Trebuchet- Baskets of Rocks
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 ส.ค. 2024
- We all know trebuchets threw rocks, big rocks. But I also believe that they threw baskets of smaller rocks to create an 'anti personnel' effect; so I think we need to try it!
My brave 'men at arms' are lined up and are ready to get pelted - but can I hit them when I get the trebuchet equivalent of a shotgun out.
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I just want to take a moment to thank the owner of this field for allowing Tod to test his trebuchet.
Lovely people
Can you imagine being guests at their house? "I want to go for a walk out in the field" "Okay, but make sure that the medieval artillery isn't firing today".
Agreed
It would be a great way to throw a ball for the dog :)
I'm curious with what that field is for. On the first scene, it looks newly tilled. The next scene shows neat rows of growing grass
I have not played with trebuchetes, so this advice is from other forms of catapults. My suggestion is to use egg shaped river rocks rolled in a ball of hessian or homespun. This will give a more aerodynamic missile profile and will hopefully unwrap and scatter loose stones on your target. Very important NOT to use a sack, just a flat piece wrapped around the stones.
This is a great suggestion and i would love to see him try this!
My immediate thought on that is that if it isn't wrapped in an exact way, it'll probably start to unravel the moment it moves and could be scattering rocks straight up which wouldn't be good for Tod's health. What do you think?
I can't speak for the specific technique, but to have the missile deploy mid-air was my immediate thought. Something which does not catch on the wind as easily so the smaller projectiles retain their speed.
Cover the river rocks in a ball of clay, bake said clay to get a "Shell", 'then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Cutler towards thy foe, who, being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it.'
Cheap, easy to make, aerodynamic, and repeatable.
@@danielburgess7785 likely to either break under launch, or not break until it lands...
Modern canister breaks at the muzzle.
The box is also.. box shaped.. A rather bad aerodynamic shape compared to the bowling ball.
I always thought that they would just load a half dozen round-ish rocks in the sling, and not put them in a box, if they wanted an anti-personnel "shotgun" charge. Who knows, that might be a terrible idea too.
Probably the purpise of the box is to keep them from friendly firing I'd assume,because it will be terrible if a few rocks just slide off mid ''firing'' sequence and mow down your friends behind it from point blank.
However the shape of the basket is important in my opinion.
Having a larger payload might help with accuracy and distance. The volume (and by extension weight) increases at a much faster rate than the area of the projectile. Because the area is the main factor of air resistance and you're increasing the weight you're going to be less effected by air resistance. In addition, the larger the payload the less the inconsistencies in the rock "shot" matter because the launch only really cares about the object as a whole.
(Edit: my original comment was posted in the middle of the video and I was thinking the corners of the box might be an issue with the sling release)
@@PuppyShooter I'm now imagining medieval troops having a back blast procedure like modern troops firing a shoulder mounted RPG.
@@MrZaranthan The two most dangerous places to stand are in front (the direction the payload is supposed to go) and behind (the direction the payload moves towards at the start of launch), thats why Tod is off to one side with a long lanyard
Yes, a woven wicker basket could be made nearly spherical, too.
I remember seeing something about trebuchet on wheels. The carriage being allowed to recoil improved the ability for the whole system to self correct and it improves range. There was a group of lads in England in ~1996 who constructed a trebuchet and used classical, full weight (I think 30 stone) ammunition and when they put it on wheels they started busting ramparts.
Edit: then, of course, when I get to the end of the video you start talking about wheels. Yes, do it Tod.
PBS ran the show in the Us. As I have been telling him every time he posts with the trebuchet.
@@warrmalaski8570 they did but I haven't been able to find it. If you can find it throw a link. I remember it being a good show.
It was called Secrets of Lost Empires and they built two trebuchets; one had a fixed counterweight the other had a basket. You only need wheels on your trebuchet if you're making a fixed counterweight one, becaue they dissipate stress forces given by fixed weight.
Tom Stanton made one titled: wheels on a trebuchet?" and he shows how much more efficient the trebuchet becomes when it's put on wheels th-cam.com/video/KpFTyE-wiNo/w-d-xo.html
@@mdsign001 brilliant! I love Tom's videos.
"Life is complicated with a basket of rocks".
Words to live by.
Life is like a box of rocks you never know where they're going
Would be interesting to see what would happen if you put the rocks in a large pouch just like you would with a staff sling.
This is what I always assumed a "basket of rocks" meant. That a load of rocks would be collected up and stored in baskets ready to be loaded, not that you would actually load the whole basket with the rocks in it.
Yeah, I got the same idea watching this. I was thinking about putting the rocks in some sort of net/fabric that can act like a sabot. That way you avoid the square box and it might stay together a bit longer in the air.
Maybe if you wanna go super fancy with it you can make some sort of bullet with the rocks held together a with wax. Although I don't know how reasonable that is.
Yeah came here to say this, that's pretty much always been my mental image of the whole thing.
I'm thinking a cube has more wind resistance than a sphere. Pack rocks in mud, the whole thing in a net and launch that. It might even be possible to launch clay jars this way too.
