Hello friends! Today I built the Faeries a trebuchet with this awesome kit from the company Abong that I got off of Amazon. I bought a set of three medieval weapons a while back, but this is the first time I am putting one together. It was like the most satisfying Lego ever, lol. The kit is wood and you are gluing parts together.
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Manannan and Yuan helped me build it. :) The first step was to sand both sides of the two wooden pieces before you took all the little parts out. It didn't explain why, but my guess is that this minimizes splinters maybe when you pop the pieces out? Anyway, they asked for two different sandpapers of specific grits, and I had two different sandpapers but they were both more coarse than what they wanted in the first place, so I just used my least-coarse one.
I was using the old baking tray to try and contain the sawdust from sanding
There was a difference in color after you sanded, so I aimed for that and called it good. There was so much sawdust! I'm glad I used the tray.
My supervisors helping me work
Then, I started popping out pieces and gluing them together. I only popped out the pieces I needed for that step, so everything was easier to keep track of. A word of caution if you order this kit: be careful when you first open it, because the beads that are the ammunition flew when I first opened everything up, lol. I had to find them.
Steps two and three
Steps three and four
The basket that is the counterweight needed me to fill it with something heavy, which was not included in the kit. So I used rocks! :) And then I made a cover by cutting out a piece from a file folder (paperboard). They said there was a template on their website, but I couldn't find it, so I winged it. It was easy enough.
I had to put masking tape on the end of the cord in order to be able to thread it through the holes, because it kept fraying. The holes were small enough in relation to the cord that I was fairly certain it wouldn't go through on a needle because it wouldn't fit doubled over. So I taped it like a shoelace, and that worked!
The first use for the cord was to attach the counterweight basket to the lever.
Such a sweet helper <3
I had to glue the knots to make sure they didn't come undone, so the first pic here is how I had it sitting so that the glued cord wasn't touching the base and sticking to it while it dried, lol. The trigger is a straightened paperclip (also not included, so you need to have one).
The next use for the cord was to make the ammunition. You are tying the cord of a certain length which you can roughly estimate using one of the original boards that contained all the pieces (there are notches), with a bead on it.
There was enough cord to make a 4th shot even though the kit only came with three beads, so I found a similar bead in my beading supplies and made a fourth one! :)
locked and loaded!
So now the Fae have a trebuchet to use in their battles against the billionaires. :D
Ta da!
I had a lot of fun building this kit. I look forward to building the other two now! You'll be able to see the trebuchet in action over on @faeriestories when we make another video. :)
Thanks for reading and have a wonderful week!