The Ballista

One of the outboard winch bushings and all the bits of it that are not.    Below we see what they look like installed in the side plates.

At the heart of every  good catapult winch there is a pawl.  This the pivoting piece of steel that snicks into the teeth on the ratchet and allows the drum to rotate only in one direction.  It is vital to get this part right as I have no desire to get clobbered by a runaway handspike.   Better to overbuild it out of some high grade chrome moly,  than forever worry it is going to fail at a critical moment.  It might be a good idea to put a little leaf spring on the pawl, it would give gravity an assist by powering into the locked position.

Such are the Saturday afternoon musings of the catapult maker.  Balancing asymmetrical risk with judicious levels of reinforcement is just about as amusing and diverting as it gets around here.  Yeah, I know,  “It’s all great fun, until somebody puts out an I.”

Athena’s little chum has just spied a bronze mouse hiding in the closet.     Good news for those of us obsessed with winch bushings.    There has been several fortuitous finds of steel, bronze and wood these last couple of days.  Many thanks to the forces at work here.

Also,  it’s snowing.

These ratchet teeth are a 1/4″ deep and appear every 15 degrees.

I figure that with a six foot lever the throw on the end of the hand spike will be about 18″  for each notch.  That seems about right for a nice smooth draw.   Click, Click, Click.

Smoothy Mc’ Smooth is having his way with the lumpy bits.  Not bad for a Milwaukee.

These last few days Firefly has started growing a winch.

Soon Grasshopper, soon.