@@johngrowcott4794 A loosely weaved basket or a rather a "net pouch" should have gaps in it and leave air through, probably having a lot less air resistance than a square box of all things - I can tell you that much after having driven a landrover defender for 12 years, it's just like a freaking cupboard at 120 km/h on a motorway and behaves totally different than a rather aerodynamic sphere 😅
A Thought... Take the rocks and put them together with mud. Dry it by the fire so it is a single Unit. It should fly as far as a single ammo but shatter on impact. You would have to work with the formulas for the mud adding in Dung and straw to strengthen the bond. You'd have horses so you'd have both. It would be a little bit like wattle and daub huts.
I also thought of this! Even if the projectile broke apart upon firing, or in the air due to resistance...it could still be very effective
Could also go all the way and use a fired clay shell. Strong enough to hold together but brittle enough to break easily and scatter the stones on impact. Not that hard to set up a good enough wood fired kiln in the field if you know how.
@@sealpiercing8476 , true and you'd get razor-sharp shards to boot.
It would be nice if the glue would be weak enough to break during flight, just before it reaches peak altitude.
@@theinqov that's where the levels of different additives would need tweaking.
It's been said already, but a wide, flat leather sling, folded with rocks inside, may very well be an excellent way to deliver multiple payloads.
The problem there is that multiple smaller projectiles experience greater drag for a given weight of shot, so you will dramatically reduce the range. The idea for the basket (or a shrapnel shell) is to have good aerodynamic qualities to maximise range, and then scatter the shot close to the enemy so it doesn't lose too much energy. If the enemy are close enough to "grape shot" your trebuchet, it's probably already been overrun.
@@lancerd4934 yeah, but the box Tod uses definitely doesn't fill the qualities of the "shrapnel shell". I'd wager that it's actually so detrimental, that the rocks flying by themselves would do better in this case.
A wicker basket of a good shape might work as it will work aerodynamically with the rocks until drag on the basket separates it from the payload.
I think there are two main contributors to the trebuchets' inaccuracy:
- remember that it is not a simulation, it is a real object made from wood, every throw will re-seat some joints, bend the wood and so on.
Moisture and age will also influence it, as you have already noted.
- I don't think the different kinds of ammunition are a problem in of themselves, but you shouldn't assume them to be exchangeable.
The trebuchet is a piece of artillery and, like modern artillery, it needs to be calibrated new for each specific target and each type of ammunition.
Your trebuchet was calibrated using bowling balls, so it will throw them at your calibrated target the best.
If you want to hit the knights using the basket of rocks, you will need to re-calibrate the counterweight, arm and sling.
I also don't think that the ground being a ploughed field was a problem, it could be a good approximation of a field after some hours of combat.
About the Basket of rocks itself:
I think it is more realistic for the rocks to fly out mid-air.
- The Basked breaking and throwing shrapnel on impact greatly diminishes the AOE, doesn't work on fields, and would do most of its damage to the lower body half.
- If it splits up in the air, your enemies get hit in the head which should do much more damage, with the same chance of hitting.
Of course this will diminish the range, so they should only split at the last moment.
"Every throw will reseat some joints"
Sounds like a Glock pistol. Part of the gun's reputation for reliability is the looseness of the fitment of its parts, ala an AK-47. There's meant to be enough clearance for dirt and grime to work their way between the components without ever completely seizing anything up.
But then, that looseness also translates into an inherent variability in exactly how all the components lock back up when they return into battery. This shows up as inconsistency with shot placement from shot to shot. And this calls upon the shooter to learn to settle for "tactical sharpshooting accuracy", versus whatever he originally had in mind.
If you veer towards tight fitment of components like with a competitive match grade gun, then you incur the responsibility to clean the whole thing far more often, because tight tolerances actually tolerate less muss and fuss before they seize up on themselves.
While that's fine for a civilian sport shooter, if you're a warrior, you really have to ask yourself whether you're going to be able to afford the luxury of all this upkeep in the field. Daily cleanings may fly in garrison, but hundreds of km's from home, almost certainly not.
The average accuracy over, say, 100 shots, is probably a lot more important than the accuracy of any one single shot. Much like modern artillery I'd assume trebuchets also work in groups where you have a couple of them firing, because in the end volume of shots raises total accurate hits just because you're outputting more, albeit low accuracy, shots.
Also, putting myself in the shoes of whoever was in charge, I would probably have a plan for how long each machine fired before parts needed to be readjusted or replaced. For example if we assume throwing 'baskets of rocks' whatever that might be required a different type of trebuchet than one who fired single rocks for the purpose of breaking fortifications... Then I don't see why I wouldn't start off with single rocks then when when the fortifications were suitably damaged, simply replace the arm, weight, or anything else required to have the machine be able to hit with the cluster munitions.
After all a siege lasts a really long time and there is no requirement for speed. You could spend the first 2 weeks breaking the wall, then another 2 weeks with readjusted trebuchets to throw baskets, before anyone even considered trying to take the fort. In the end your goal might even just be to make the defenders' lives so miserable that they surrender, so simply the possibility of being beaned with a brick at any point, although unlikely, was so demoralising that the actual lethality wasn't relevant. Point being you could use this platform in many ways without ever having to move it, as it is scalable and modifiable.
And of course, there is always the possibility that it was an educated decision whether to break the fort at all. Maybe we don't want to damage it, just get rid of its occupants. In which case there is nothing stopping you from building a trebuchet that can only fire baskets of rocks and would horribly miss the target if you loaded it with anything else. After all who wants to take over a pile of rubble? It's a lot more expensive to repair it than to break it down and odds are whether engineer or commander whoever you are working for wants the thing in one piece.
