The Ballista

The Lurgy persists, but I am slowly getting better.  This is the summer slow season for catapult work.  Things always pick up around the vernal equinox when the CG’s start getting hungry for a little progress.  I have promised them all sorts of delights for next season, including:  lighter limbs, a two way hand winch, a fancy stand that knocks apart for transport, barrels of bolts, tubs of glandes, and possibly even a new, rapidly adjusted sighting system.

Firefly has started to enter her prime as a full power working reconstruction based on the Orsova artifacts.  Ever since the kamarion and field frames have been reworked with spring grade steel to resist the powerful forces at work when she is operated,  our little machine has performed very reliably.  Even the evil chaffing trolls  seem to have gone into remission.   Rope based torsion springs are always vulnerable to their rapacious antics.  Fortunatley,  our stout Sherlock wrappings seem to  have solved that problem.

In the coming season I intend to present more comprehensive and better organized ballistic data.  Up until now it has been hard to  make much  sense of any numbers because the parameters that generate them were always changing as something bent or broke or had to be fixed or improved.  That is not so much the case anymore. Take, for example, this string of velocites I recorded the day before the Lurgy struck.  All these shots were done with lead glandes weighing 6,100 grains  +/- 10 grains.

Shot #                   Velocity in feet per second (measured two feet from muzzle)

1                              288.8

2                              288.3

3                              286.5

5                              287.0

6                              283.6

7                              285.0

Even by firearms standards these are remarkably low levels of velocity deviation.  What might happen if I were to do this same testing on a different day is still an unknown, but having seven consecutive shots be this consistent for speed is very encouraging.  Not quite so thrilling was the group they produced, about two feet at fifty yards.  I suspect the pouch needs to be rigged a little differently, and that might be quite an undertaking.  In any event things progress.

Back to my cold medicine now.

The dreaded lurgy has struck.   Coughing and spluttering up big ….. well you don’t want to know……..and a nice smattering of hot and cold sweats,  with a major case of conjunctivitis thrown in for good measure.  Having too much fun rocking back and forth, watching you all through a bleary yellow film.  Yuck!

Apologies for not responding to emails.  Will get to it when lurgy recedes.

Crawling off to die now.