[Elfsea] Iron Lance Ballista

[Adam Harrison]

Tangwystl,

Unfortunately we cannot send that ballista off to the
Lance yet.  It is not legal under the new rules and
cannot be grandfathered in since it wasn't finished at
Gulf Wars.  At war we rushed to complete it, but alas
the new trigger for it failed impressively.  It was
something that could not be fixed on site.  It needs
to be completely reworked before the ballista will
pass inspection.

The new rules state that surgical tubing or other
bungee material cannot be used as a power source on
siege weapons.  I knew this rule was in consideration
when I rebuilt that ballista in March and designed the
hole carrier(that big box stucture in the front) with
the intent to convert it to a tortion powered machine
over this summer.  This is a relatively easy task and
should take less than a day of work in a good
workshop.

As it stands now, the bowsting of that particular
ballista rides too high and does not engage bolts on
the slide(long stock looking thing-essentially the
ballista's equivalent of a rifle barrel).  This was
partially intentional in that I wanted to convert the
ballista to a stone throwing machine, not a bolt
throwing machine.  minor modifications are necessary
to improve this so it actually fires rocks straight.
This shouldn't take more than an hour but cannot be
done until the tortion coversion is completed.

The swivel joint may need to be reinforced, it is a
bit wimpy at the moment.  it also needs to be
repositioned, it is to far forward from the balance
point, so the slide/ladder/holecarrier assembly tends
to want to rock backwards.

The base also needs to be reworked and strengthened
considerably.  Some structural concerns were bypassed
in lieu of expediency in an effort to complete
construction of the ballista on site at Gulf Wars.
Unfortunately the plan backfired and we couldn't get
the ballista on the field.  Structural improvements
need to be added to the base.  These shouldn't take
more than a couple of hours to do.

Finally other minor improvements need to be made to
the ballista before I would ship it off to the lance.

All of these improvements can be made before pennsic
if we get about 6 people willing to invest a couple of
days of work and a little bit of money.

Unfortunately I am without the use of my right wrist
for at least the next six days due to a mountain
biking injury suffered last week, otherwise I'd say we
could get this done with 3 people(It helps to have the
person with the plan fully able to participate).

I had intended to rebuild the ballista earlier in the
summer, unfortunately I have been very busy.

If anyone has some free time in the next few days, we
can probably get the ballista rebuilt in time to send
it to Pennsic.

If anyone is interested in helping out, please contact
me at concrete_donkey at yahoo.com

-Bjorn
Siege Marshal

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