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Skills catapult Sisters
man onto 'Nova'
By Gordon Gregory
(published in The Oregonian Newspaper, Portland Oregon - April 25, 1999) SISTERS — The earliest precursor to the computer guided missiles now smashing through hardened defenses in Yugoslavia dates back at least to medieval times when catapults, or trebuchets, were used by invaders to break down castle walls.
They were weapons of mass destruction, and they were nasty," said Hanney, an expert at shaping great timbers, particularly into irregular or spherical shapes. He and about 50 other craftsmen from the United States and Europe met in Inverness, Scotland, to participate in a "Nova" public television project intended to find out if today's top timber crafters could replicate the great machines. "Nova" producers, who plan to run the program in about a year, wanted to see if a trebuchet (pronounced tray-boo-chey) that was capable of breaking sown massive stone walls could be built today without modern equipment or tools. The builders could not use any contemporary fasteners such as bolts or welded plates. They could not use composite woods like laminated beams or plywood. And they had to use hand lathes, axes and hand saws to shape the timbers. The machines themselves had to be able to withstand immense stresses. Trebuchets, which were as tall as five-story buildings, have tremendous throwing arms that swing at blinding speed on wooden axles. They are powered by gravity acting on several-ton counterweights. Trebuchets work on the same principles as teeter-totters, except in the war version one end holds a 300-pund sphere chiseled from sandstone and placed in a rope sling attached to the throwing end. On the other end is a 7-ton counterweight. The trebuchets of old had to be able to cast hundreds of stones with great precision.
The two machines he helped build in Scotland, each about 30 feet tall, were able to throw their great sandstone balls 600 feet at almost 130 mph. And once the operators figured out how to aim them, they were remarkably accurate. There was naturally some trial and error, however. The first time they fired one of the machines the rock went straight up in the air, landing some 30 feet from the trebuchet. "This was very dangerous work," Hanney said. Eventually, they figured out how to adjust the aim and they were able to crumble a section of a 5-foot-thick rock wall built by Scottish masons for the project. Hanney, who works for the custom timber framing firm Earthwood Homes in Sisters, was impressed by how effective these weapons must have been. Because of their size and weight, they had to be built at the battlefield, although because of their range, they could be placed well out of bow-and-arrow range from the castle. Producers of the "Nova" series, "Secrets of Lost Empires," wanted to see if the weapons were as effective as described in the old texts. Hanney said the producers also wanted to see how well a group of people facing a difficult construction problem, for which none of them was an authority, would work together. The conditions were not pleasant. It rained every day for the two weeks they were at Urquhart Castle on Loch Ness. Hanney said the mud was ubiquitous and added greatly to their difficulties. But neither tempers nor egos flared, and Hanney said every aspect of the experience was actually quite fun. Surrounded by the centuries-old stone ruins and lush Scottish landscape, Hanney said he sometimes sensed the antiquity of the environment. Also, using traditional tools on the archaic war machines helped him connect with the past. Sometimes bagpipers played for the workmen, who were facing many of the same construction challenges as the medieval builders. "It was so authentic that sometimes it just really took you back there," he said. Hanney tried to imagine what it might have been like in the 13th century to be standing on the castle wall at Urquhart, watching invaders float huge timbers across the loch and begin building trebuchets. Defenders could probably also see the stone cutters shaping the projectiles that would be used to tear into their defenses. He said that in some sieges, firebombs or livestock infected with the plague were also hurled over the walls. "You could just imagine those guys in the castle watching this. It must have been terrifying when they started flying those stones," he said. |
An Oregon man, Derwyn Hanney, a master
timber framer in Sisters, can attest to the effectiveness of these ancient
war weapons that today seem so crude. He helped build two trebuchets
in Scotland last fall that were modeled on historic drawings, and he was
clearly impressed by the machines.
"The key to breaking down an 8-foot-thick castle wall is hitting it repeatedly,
over and over and over in the same place," Hanney said.