The long and short of it is that I am not convinced absolute lethality is the most important part of the trebuchet. Besides, you're not aiming for Edric in his tower shouting obscenities at you, you're aiming for the entire courtyard and adjoining structures. In the end you're sitting at a safe distance, you just need to get lucky once; they need to be lucky every time.
@@texasbeast239 as to the daily cleaning, during Vietnam the troops discovered that they needed to do that cleaning every day for both the 1911 and the M16.
@@texasbeast239 If you're using a pistol as a weapon (as opposed to target shooting), I don't think the precision of the pistol is going to matter relative to the shooter's accuracy.
@@texasbeast239 It should also be noted that for most people, any inaccuracy in the gun isn't really that relevant compared to the inaccuracy of the shooter. Even most so called inaccurate guns are more accurate than most shooters.
Historically I believe I read that it was rope weave sacks, imagine very heavy netting, with gaps, making a sack of rope, that were used to hold the rocks. It can fling off the sling essentially closed by two major loops. The full load launches together, and the rope weave sack prevents rock scatter through the high-G launch. At apogee it will fly off without too much interference to the fairly tightly packed rocks in flight. Please give it a try!
Yeah this seems like the simplest way to get the desired result. My dad and I have been discussing this quite a bit lately
I think what you want is a clay vessel to throw your "grapeshot" roundish in shape (similar to the stone) allowing shrapnel container and contents to shatter and fly all about on impact.
That would more closely approximate the aerodynamics of a bowling ball/rock, improving accuracy. But the rocks should be tightly packed to approximate the unchanging mass distribution of a solid projectile. I think the loose rocks in the basket contributed to the inaccuracy.
While i wouldn't want to be stood right next to the thing as it hits, the effectiveness is limited at best - especially against anyone in armour.
You're wasting the vast majority of energy from the shot into the ground, very little is going to be put into throwing the debris outwards.
This idea has merit. The only risk being the pot shattering on launch and sending a lot of sharp angry missiles flying back towards your own team.
Also you would need to make sure the rocks didn't shift around as it meses with your centre of mass and is going to affect aerodynamic stability.
Finally, making large spherical clay vessels is going to be very difficult. To get them strong enough to withstand launch forces, even with todays infinitely controllable kilns, would be incredibly difficult. Using medieval techniques, I'd say pretty much impossible.
A wooden barrel would be far easier to make and still shatter if it wasnt reinforced too much.
@@TheMatthooks You could prevent shifting by filling the spaces with sand or soil. Or night soil for extra biological warfare.
Several of us suggested using wheels under your trebuchet months ago... and not just for mobility... but for allowing the machine to roll slightly forward and back as the bucket dropped - allowing the bucket to travel straight down instead of swinging - and thus increasing the efficiency and range of the machine.... while at the same time reducing the mount of stress placed on it... ...
Yep.
I understand that there is a whole 'wheels' camp, but it very much does have its own issues, so I am not utterly sold on the idea, but on balance I think wheels or rollers were a possibility that would give loads of utility.
No need with the swinging basket type, as Todd has. The wheels all seem to be on the non-basket types.
It has to recoil. Fixed weight needs wheels. Swinging basket weight for no wheels.
Boy Scout troop i was part of 20 years ago had a trebuchet with wheels, counterweight was a 55 gallon drum full of rocks and birdshot, solid fixed to the arm. Tod's is a bit bigger but we flung bowling balls too.
never heard of using trebuchet to launch baskets of rocks. i have heard of launching baskets of all kind of things from a catapult. catapult has a different style, that might be bit more convenient for launching smaller loose objects.
I've definitely heard such of baskets of rocks, but like Tod damned if I know where. However I always thought it was simply because it was simpler to use not antipersonal (though no doubt it can do that) - wicker, sapling withie type baskets can be made trivially from almost anything and are an easy way to get a big heavy 'rock' to your trebuchet - try moving the few hundred kg giant rocks the big trebuchet from history would want over a muddy field, going to be a real pain - just those bowling balls would be bad enough when wet on uneven ground, but a few guys with small baskets of small rocks to fill up your big 'rock' to fire trivially easy, and you can add some extra like the burning rags so IFF you hit thatch etc on the other side you might well start a fire - could even put real hot rocks into the centre of the pile where they won't quickly weaken the basket...
Basket of rotted dead things is more likely. Starving people inside after a long siege might venture to try eating anyway, at their own peril.
Ooh! Basket of burning coal!
I don’t think they would ever have put a trebuchet in arrow range. So if they ever shoot baskets of rocks, they would have done so with much move powerful trebuchets. The point of a siege engine is that you can bombard your enemy with little fear of retaliation, so range must be more important than basically any other metric.
Nope , you want the rocks to hit a wall at ideally 90 degrees to transfer most of the energy to the wall . This means you would need to be a lot closer than the trebuchet's max range , which could bring it well within arrow shot .
@@pp-wo1sd - Didn’t they run trenches / use shielding to enable them to get siege engines close enough to the target?
@@pp-wo1sd No, you want to bombard the inhabitants of the castle with siege engines. Most times you can only take off merlons from the walls, so unless they wanted to do the medieval version of suppressive fire, they didn't target walls, but the buildings behind it.
