Hi. I mentioned a while back that myself and a friend are Kickstarting a medieval weapons sound library. We've recently found a local farmer who has a small trebuchet that he throws pumpkins with. The spar is about fifteen feet long, with a box of around a thousand pounds. He does not have any sort of racheting system to span the engine, but uses a tractor and just has a helper set the pin when the spar is spanned back. We are planning on recording the loosing of the device, but would also like to get some sounds of a trebuchet being spanned. My question is: how were most of these smaller trebuchet spanned? I've seen large "mousewheels" on giant ones, and some racheting systems as well. What do you think is most historically common a device and could such a thing be built with any sort of relative ease? Thanks for any info you guys have!

Brian

The most historically accurate method would probably be ten or twelve sturdy men-at-arms.

Actually, a winch or a straight ratchet would probably be the best option. Either can be made of sturdy lumber, with or without metal reinforcements. The release is a little beyond my know-how for trebuchets, but you could extrapolate from the Legio XX ballista page: http://www.legionxxiv.org/ballista.htm.

At Nykøbing Falster's “Middelalder Center“ they have specialized in the building and researching of trebuchets and early cannons.
The museum leader Peter Vemming has lead it since 1992 and they have build both a small and a big trebuchet (Danish: Blide).
The big trebuchet used at Warwick Castle was build to his specifications (local carpenters and Danish ironfittings).

So the big one are “loaded“ by “mousewheels“ while the smaller ones are “loaded“ by muscle power as you can see in this clip (1.15-1.35 min): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUMKJm5LLZY

Seeing them shot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhE_FxaUpfU&index=2&list=PLezwDWchAtcMFPUY7qcsW4fy5SjySJQPC
0.59-2.19 min

You can also see this article in Archaeology from 2005 about Peter Vemming about trebuchets:
http://archive.archaeology.org/online/interviews/vemming/

They had a conference and workshop called “Trebuchet to Cannon, Military Technology 1000-1600“ in 2010, but apparently the results haven't been published it. :\

From 2001 there has also been an ongoing study in early cannon and the making of early gunpowder. Apparently a sulphur mine in Iceland was in use for gunpowder production already in 1300 [it was processed as sulphur for gunpowder on the site].

If interested you can see some off the testing reports on the right of this web page (in english!):
http://www.middelaldercentret.dk/Projekter/krudtogkanoner.html

Parts of “The Mediaval Fightbook“ (about the Hans Talhoffer volume in the Copenhagen National Library) was shot at the “Middelalder Center“.

As far as I am aware, Almost universally, windlasses with ratchet were the most common and easy to produce mechanisms for spanning. Here some exapmles;

Anonymus of the Hussite Wars, 1475 (Ratchet mechanism clearly seen)



From Conrad Kyeser's Bellifortis;

[ Linked Image ]

Philip Mönch, 1496



Jami el Tevarih written between 1304-1314, Mongols besieging a castle;


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For most cases it is true that book copying monastic audience were unaware of what they are doing but this was not the case when it comes to specially prepared books written by expert military technicians such as Konrad Kyeser, Ibn Erenbugha or Al Tarsusi.

Also, if we try to get a solution in a scientific way, by taking statistics of visual evidences remaining we can conclude that windlass was the most popular spanning device. Interestingly, there are quite a few historical images of thread wheel mechanism. They were not that common as represented by popular media.

About written evidence such details are hard to obtain. Writers in most cases omitted about some details, maybe intentionally not to provide secrets of building such powerful weapons.