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+--- Thread: Orsova ballista field trials to start. (/showthread.php?tid=14698)
Orsova ballista field trials to start. - Nick Watts - 02-25-2009
This is my first posting to this forum. I have been reading that the inswinger/outswinger debate is still a matter of controversy to some people. To anyone interested in the subject, I respectfully call their attention to an ongoing blog I have started that details my experiments with an inswinger design based on the Orsova artifacts. At the time of this posting we are on the verge of starting a long series of full power tests. If velocities and foot pounds of energy and group sizes at varying ranges, are of interest to you, please give it a look over. In the next few months there will be a detailed exploration of the performance of our machine at, http://wattsunique.com/blog/
Comments are always welcome. Thank you, Nick Watts.
Re: Orsova ballista field trials to start. - markusaurelius - 02-25-2009
Thanks it will be interesting to see how things go. Reconstruction of ancient items is always fun to see, as you can learn a lot about how these ancient machines may have worked.
Re: Orsova ballista field trials to start. - Paullus Scipio - 02-25-2009
As someone with an interest in catapults going back 30 years, I look forward to seeing your results with great interest !!
Re: Orsova ballista field trials to start. - D B Campbell - 02-25-2009
Quote:I have been reading that the inswinger/outswinger debate is still a matter of controversy to some people.That's putting it mildly.
Quote:To anyone interested in the subject, I respectfully call their attention to an ongoing blog I have started that details my experiments with an inswinger design based on the Orsova artifacts.I see your blog has been up for some time. Shame on me for not noticing. I look forward to following your experiments with some interest. Bon chance!
Re: Orsova ballista field trials to start. - Nick Watts - 02-25-2009
Thank you for taking a peek at my blog. I am hopeful we may be able to contribue some new information to the inswinger/outswinger debate. At least as far as the Orsova artifacts are concerned, my current reconstruction of them seems to all but prove it was intended to be an inswinger. Perhaps that is a tad more emphatic than many on the outswinger side would like to hear, however the actual geometry of the artifacts makes the point very clear. Given the uneven ends of the tangs on the kamperion there are only 4 possible ways the field frames can be assembled relative to to the tangs. I have detailed the implications of those 4 alternatives in my blog posting from Dec 24 2008, "The Orsova ballista goes radical. The case for an inswinger", at, http://wattsunique.com/blog/
The argument I lay out in that posting may be a little cryptic, so if anything about those 4 alternatives is unclear I would very much appreciate hearing about it. Re: the Hatra artifacts: to me it is clear that a machine along these lines could function brilliantly as an inswinger. However, its set piece wooden frame does not provide the 4 assembly alternatives mentioned above, and thus the debate over the Hatra finds is essentially irresolvable. The Orsova artifacts are another matter however......
Re: Orsova ballista field trials to start. - D B Campbell - 02-25-2009
For my money, the Hatra finds pretty much prove the inswinging theory -- that's why I reconstructed it as an inswinger in Greek and Roman Artillery 399 BC-AD 363 (Google Books), Plate F.
The iron-framers could go either way (as I showed in Plate E), although I'm pretty much convinced by Aitor's reconstruction of the cheiroballistra, which ought to take the big machines with it.
I look forward to more of your postings.
Re: Orsova ballista field trials to start. - jkaler48 - 02-25-2009
I don't think anyone has been able to do a test with sinew rope because it is difficult to find. I did find this photo of some that is available
but haven't asked the details yet as I don't know what would be required in thickness and length to rig a machine.
Re: Orsova ballista field trials to start. - Nick Watts - 02-26-2009
Thank you for your responses. Mr. Campbell, your excellent book has been a great help to me in pursuing this project. I hope you don't mind, but I must confess to having copied some of your artifact photos for my blog. One day I should like to travel to the museum and see the artifacts first hand. In the meantime, staring at your book will have to do. I wonder, is there any more technical information on the artifacts? Were they made from soft iron, or some form of tempered steel perhaps?
Mr. Kaler, the photos of that sinew rope are truly intriguing. This reconstruction of the Orsova ballista I am working on takes 275' of 1/4" nylon line per spring. I doubt sinew rope in that quantity will ever be available to us in the modern world. However, a small test machine might be constructed to evaluate the relative propulsion of sinew vs. nylon, and thus deduce how well reconstructions like this would perform if rigged with sinew springs. That's all down the road a bit. Still, any info. you come across regarding sinew rope will be greatly appreciated.
Today's tests yielded 692 foot pounds. About the same as a .41 magnum revolver.
Re: Orsova ballista field trials to start. - D B Campbell - 02-26-2009
Quote:Mr. Campbell, your excellent book has been a great help to me in pursuing this project.Glad to be of service in some small way.
Quote:I hope you don't mind, but I must confess to having copied some of your artifact photos for my blog.I noticed!
wink:
Re: Orsova ballista field trials to start. - Epictetus - 02-26-2009
That's really fascinating, Nick. I always wanted to try something similar, but now I can live vicariously through you. :wink:
Re: Orsova ballista field trials to start. - Nick Watts - 02-26-2009
I noticed!
wink: Yes, of course. Perfectly right. I have taken care of it. Thanks for the input.
Re: Orsova ballista field trials to start. - AuxArcher - 02-27-2009
Nick, great blog, and great information and videos! I just glanced at it, and will visit it indepth.
