I am still working on the larger onager and have yet tried to overcome the flexibility problems. I found a vague drawing of a "catapult" on the web today. I spent an hour in my room and built a working model of it, I have named it the Monager, or Manual Onager.
. Please forgive the poor quality of the pictures as they were taken with a digital camera which is not of the highest quality. In some pictures the larger onager may seem to be tilted or skewed but it is just the camera.
The onager is a form of catapult that has been in use for thousands of years; it was used by both the Roman and Greek armies. The onager is affectively a type of torsion catapult which uses a single arm and thick coil of a twisted rope material for power. The onager consists of two upright posts with a crossbeam, usually at the top, with the rope coil suspended between the two uprights (imagine something like an American football goal). Through the twisted portion of rope is the throwing arm, normally this arm rests upon the crossbeam when the weapon is not being used. The arm is cocked (drawn back and readied to fire) by a crank and ratchet type system. Once the firing arm is fully cocked the missile is loaded onto the end of this arm. There are several variations of the onager and my test model represents the type that uses a basket (in this case, the head of a teaspoon) while the one being currently constructed will attempt to use a sling system. The onager is almost stupidly simple to use in operation and was a powerful ballistic weapon for thousands of years. You can conduct a search of Google's image database for "onager" to find some images of it if you wish. My two onagers are constructed from materials which I have found lying around the house. Thick bamboo kabob skewers, hemp twine (wonderful stuff, I used it for the string on my slings), a hotglue gun and various simple handtools.
Why do I build this type of thing you might ask. Boredom, sheer boredom. The only good thing on television anymore is the History Channel and currently they are playing a marathon of shows on the Wild West which I have seen each episode of a few times. While I am not browsing the Bad Astronomy Bulletin Board (BABB) or playing The Sims I go off to my room and sit in the floor, with makeshift materials, and build things.
The description of this is long because I have never seen one of these before and I doubt many others have. I tried to make the basic structure clear but if you wish clarification or more pictures you can email me at acerbichumor@hotmail.com. Please include "monager" in the subject line.
