ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, April 9, 1997 TAG: 9704090019
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: LEXINGTON
SOURCE: TODD JACKSON THE ROANOKE TIMES
It started with a federal grant to study the medieval weapon called a trebuchet. Then, cadets and engineering professors warmed to the idea. Now more than 100 people have been working to get the giant contraption to show its hurling power.
They build more than character at Virginia Military Institute.
In McKeithan Park just outside town, about 100 people have been working since Saturday morning on a Big Bertha of a project. There are tents and sawdust everywhere.
On top of a hill in the middle of the park, high above Interstate 81, stands what first appears to be one heck of a children's playground.
On closer inspection, several cadets and craftsmen hanging all over the object are calling it a trebuchet.
A treb-you-what?
A trebuchet (TREB-yoo-shet) is not something the local Wal-Mart stocks.
During its heyday in medieval times, the trebuchet was the siege weapon of choice.
It could fling heavier objects than its smaller and less destructive cousin, the catapult.
The trebuchet builders in Lexington - including VMI professors, cadets and members of the Timberframers Guild of North America - hope their machine will hurl a 100-pound river rock the length of 21/2 football fields.
But they have to get it built first.
The group had hoped to start flinging things with the trebuchet at midday Tuesday. However, the construction of the machine - whose frame is 15 feet tall and throwing arm is 22 feet long - is taking longer than anticipated.
And that's with some of the most skilled craftsmen in the country working on it.
If the Lexington trebuchet works as planned, it will be the largest all-wood machine of its kind successfully completed in the United States, said Paul Chevedden, a history professor at VMI who's an expert in early siege tactics.
"Stonewall Jackson would have liked it," Chevedden said. "It's a piece of artillery."
The idea for the trebuchet started when Chevedden - along with four other engineers and historians - received a $113,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities last year to conduct an interdisciplinary study of the weapon.
Cadets warmed to the idea as did several VMI engineering professors including Grigg Mullen and Wayne Neel, both of whom have been working on the construction team.
It's definitely not a typical science project.
The machine's design started in a library in Innsbruck, Austria, where one of the most detailed plans for an early trebuchet is on file. The author was Conrad Kyser, a medieval German engineer.
The trebuchet is activated by cranking the throwing arm down with a rope wound around wooden axles. The rope is then pulled free and the arm springs forward with the use of a counterweight (a wooden basket full of rocks).
After settling on the design, the VMI professors began a dialogue with the timberframers.
Members of the guild get together all over the United States to build things and to celebrate their craft.
Let's go to Lexington and build one of those war machines, they said.
And here they are.
Men like Chris Madigan of Alstead, N.H., and Jim Kricker of upstate New York have been working alongside a troop of camouflage-clad cadets.
"We've built many things," Madigan said. "But this is the first siege machine for us."
Kricker had little time for talk Sunday. He had one of the toughest jobs: Sawing the mammoth piece of hemlock that's being used for the throwing arm. Massive pieces of hemlock aren't easy to come by, so the project's brain trust stood and watched intently as Kricker worked.
With the help of a partner, he glided a chainsaw a horror movie fan would love up and down the log as if he were spreading butter on a piece of toast.
"That man knows what he's doing," Mullen said.
On top of the hill in McKeithan Park on Tuesday, cadets and Lexington residents took pictures of the trebuchet being assembled. Mike Barnes, who works for the PBS television series "Nova," shot video of the scene.
The show is planning a series that will feature trebuchets, he said.
Everyone on the hill talked about what the Big Bertha will look and sound like when it's set in motion.
It's even being lubricated as it would have been in the Middle Ages - with lard and linseed oil.
When completed, there's been talk of taking the trebuchet on a tour of the country.
Chevedden said the trebuchet could make some money.
"People could pay to have their mother-in-laws tossed," he joked.
LENGTH: Medium: 96 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: JANEL RHODA THE ROANOKE TIMES. No, it's not aby CNBre-creation of the Iwo Jima Memorial; it's a trebuchet, the larger
cousin to a catapult, which VMI cadets and professors are building
with the help of the Timberframers Guild of America. color.