Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Oh yeah, this will end well...

Ok folks, its time for another installment of 'The Danger Show - with Grimm and Steve'. What are these two kooky kids up to today? Well, they've decided to built a ballista. That's right, these brain surgeons are going to use tools, to make a weapon. It's a danger trifecta!

We began with a well written set of directions and blueprints we obtained off the interweb. These plans were promptly ignored by Grimm, who has in typical fashion, completely redesigned the project in his brain.

Things got off to a good start when Grimm informed me that the prod (the bow shaped thing that makes the big arrows go zoom) did not look good enough, and would have to be cut down. Now, because of the spring like nature of this piece of steel, it cannot be subjected to heat. This would ruin the tempter. The solution? Hose down the prod as we use an electric circular saw to cut the prod.

I am not making this up. If you click HERE you will see the larger image, labelled accordingly:

1. The Hose
2. The Saw
3. The electric cord
4. Glasses. Subject to fogging and debris
5. Grimm's mind

I'll upload some video to youtube later. It was fun, if you consider getting soaked to the skin in ice water while risking electrocution fun. But somehow, we managed not to injure ourselves. We only got half the prod done before the cold forced us indoors for fresh socks. We began the body of the weapon, which looks pretty good. To be fair, Grimm did the lions share of the hard work work this first session. I alternated between flinching and trying not to pee myself. To feel productive I've started stripping a pair of Amish wheels Grimm 'obtained' which will be used to move the weapon once its done. I am fairly sure that using Amish wagon wheels as part of a Medieval siege weapons is a fairly straight path to Hell.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Over the weekend Delgrath's brother-in-law shot out his(Delgrath's) garage window with a ballista.
There was much laughter, although I don't know how del's wife took it.

Tim