we need to go and talk about that. I've learned so much actually
the last time I was out and then today. Basket of rocks and trebuchets,
what have I learned? Well we learn from our mistakes and I've made plenty of them,
however these things are fiendishly difficult to throw but actually every time I tried to throw
something that's not a bowling ball, bowling balls are hard enough, anything else it changes
all the parameters completely so this is my one big takeaway from this today. Bowling ball rocks
are tricky, but everything with the trebuchet is tricky and what that means is if you try and
change any one thing, the 10 different variables in the machine will all just come into play
and your accuracy at the other end is rubbish. I thought when I started the trebuchet journey
that it would be totally repeatable, gravity is the same every single time, everything will
be the same, it's not, it is not the same and that has made me really rethink something else.
Wheels on a trebuchet. Because this machine is fine, it's fine if you want to shoot 140 meters
a bowling ball. What if you want to shoot 150 meters? what if you want to shoot less?
What if you want to shoot to the left or the right? I assumed, I assumed that this thing
would be so heavy like the one at Warwick is 22, 25 tons, really difficult to handle on wheels,
but if you don't put it on wheels you are restricting yourself so much and as one of
the commentators said, how do you build one of these things within bow shot of a castle?
You are absolutely a target every time your skilled craftsman goes up 20 meters, wham 'oh lost
another skilled craftsman'. How many have you got? So I have completely changed my attitude on this
and give me the evidence, let me know. I think they must have put them on wheels I really do.
Anyway, baskets of rocks, trebuchets, learning experiences, mistakes. See you another time.