Directly shooting walls is a cannon thing, not a trebuchet ones.
@@philhughes3882
To my knowledge trenches only started to become a thing by the advent of cannons (trenches as in holes in dirt designed to allow you take cover from enemy fire , other kind was always present and was used to make attacks more difficult and a convinient place to dispose of waste) . As for shielding they definently did use all sorts of moveable cover to get them closer . The most common one I know is basically a wooden wall (a couple men wide and about the height of a man) mounted on a pair of wheels with some holes wide enough to shoot out of . I'd also assume if the besieger had enough time he'd improve upon this by building palisades .
@@kovi567
There are cases where trebuchets were used to take down walls , but I agree with you bombarding inhabitants was much more common
I recal watching a documentary some years ago in which they proved, contrary to what was expected, that putting wheels on a trebuchet greatly increased it's range.
The wheel design is completely different though with a fixed weight instead of a basket weight. And the wheels will roll during launch to account for the angular momentum (might not be the correct term here as I'm relying on memory only).
I like how the field grows as the video progresses, as if Tod was out there so long plants grew around him
I'm really doubtful that counter-weight trebuchet were used as anti-personnel weapon. You're simply be better off - in terms of rate of shooting, accuracy, cost, manoeuvrability, flexibility, etc... - giving the crew crossbows and letting them do their own stuff. If you really wanted the range, then ballistae or catapultae would give you that at a much smaller trade off in all the other characteristics. Trebuchets excel at one thing and one thing only: throwing big things fast enough to knock down walls.
Of course, if someone has a source contradicting me, I will very happily eat my words.
I agree with this which is why I wonder if they were more a deterrent to errant peasants :)
FYI ballistae or catapultae would be plural forms
Artillery was also used as a terror weapon to hit buildings behind the walls . The aim wasn't really to destroy them , but to let the people inside know they aren't safe and for that several smaller rocks might be more effective than a single large one .
Except if the enemy is behind a wall, which is exactly where a trebuchet comes in hand in the first place. Same reason why mortars were invented, contrary to popular imagination you don't break through a proper massive bastion walls with a mortar just by dropping stuff on it, but you can kill people on or behind the walls by dropping stuff on them especially if said stuff happens to be explosive. Crossbows on the other hand aren't very useful for hitting people hiding behind merlons, I think you're thinking about this in the context of a field battle where trebuchets aren't that useful to begin with.
I've flung multiple Plumbata at a time with Trebuchet. 3, and 5 at a time are doable, and out to a thousand feet or more. Here's a video of me doing 3 at a time. th-cam.com/video/NBFCqYteZvI/w-d-xo.html
If you could find a way to launch a basket or something full of plumbata that would be awesome.
"That was almost really good" is a great phrase :) Not accurate, the video was in fact really good! Love the trebuchet content, and the creators passion for history. "Everything about a trebuchet is tricky" made me laugh! Thanks!
Thanks and glad I kept you entertained
Possibly they had upturned ends on the lower rails to act as a sled. If they assembled the trebuchet slightly out of bowshot they would then be able to drag it into range. What might be worth a try is something like an oversized sling pouch, probably made from canvas, sail cloth or leather to hold the smaller rocks. It might help to think of the trebuchet as a "shotgun" for this experiment. You can always get more range with a slug (or boulder) than you do with bird or buckshot (a basket of smaller rocks). See if you can get a bunch of croquet balls to use as ammunition. Brightly colored and a consistent size, weight and shape!
Oh, yes, croquet balls would be ideal!!!!
brilliant idea!
I think a lot of men could move one of these, if they managed to make stonehenge they can move a trebuchet, in methods similar to what you've suggested.
I wonder if it would be possible to build some form of turntable for it too.
@@theinqov but you don't need to move the megaliths of Stonehenge anywhere near as fast as you need to move your trebuchet to avoid having all those expensive engineers (or whatever you call the guys who build your stuff) turned into pincushions.
If you fired that thing 100 times a day, for a decade, and made hundreds of adjustments as you trained. Your accuracy would inevitably improve. It might never be as accurate as a bow and arrow, but I think you'd be surprised at how accurate someone whose entire profession was operating trebuchets would get.
Can you name any from history?
I remember a PBS special about trebuchets that depicted two designs:
One was your type, with the swinging basket and fixed foundation.
The other had a solid counterweight and wheels.
Something with only straight angles, especially a cube will fly to pretty much all possible directions you can aim at, so that wouldn't be used if they did do grapeshot style stuff. I would think they did use the exact thing its named after, baskets, strong and big enough to keep in one piece during launch and flight, but open enough to let the rocks or whatever is in it fall out during flight. As they are usually round, it makes a big difference in aerodynamics and accuracy. Using they same weight doesnt mean it will go the same distance as drag, volume and such will have great impact on speed and idistence. Maybe some sort of netting would also work. And lastly if you want a break on impact load, use something like pottery, thi will break on nearly anything and can be loaded with pretty much anything.
I think the corners of the box might be causing problems with the release from the sling even more than aerodynamic problems
the idea of using pottery is actually amazing, because i think it is way easier to craft than an actual basket and they have propably the same air resistance as a rock isntead of being full of holes like the basket. i have crafted neither of them with my own hands, this is just a guess. but i think creating a bowl of clay, burn it and tie some sort of cloth on top of it to function as a lid isn't that hard. also you could fill the jug with oil and set it ablaze to use as some sort of medieval napalm strike....
