Len Morgan\'s latest project....

[Crispvs]

Randi,

All good points, and yes I too am aware of the limitations of much copied and possibly corrupted manuscripts. I do tend to feel too, that as no catapult has yet been found in its complete state, that we cannot discount the possibility that there may be further parts which have not been found or which are yet to be identified. But I agree that we should always start with the evidence and then work out from there, rather than the other way around.
Regarding assuptions, I see your points entirely. I was just concerned that your post did not make any obvious distinction between known facts and necessary assumptions. I am aware that most of us who have been contributing to this thread are able to spot the assumptions we must make with little trouble and should not need prompting, but I am also aware that many other people may be looking at this thread and endeavoring to learn lessons from it who are not known to us and do not have the familiarity with the subject matter in question needed to sift fact from assumption.

Crispvs

[AuxArcher]

Crispvs, I'm still recovering a bit from my legio's deployment to guard the Vermont provinces from barbarian hordes (being mainly WWII reenactors, ) but I have to agree strongly with Randi's comment about avoiding making up missing parts to fit into already formulated assumptions. Many washers and other metal parts are known to us, zero complete wooden cases and stands are known to us. And glancing though a copy of Alan Wilken's book Roman Artillary, I was struck with a few of those very assumptions. One is the battle shield of the Cremona machine. It looks essentially complete, including the leaf design that boarders the text embossed in the plate.

But, Alan states flately that the bolt is always positioned half way up the spring frame, and thus, he has to invent a "missing" portion of the shield, which he has conveniently made up some text for; my assumption is that he did that because the apatrue for the slider and bolt is significantly higher than in the horizontal center of the plate. My feelings right now (and I will put my money where my mouth is) in my still in-progress 2" machine, is that the bow string doesn't absolutley have to be positioned exactly half way between the top and bottom of the spring frame. In fact, I had to work very, very hard to get the slider assembly in that relative position based on that assumption, and would do it differently in future machines.

Medieval cross bows feature a string that rubs across the top of the weapon's stock, and Marsden illustrates bow machines with strings that cant upward and rest behind the bolts / arrows, instead of staying on a comptely horizontal plane. It makes perfect sense in those cases, and why not for Roman arrow machines? I don't have my Marsden in front of me this moment, but I will go through his translations later and see if he too shares Alan's opinion.

Those kinds of opinions don't, in all honesty, make me feel I can entirely trust Wilken's other theories.

[P. Clodius Secundus]

Happy Day!
The UPS driver just dropped off my very own copies of Marsden's Vols. I & II. Now I won't have to e-mail others (Thanks Dane) and ask them to look for referrences that might help prove or disprove my latest theory or as some would say, heresy. While Dane is reading up to find out what, if anything, is said about the relative positions of the string, case, and frame, I would like to interject that what brought the possibilty to our attention that a frame could be mounted "underslung" (lower on the case and therefore vertically off-center) was a wire-frame drawing analysis of the Cupid Gem. It showed a distinct offset which did not square with the conventional wisdom. This ideal either originated, or was at least championed by Mr. Wilkins. I'm sure he can clarify it's origin far better than I. If one cites Vedinnius or the more recent Xanten find, I would point out that they are most likely hand-held weapons. Under my current view of the catapult universe, this would indicate that they were subject to a different set of design criteria than stand mounted weapons. Being oversprung (due to the need for compactness) and therefore posessing shorter arms, the angle at which an offset string met the slider would be greater than on an undersprung larger weapon. Perhaps that would cause problems. A quick glance at the at Marsdens Gatraphetes (T.T. p 47) the angle on a theoretical underslung Cremona would be no greater. Another point which would make underslinging desirable would be everyone's favorite catch-all "field of view". By lowering the top hole carrier relative to the case it is much easier to see one's target when firing elevated at long range. This would probably not be as beneficial on hand held weapons where one would likely be using a more direct aim through the aperture.
I depart now to cook supper and read my new books, confident that I have caused enough aggravation and/or boredom for now.

[jkaler48]

Getting back to our dear new friend Bestia for a moment, I was helping out on her on Saturday and can testify to both Len's craftsmanship and the weight of the machine. It takes four to five of us to raise the head of the ballista and three to four even to tip it onto its end when not on its stand. It weighs in at just over a ton.
It comes apart (as we feel most of the originals must have for transporting) into the two spring frames, four steel plated front / back braces which hold the spring frames in position, four steel plated side braces, the stock/tail and the three part stand. We plan to have a trained six man team to assemble, operate and disassemble it and will probably try to have what amounts to a reserve six man team to cover those who may not be there for every show.

The test shoot is to be the Saturday after next, where we will be shooting concrete balls of the appropriate callibre and measuring the distances achieved. These distances will be able to be compared with measured draw weights. Each spring frame contains around 300 metres of nylon cord (so I am told - I was not there for the actual loading of the spring frames) and whilst this will not tell us much about the actual performance of ancient ballistas powered by sinew it should be useful for comparison purposes, particularly once it becomes possible to determine the performance of nylon compred to sinew (assuming that someone out there has been able to or will make enough sinew cord to be able to test its energy storage and spring compared to that of nylon cord). I will certainly be there for the test shoot, although whether I will be able to stick around for the massed gathering of artillery the next day is in some doubt unfortunately.

Incidentally, the catapulta with the brass front mentioned earlier in the thread was probably Tom Feeley's trispithimus, which should be in attendance on the Sunday, along with a machine from II Augusta, our trispithimus and Alan Wilkins' cheiroballistra, polybolos and onoga. There may be some other machines there as well. I don't know whether the ESG will turn up with any of their pieces, although personally I doubt that they would.


"When the government here in America caught wind of my Civil War groups' cannon, they sent us a contract to sign. The contract basically bound us to never use it as a terrorist weapon! LOL!!!"

Back in 1977, when my parents neglected to sign a declaration stating that my 18 month old younger brother was not a communist we were held under armed guard at Los Angeles airport for two hours while the plane was refueled and then returned to the departure gate under guard.

Sorry to get a little OT here.

Crispvs

Enough sinew to test or even rig a machine may now be available see photo here : [url:241q31ez]http://daniyalsteelcrafts.blogspot.com/[/url]

[JVL]

Is there any way to see some photographs of the machine? I would be most interested to see some. I've only seen one so far, but I'd like to see from different angles and some detail photos.

If it is appropriate to ask such thing... :oops:

[Crispvs]

I do have a photo, which I took when we were doing some more testing the other day, but I think I had better ask for Len and Alan's permission before posting it up. I could also say a good deal about the results to date but for the time being I think I had better ask you all to be patient. I understand that this is frustrating but the testing has thrown up a number of areas which still require a bit of further thought and it will, of course, be properly published as soon as possible once we (and in particular Alan) is satisfied that we have found successful solutions to some of the problems being encountered which can stand as possibilities for what may have actually existed. Sorry to be so cryptic.

Crispvs