Trebuchet Plans

In 2005 I happened to catch a fascinating news report about the "World Champion Punkin Chunkin Contest" on NPR. I shared the story with my son and we both knew we had to attend the next year. In 2006 my son and I traveled from our home in Asheville, NC to a farm in Delaware where we met thousands of people from across the US and around the world who had all traveled to witness pumpkins being hurled hundreds and even thousands of feet across a giant field. Even the Myth Busters did shows each year about the Punkin Chunkin. We had a fantastic time and learned lots about medieval siege instruments. Of all the siege instruments we saw that day it was the trebuchets that most fascinated us. A few months later we had purchased a trebuchet kit and built it together as a father-son project. That tiny trebuchet was able to hurl golf balls 70 yards! This only fueled our desire to hurl something larger. And so began my quest to design a trebuchet that was not so large that I couldn't carry it on top of my car's roof rack. 

Before building my first prototype I met with my friend Sam Sykes who had developed a trebuchet teambuilding game. Sam offered some valuable feedback on my initial design. Many prototypes (and improvements) later, my design is now refined and has been used by thousands of people (young and old) to hurl water balloons up to 50 yards.