Trebuchets would have had wheels, it's even shown on some historic artwork...
Wheel-less trebuchets have a tendency to rear up into the air as its arm begins to spin and then slam back down. Rolling wheels prevent this crushing lurch. Instead, energy is more smoothly channelled into the trebuchet's arm and missile.
Also, wheels add power as the trebuchet rolls forward. The rolling back and forth of the wheeled counterweight allows it to fall in a straighter line, the most efficient way for a counterweight to respond to the force of gravity. The straight-falling counterweight is more powerful because it results in a higher velocity at the sling end at the moment of release. A higher velocity results in a farther throw.
I tested wheels on the one i built and the projektile whent 50% longer. And i hade the sled that the projektile rested on before fireing lose, so i could aim just by taking it to one side or the outher.
@@thorbjornkarlsson4681 nice!
Some had wheels but most didn't.
I wish you would show us how you work the treb! Like all the trigger system, how you reload it, how you maintain it.
I think you're right about the accuracy issues. Anything like this will be very sensitive to initial conditions. A few millimeters on this end turns into several feet at the other end. But like you said, castle walls are large targets :-)
The transition from shadow to light at 3:30 is mesmerizing.
Every woman dreams about being loved as much as Tod loves his Trebuchet 🤣🤣🤣🤣🙏
I think they would have used a woven basket or maybe a piece of netting.
this is what i have always imagined, or a a big leather sling full of rocks
Agreed! A hail of fist sized rocks would seem, to me, useful in causing casualties in siege bombardments. Not very useful , IMO, open field battles.
They might have. But a netting or similar filled with rocks thats still loose enough to burst on impact reliably must also be an aeodynamic nightmare
What about a clay pot?
@@Sallafar Who says it has to burst? a giant faux rock is still going to hit like a freight train even if it stays together.
about the issue of moving the trebuchet into place, it doesnt need to be specificaly 'wheels', it could have been the old fashioned method of moving anything big and heavy, rolling it on round logs, that combined with 1 or many mobile screens/walls which we know were used, you could build it further away and then slowly move the trebuchets closer or further back while having good enough protection.. then when its in position, tie it down like a tent, possibly raisng it with thicker logs raised verticaly or some other material and using wedges to level it out if that was desired.. or just pulling the logs out and dumping it on the ground as looks more common in paintings..
also, what about using a basic woven or rope basket, possibly trimmed to a bulbous shape?
I always thought "how do they aim it horizontally?" Well I guess they don't really need to. They'd rarely want to level a city, and instead just punch a hole big enough to get soldiers through and capture it.
I have seen a number of wheeled trebuchets by way of 'Punkin Chunkin'.
It may be a function of needing to be able to move the machines to and from the event, but it seems that the wheels, when left free to roll, make the weight of the full machine part of the complex action of the flinging.
I have no science or conclusions to offer, just a source for more information for those interested.
@@BobT36 i mean, if you had to move it, get a big strong, long stick, and some big, strong men and you could lever it into moving left or right, or lift it for getting a wedge, log or whatever underneath..
@@MonkeyJedi99 Yeah I saw those, however those aren't the "swinging basket" type, as Todd has here.
They need the wheels to offset the weight of the swing, where the movement of the wheels allows the whole frame to counteract it. However on the version Todd has, the basket does just that, so the wheels aren't needed.
I never knew those types existed tho till someone posted it here.
@@MonkeyJedi99 i have seen some of those sorts from the US, they seem to be very keen on getting the maximum efficency out of their machines, not so much authenticity x3
there is definitely a physical advantage for machines designed for it within a certain scale, but, might not be so advantagious when you factor in rain and mud, so idk..
I think trebuchets must have been transported on carts broken down into prefabricated components, and perhaps they woukd be erected on earthen work hill to extend the range with some kind of palisade wall to protect the workers.
while being charged down or shot at
I think you will find they throw further when on wheels as the trebuchet moves back in reaction to the arm as it revolves- this keeps the energy is one plain and so energy is not lost as the arm passes through less plains.
Tod, what about trying a circular or oval shaped wicker basket consisting of two (top and bottom) halves, tied together on one side with two pieces of string to function as hinges, and the other side- one string that keeps it "closed" merely with friction created by it being pulled through the wickerwork a tad? So it sort of functions like a sort of lock that can be opened by the rocks inside pressing against the opening and wanting to escape the basket during the flight?
(Think of a Carcass shell for later artillery, but without explosive device... Ish?)
If there any period references to baskets, surely the next best step is to try and figure out the exact sort of basket rather than taping s box together to see if it'll stand in for it? You of all people should have an idea of just how well organised armies of the time were in regards to ammunition and such- surely then it is not too weird an idea that they'd have sort of "standardised" the concept of these baskets?
Good points. I suspect also that the inherently barrel-shaped simple wicker basket would afford better aerodynamics than the cube of a box of rocks
You could also wrap the basket with a cord and piece of cloth at the end. It would catch the wind and start a tumble or spin of the basket, ejecting the rocks after a time.
Size of cloth an length of cord could be tailored to a specific duration before opening. It should also fit properly into the sling used for other projectiles.
