Aitor Alert! Manuballista found!

[AuxArcher]

It would seem most unpractical to lug this much hardware around a battlefield and try to fire it out of hand, as any archer would be more mobile and have a higher rate of fire. This type of weapon would IMHO really come into it's own as a mobile artillery piece, firing long range projectiles into approaching troops from a rampart either in a castellum or fortress or from the castle of a marauding liburna.

I think you're probably right, Robert.

With a modiolus (washer inner diameter) of 4.5cm, the Xanten catapult is a good bit bigger than Ephyra catapult #6, which is the only known (presumed?) hand-held catapult prior to the cheiroballistra. With a modiolus of 3.4cm, the Ephyra machine was a "1-footer", meaning that its arrows were 1 Greek foot in length (0.31m); this is a comfortable size for manhandling. The Xanten machine, on the other hand, was perhaps intended as a 2-span catapult, shooting arrows 0.40m long. It could well have been stand-mounted -- not necessarily a fixed tripod, but a portable prop in case there wasn't a handy rampart to lean it on!

Of course, it's difficult to tell until we see the official publication.

When do you expect the paper to come out?

4.5cm / 1.8 inch inner washer diameter makes for rougly a 11.7 inch to 1 foot wide spring frame. That is beefy, but not impossible to lug about if you had to. I reckon that these machines were much more cost effective to build than even the smallest scorpio, so I wonder how common such machines were? Each one would have been unique as well, even if they came out of the same workshop. Similar, but not carbon copies.

How much does this reproduction weigh? Anyone know?

A bolt that large is not terribly huge, as well. The arrows I make for my 50 and 60 lb. self bows (pales in power to what a war bow would have pulled, perhaps 100 - 150 or more), are 11/32" and 32" long. An arrow for a 100+ pound bow can be as large as 1/4 inch and run 35" long or more, to accomidate the long pull (behind the ear) needed to shoot them.

I agree, a portable stand of some sort would have been nice, much like the M60 AG lugging the tripod about. Crew served weapons like that type of machine gun have a built in biopod, so maybe something that folded down from the stock / slider base?