Torsion Catapult

Jayce found the breaking point of the catapult's base. He twisted about 5 1/2 times and the wood cracked. Now we must buy new wood. The wood cracked at the point where the rope bundle exits the hole in the wood and wraps around the handle.

The wood was cut and installed in the catapult's base. Now we will go back to testing the extent to which we can crank the handles before the wood in between the crossbars cracks.

We have selected which 4x4's we want to use as crossbars and have marked the wood for cutting. Now we are cutting the wood using the miter saw.

We encountered a problem today. We had not taken into account the fact that twisting the torsion bundle will exert crushing forces on our catapult. We must now add crossbars for increased support. Also we added the torsion bundle itself. It is very hard to twist. We must address these new problems promptly.

Today was a super testing day so we could not work on anything.

Today we messed around a little bit with the torsion bundle. It ended up snapping. We will put more effort into creating an effective bundle when we have more time.

We finished installing the arm stop and its supports. Now we will work on installing the actual arm. We have created a few-inch hole on either side of the body that the rope bundle will feed through.