Not surprised how off target the box is due to poor aerodynamics of a cube
I have read that on some occasions, trebuchets were used to hurl pots filled with red hot nails and bits of slag/iron filings. It was not from Olaus Magnus though, but he describes a very similar instance with Finish staff-slingers hurling red hot bits of iron into a Swedish fortification.
If that stuff was thrown via trebuchet, that's just damned terrifying!
Tod brings a whole new meaning to the term "dumb as a box of rocks" ;)
And in case anyone misses the sarcasm, no I'm not insulting Tod's intelligence. It's the opposite. A lot of people, me included, see these movie scenes where they use trebuchets to spray the enemy with baskets full of rocks and think "Well of course, that seems simple and makes perfect sense" but Tod goes and puts this stuff to the test and shows us things aren't so simple as what the show in movies
I've been wanting a staff sling episode about throwing large rocks, I guess this will have to do for now
Great episode as always. I wonder about a bundle of rocks wrapped in newspaper or some other type of cloth. Ideally once it launches it would fall apart kind of like a sabot round. The loose binding cloth or paper would fall away from the air drag leaving your projectiles moving forward ideally :-)
And if you did decide to wrap them in rags, you could call them Rag-na-rocks ;-)
After a hard day's work, there's nothing quite like watching a bloke messing around with his trebuchet. :)
A friend of mine with a home wood shop did a science project in school about trebuchets and catapults. They found that with wheels, the trebuchet had a significantly increased range. They were building 1/16 models and throwing steel ball bearings. If I remember correctly the difference was up to several feet (filthy imperial system over here in the states). Perhaps not a full meter but certainly an additional foot or two in distance just due to the wheels. At 1/16 scale, I can only imagine what that actually works out to with a full sized model.
As you’ve said before, the people of the medieval ages were smart despite science not being quite what it is today. They’d have learned by doing, and it’s very reasonable that at some point, someone in the room said, “what if we tried putting wheels on it?”
I love these videos, and have learned an incredible amount about practical medieval technology from you. Please keep it coming.
I'm glad I waited until the end for commenting... If it weren't cost prohibitive, I'd try actual woven baskets, with lids, full of rocks. Or clay pots.
I believe that if they were wheeled, it was only for short distances, unless they were put on a massive platform.
Would be interesting to see what would happen if you shot a large rock made of obsidian or some other type of rock likely to shatter on impact and send shards everywhere? I've heard stories of this being done in the Crusades
Flint would be more likely, Europe isn't exactly flush with obsidian deposits. It might possibly break, but spheres are an incredibly strong shape, and it's solid all the way through, it's not like a glass bottle. I would be very sceptical of getting any militarily useful amount of fragments from something like that with no bursting charge, travelling at the fairly leisurely speeds these things throw.
Length of cloth, wrap the rocks up like a cut of meat in paper (fold ends in a couple times) then attach a ribbon to the unravel-end and just stack it loose in the sling. Do not fully wrap the cloth over itself more than once and only really gather the sides towards each other. The enclosed box will inelastically annihilate its own energy by making gravel. Trebuchet can also throw short logs.
Long may this series last. I'm really enjoying it.
If I was designing my new castle, I would want a deep ditch, with one or two narrow bridges, about 100m from the wall. That would make deploying any siege weapons within range a lot harder.
"little inconvinient" Alexander make long bridges over rivers under arrow fire....
Speaking of trebuchets on wheels, I was aware of two general types of trebuchet: swinging counterweights like the one Tod's built, which included the largest of siege weapons and were fairly immobile; and small to mid-sized engines with fixed counterweights and mounted on wheels (as the fixed-weight engine swung, it would roll back and forth as the center of gravity changed, much as how the swinging counterweight type minimizes that change by having the weight move mostly vertically through the swing). Seems to me like a wheeled trebuchet is just the sort of engine that would have been used for chucking both medium-weight stones and baskets of rocks, so I'd say Tod's on the right track.
I have _no idea_ how a swinging counterweight on a wheeled chassis will work, probably some interesting chaos unless Tod puts some chocks around the wheels to stop them rolling. He might have to end up converting his engine to a fixed weight to stop it shaking itself to bits.
I think it's a given they'd have to chock the wheels somehow, right? Unless they wanted to lose a ton of throwing power.
@@ottrr_ What I found interesting is that while you're absolutely right about needing to immobilize a swinging counterweight engine, you _want_ the fixed counterweight engines to roll on their wheels, otherwise they start to rock on their foundations, which could lead to tipping over or breaking.
Think of it like a recoil buffer on an artillery cannon.
Seeing how complex all of this is really makes you appreciate the original engineers.
I’m so happy that you came to the conclusion of wheels. I cannot remember what I was watching, but they built various version of trebuchet and the one with swinging load(like yours) and the wheels performed the best. Might have been a discovery channel show 15 years ago lol
Good luck with any future modifications!
I don't think besiegers would really spend tons of time in formation like on a battlefield, but the basket of rocks thing makes me think of onagers from AoE2, trebuchets I think are a little too complicated technically (both in the buid and in aiming) for firing at formations of troops, but I think you could get decent results from a torsion weapon although it's probably isn't as cost effective as a bunch of archers or slingers or crossbowmen.
Or if you want to go with the game promotion this was originally built for, mangonels.
Thank you for choosing our colors!