As soon as I finish the two machines I have in progress (one is a 2" outswinger, an early Greek machine with two seperate center stanchions, and the other one being a Vitruvian handheld in the spirit of the Xanten machine, but with curved arms as should be proper, I think, for a Vitruvian style arrow shooter), my next project will be a small handheld Hatra, configured as an inswinger. I'm thinking 1.5" washers, the same size as the Vitruvian on my workbench. Perhaps one day, I will build a full scale Hatra, also as in inswinger. Part of that decision is that I have the woodworking skills, but not the metal fabrication abiliites quite yet to tackle an iron frame machine, and since on one has done a tiny Hatra, it should be a fun project.
I hope to touch base with you in the future about all this. One of my Legio III colleagues is also a big advocate of the in-swinger theory, much more so than me. I think the two kinds lived side by side as catapult and ballista science and practice evolved.
Speaking of sinew rope, I use sinew for arrow making, atlatls, stuff like that. I too wish there was a cheap and plentiful supply of sinew rope. The only way I see that is pratical is to harvest the sinew myself from commercial slaughterhouses and make the threads and then the rope. I do expect to be able to pull all that together, but it will be in years, not months. A bit messy, too, but not ever Schramm was able to acquire proper sinew rope. In the meantime, I am making my rope out of horsehair, but may not have that in time for when the two catapults are finished. Nylon will have to do in the meantime.
Take care,
Dane
Quote:Thank you for taking a peek at my blog. I am hopeful we may be able to contribue some new information to the inswinger/outswinger debate. At least as far as the Orsova artifacts are concerned, my current reconstruction of them seems to all but prove it was intended to be an inswinger. Perhaps that is a tad more emphatic than many on the outswinger side would like to hear, however the actual geometry of the artifacts makes the point very clear. Given the uneven ends of the tangs on the kamperion there are only 4 possible ways the field frames can be assembled relative to to the tangs. I have detailed the implications of those 4 alternatives in my blog posting from Dec 24 2008, "The Orsova ballista goes radical. The case for an inswinger", at, http://wattsunique.com/blog/
The argument I lay out in that posting may be a little cryptic, so if anything about those 4 alternatives is unclear I would very much appreciate hearing about it. Re: the Hatra artifacts: to me it is clear that a machine along these lines could function brilliantly as an inswinger. However, its set piece wooden frame does not provide the 4 assembly alternatives mentioned above, and thus the debate over the Hatra finds is essentially irresolvable. The Orsova artifacts are another matter however......
Re: Orsova ballista field trials to start. - Nick Watts - 02-27-2009
Thank you one and all for these kind comments. I tend to be a bit of a hermit, and so knowing that there might be other people actually reading my blog does help to keep me focused on the task at hand. And what a lot of tasks there are. All this ballista'ing is a lot of work. As I mentioned in my blog, I tend to be a bit obsessive when it comes to matters of power and accuracy. I have found it curious that there seems to be relatively little ballistic data published regarding ballistas (no pun intended). If anyone could point me in the direction of some hard data from other reconstructions (ie. velocity, energy, range and, perhaps most of all, group size @ 50 and 100 yds) I would be most grateful.
Respectfully, Nick watts
Re: Orsova ballista field trials to start. - AuxArcher - 02-27-2009
Nick, that is the thing - you too, have noticed a derth of information about performance of reconstructed / interpreted machines, and one of my gripes. Finding data such as chrono tests, for instance, seems impossible, or penetration testing of catapults into realistic targets (shields, chain maile, plate armor, ballistic jell, etc), ranges of machines, pounds of pull, maximum range, and so on. I do plan to provide as much data as possible when I move into testing my work, and will publish it here and elsewhere. Off the top of my head, I dont recall one machine reconstructionist posting such data to date. Perhaps they are being cagey for their own reasons, or aren't interested in performance testing?
To me, the single biggest reason to build catapults is to see what they do. That, and they make splendid door stops
Dane
Quote:Thank you one and all for these kind comments. I tend to be a bit of a hermit, and so knowing that there might be other people actually reading my blog does help to keep me focused on the task at hand. And what a lot of tasks there are. All this ballista'ing is a lot of work. As I mentioned in my blog, I tend to be a bit obsessive when it comes to matters of power and accuracy. I have found it curious that there seems to be relatively little ballistic data published regarding ballistas (no pun intended). If anyone could point me in the direction of some hard data from other reconstructions (ie. velocity, energy, range and, perhaps most of all, group size @ 50 and 100 yds) I would be most grateful.
Respectfully, Nick watts
Re: Orsova ballista field trials to start. - D B Campbell - 02-27-2009
Quote:I have found it curious that there seems to be relatively little ballistic data published regarding ballistas (no pun intended).You must remember that this is a relatively young science, Nick. For a long time, all we had were Schramm's Ampurias reconstruction (sprung with horsehair and never fully wound up, I guess to avoid damaging it) and (from the 1980s) the ESG's scorpion (sprung, I believe, with nylon, and never fully wound up, I guess to avoid killing spectators). :wink:
When I published my first paper on the subject (Britannia 15, 1984), my colleague Dietwulf Baatz kindly supplied technical data, drawn both from his lengthy observation of Schramm's catapult (well, he was in charge of it at the Saalburgmuseum for years) and from a mathematical program he developed (pre-Windows, heck it was pre-IBM PC!). But, crucially, he was forced to estimate the initial velocity (which he assumed to be about 72m/s).
But now we have the exciting prospect of several talented artificers, yourself among them, all keen to study these machines. I, for one, look forward to a rich harvest of ballistic data. So get back to work!!