What a gorgeous sky that was. Simply marvelous.
Now that the kids are out of the house, my wife and I are looking to move out to the country on some land. I am SO building a trebuchet. That just looks like a ridiculous amount of fun. 😂
Bring Tom Stanton aboard! He's just down the street if I understand the layout of the UK correctly.
That would be terrific, and also fruitful considering Tom's experience with his compact trebuchet.
I'm not sold on the anti-personnel aspect of this.
Even if the box breaks, and it lands on the narrow streets of a town (remember towns/cities are mostly buildings and very narrow streets at this time), the radius in which it would harm people in is pretty small. And if one is selling this as a terror weapon to keep people afraid of going outside, I think a single big rock would do the same thing.
Not to mention ofc that even those narrow streets might not be cobbled.
Baskets of rocks would be a poor use of a trebuchet, given the alternatives as I see it.
Great experiments tho of course :)
Seems like a group of archers would be a lot more effective and efficient.
I had a trebuchet which was calibrated to throw an 8 lb payload with 600 lbs of counterweight about 15 years ago, and they way we would throw “submunition” loads (specifically 32 4 oz water-balloons or a whole bucket of golf balls), was to use a different sling with plastic stiffening strips (a basket, come to think of it) and load all of them loose in the different sling. You lose a bunch of range (30% or so? Don’t remember) compared to a pumpkin or a big rock, and you get a fairly wide spread, but it made for great fun.
Sounds pretty much what I am getting
You're a trooper for staying at it trying to figure it out. I love watching. Thanks Todd.
Useful for dispersing caltrops I'd imagine.
Caltrops are nothing a sweeping brush can't handle in a city.
8:12 now you said that, that got me thinking. isn't a trebuchet kinda like double pendulum? which is kinda the definition of chaos?
I guess technically yes. It's even a triple pendulum as there 3 axes of rotation: main one in the middle, one where the weight hands off, and one where the sling rotates at the end of the arm.
HOWEVER, chaos only really means something on a long time frame. The chaotic behaviour (defined as small initial conditions leading to arbitrarily separated states at a later time) of a double pendulum is only visible after many many oscillations. The short term behaviour is determined by the 2nd derivative of the Lagrangian (ie: the stability). While similar concepts the two aren't necessarily correlated. You can have things which are very stable in the short term but end up completely chaotic, and things unstable at the start but that never become chaotic.
I am loving these videos. Please continue.
Look at the nice laser-straight rows that the tractor driver made. Good job farmer!
Can you test out what would happen if you launch multiple small rocks without a basket?
Try it with a sling, and you'll see why this isn't a great option. Just don't have anyone standing behind you. Or beside you. Or anywhere in your general vicinity, really.
''Easy to find rocks'' Yes.
Slava Ukraini! Geroyam Slava!
Little known medieval rhyme:
"A tisket a tasket... Lord save us it's Mstr Tod's flying basket!"
I don't think that any amount of rocks in whatever size box you have will achieve the anti-personnel aims that you're looking at. The energy is taken out so quickly, them hitting each other etc just takes power away. A single rock can shatter, but it's not a missile. You've built a fantastic machine there Todd, loving all of these videos! Tom Stanton (YT) has done some great work on trebuchets, particularly looking at wheels etc. All the very best
💛💛💙💙💛💛💙💙
Ukraine colored rocks? *Yawn* 😑
Good to see you were able to get your rocks off in a smart fashion, brilliant!
I bet a basket of old horseshoes would make a formidable anti-personnel weapon.
It seems to me that you are learning the principles of external ballistics in real time. It's nice to see the difficulties that they impose upon nonuniform projectiles.
Blue and yellow are great colors when put together. Very recognizable.
It's great to see this and all the things that can affect performance.
If I remember correctly, wheels on a trebuchet helps greatly with distance. It's the interaction of the loading of the arm when in motion and the wheels allowing the whole apparatus to to rock back and forth, putting more speed on the very end of the arm. if you want to test that out, I did it with Lego, throwing pennies. The counter weight was a box of old computer mouse balls, I think like 8 or 9 of them.
I’ve got an idea to make a projectile that will explode on impact like what you were trying to achieve with the closed basket. If you made a hollow clay ball the size of the average projectiles you’re throwing, and fill the hollow shell with tons of pebbles, dirt, sand, medal chunks/fragments, etc. When this projectile hits the wall it would break open, and I believe would have enough force to send the stuff it’s filled w flying everywhere. Th sand would probably be more of an irritant as it would get in peoples eyes and everywhere else, and the stones and larger objects in the shell would hopefully fly with enough force to harm defenders near where the clay ball impacts!
You might try a basket formed of two halves with a joint at the bottom, such that the basket can fold open. This basket can be used in place of the pouch on the sling. When the loose end of the sling disconnects from the pin on the arm, the two halves of the basket will be spread apart by the movement of the sling-ropes relative to eachother, at which point the rocks will fly forward in a shotgun-esque spray.
We have grown to assume something that works will be consistent but actually making something that works consistently (as much as necesary for the respective use case) is a huge part of developement for many things
Many many many years ago. Around 30 yrs. I saw a documentary made in the UK that tackled how trebuchets truly worked. They employed a group of engineers, a physics professor, an archer who used a 120# English Longbow and even a rock carver. They had the archer stand on an actual wall of a castle and determined the average distance the arrows landed. They then went to another area where theyvbuilt a double thick stone wall that had debris in between that matched the same as the castle the archer stood on. The engineers figured out the exact dimensions needed for the structure of the trebuchet, the size and how much weight they needed in the counter weight and the size and weight of the rounded stone to throw at a distance that was just outside the archers range. They built two trebuchet. One with and one without wheels. In the end they were able to tweak and adjust the one on wheels until they were able to devastate the stone wall. It was incredible how much destruction they did to the wall. Essentially taking down a section big enough so that troops could enter through. I wish to God I could remember the name of the program but hopefully someone on here can help locate it
Firing many small, fiery rocks (or dead cows) would also be interesting to test, for siege warfare.
A basket of rocks shrinks to grapeshot which shrinks to buckshot. It's like watching a wolf evolve into a chihuahua.
There was a TV program about trebuchet and they thought wheels would lessen the power, but it did the opposite. It magnified the power and in several old images I've seen they had wheels. You could test this by building a 6' treb with removable wheels. Love the videos. God bless
I never get tired of hearing that thing fire
If not wheels, maybe just a load of rollers. They're less complicated to make and easy to source from the same forest you got the trebuchet lumber from, and far less prone to breakage.
You'd need a big team (or horses) to move it, but that's true even with wheels.
"Different day, Different tash" Love it 😂
Around 10 years ago I built a small trebuchet (like 3ft tall, used ~40lbs) to throw water balloons. Now, mine was made from PVC pipe and extremely light so that may be part of it, but adding wheels made the thing throw further and more accurately. It went from a violent, chaotic throwing machine to an elegant one.
I kept thinking the answer is in the words: rocks In a basket, not box. A straw/wicker basket tends to be more rounded in shape (and potentially also flamable). The flat sides of a box catches air & moves it about drastically (try shooting slingshot with irregular gravel, they seem to take right angles on occasion!).
A basket made of straw might have 1000s of drag points & either stop like a parachute or hold air like dimples on a golf ball & go farther.
But I agree with the conclusion: small changes that would be very hard to notice = big end result differences.
As always, Tod, great work!
I imagine an wicker or woven stick basket, made of two pieces held together in wrapped string, made to fit more like a ball you'd launch. It keeps them together similar trajectory to the way a regular munition would go, then string unwraps mid flight releasing the rocks.
I want to see a big bundle of your large throwing darts, they could even be retained in a bundle until loosed by a variation on the loop and knot idea you use to throw them by hand.
"Different day, different tache." Yeah, that green grass filling the whole field kind of gave it away :)
What a gift, your work and channel.
As demosterd by a show on PBS. Wheels add distance and reduce stress on the frame. By alowing the counterweight to drop in a strater line .Then disapateng most of the stress by rocking back and forth freely. That is as long as you do not block them in place.
I have an idea, use a linen sheet or similar and wrap the stones tightly in it, wrap it so it unrolls in the air. A trebuchet should induce a forward spin on the projectile, so maybe you could use the spin rate and length of fabric to control when it disperses.
In my own limited experience with small trebuchet, wheels make all the difference. It is another level of adjustment, but you get a payoff in distance and another way to distribute energy after the throw. Plus, it's a pleasure to watch.
Keep up the hardwork.
Awesome work Mr Todd thank you
As I understand it, in some sieges the anti-personnel artillery was provided by many, smaller pull trebuchets each hurling a tennis ball sized stone. The pull trebuchets had a much higher rate of fire, and with only one stone as ammunition, didn't suffer a significant range penalty.
I can see that this trebuchet stuff REALLY gets your rocks off!
I have shot a sling many times with multiple projectiles, but I simply loaded 5 - 10 little rocks in the pouch, and it works great ! The impacts were very spaced out at 30 meters, but all the rocks hit at the same distance, like a blunderbuss. If you ever try this with the trebuchet, be careful : stand at 10 m from it when firing...
This seems very useful for defending against an assault rather than for siege warfare. Put this on top of a castle wall and sight it for your lower elevation defenses (moats, lower town walls) and you gain a bunch of advantages and eliminate your problems. You can shoot over obstacles with a ballistic trajectory, and don't have the speed limitations of European crossbows or the arrow/bolt supply issues.
Hi Tod, I always enjoy your great videos and thoughtful insights on your subject matter. If medieval commanders ever decided to hurl clouds of small rocks as a kind of anti personnel weapon, then perhaps they might have used clay pots. A round clay pot with a small opening would be almost as aerodynamic as a rock, could be loaded with many small rocks but the small opening would stop too many, or even any, rocks from falling out before the target area. It would also burst open nicely, even adding its own potsherds as extra fragmentation.
I think that no matter how you calibrate it, a basket or box of rocks will never fly as far as a large rock of the same type. Density of the ammunition will change how much drag affects it.
Seeing that the tether line could work as a form of fletching is absolutely brilliant. I never would have thought of it myself, but it reminds me of different types of fletchings for arrows, javelins, and other missiles.
The colors of the rocks just made spirit of people in a distant country rise up ;)
I think they might have put the rocks into some kind of pottery... every army probably had plenty of pots for storing food and if it shatters every pice would turn into a projectile. Also it could improve aerodynamics because pottery is usually more round & smooth then wooden boxes.