Trebuchet - 100 Darts 

There are two surefire ways to be wrong about history: "They always..." and "They never..."

This is such a magical channel. Just a guy living the dream, teaching us about his craft, history, and the unlimited joy that comes with owning a trebuchet.

Whether or not they were ever done this way on the battlefield, I think it's safe to say that somewhere, at some point in medieval history, somebody definitely at least tried it to see how it'd work.

"If things are this cool now, they were THIS cool then" has got to be my quote of the year so far Tod. Brilliant!! Thanks for that...

Only tactical reason to load loose projectiles into a trebuchet I can imagine would be to distribute caltrops in an area to stifle a cavalry charge or slow down advancing enemies. As can be seen by your tests a large area can be seeded with caltrops by a single trebuchet. A couple of them should be able to 'seed' a meaningful area.

I think there is a fundamental difference between doing this regularly, as a common practice, and doing this with the purpose of experimentation. I (in my ignorance) think that it is very likely that they have tried this at least once. Figured that it's probably not worth it, and move on to the next thing.

This is a nearly perfect video. It has a unique concept for testing that everyone wants to see; the title gets straight to the point and isn’t clickbait; you show the result _immediately;_ you take a _very brief_ amount of time to better describe the ammo and what you’re doing; you show the launch and the result a few times; you explain some history / possible history (I didn’t catch if you had sources or if you were thinking through what might’ve been the case); and everything was less than 7 minutes. I appreciate you. Even though I know I probably won’t watch many more, I think I will subscribe anyways in support for videos made in this manner ❤

Sometimes we reminisce about hanging out with our friends doing stupid and/or dangerous things. Thank you for hanging out with us, Tod. Love your films.

So you've done a lot on armour already. However what I would find really interesting to see is not more details on classic metal plate armour, but instead research about this clearly extremely effective plot armour your printed soldiers have!

I think 100 plumbata would be a way more interesting payload than 100 crossbow bolts, but as a bit of silly fun I love this. Either way I think it's too much labor per-shot in comparison to a payload of fist-sized stones.

Something I love about your channel is you don't beat around the bush, you get to the point and your thoughts without all the random fluff!

This is some of the best experimental archeology I have seen to date. Tod's thinking like they did, and it's like watching a time machine. Nice.

This guy is such a treasure! A rare combination of knowledge, enthusiasm, and know-how!

Reminds me of Detritus the troll's Piecemaker, from the Discworld series- a siege crossbow modified to fire a bundle of darts like this one!

I've recently 3D printed myself a Trebuchet. I have wanted a trebuchet for decades and always had the plan to make one. The arm is about 45cm and according to the videos shown on the site I got it from it will throw a marble about 20 yards. Really looking forward to building and testing it.

I’ve always liked working both wood and metal and Tod shows some of the skills which have been passed on through the centuries which is indeed cool and does inspire the real meaning of awesome.

I guess it's all about physics. You want to transform as much of the energy of the Trebuchet into the object your are throwing. Darts, being so light probably waste a lot of that energy.

I'd like to see this with plumbata

Definitely need to redo this with ballistic gel torsos! Even a few different shields pointed upwards

Good man Tod always knows what his audience wants, what a chad-lad.

Cloudy with a chance of Crossbow bolts.

Imagine 5 trebuchets doing that all at once in a somewhat tight configuration! Talk about raining hell! That looked so cool!

Tod, your videos have helped me immensely, because I have recently joined the SCA. You are a name that people love to hear in those circles for your eye for accuracy. Cheers, and kudos, my guy. Plus, a trebuchet shotgun is something I never knew I needed.

More Trebuchet! I love all these ideas you have for rounds to fire, and how you share the process of experimentation with us. Keep up the good work!

This is why I love you. An improbable yet possible scenario imagined into a workable model. FANTASTIC!!

All this experimentation has shown me one thing for certain: I want whatever armor those men-at-arms are wearing-no need to fear enemy weapons when the magic doesn’t even allow them to hit you.

The amount of work put into this demonstration is incredible.

This channel might just have my favorite approach to history, ever: "They had the technology and understood the physics/ballistics. Even though _improbable,_ it's not _unreasonable_ to guess that someone tried it, somewhere & some time."

Now isn't that a perfect stretch goal for "arrow2": trebuchet vs armour! 😁👍

I think the thought process from big stones to many little stones to darts is too obvious for no-one to have at least tired this in the past, but probably not as a regular battlefield or siege weapon.

Honestly love how much energy you have doing this! more!

One of my favorite videos you’ve made. Looking at that tight grouping of arrows on the last shot it doesn’t sound unreasonable that it was done in period.

There is simply no end to the awesomeness coming from Tod!

That worked incredibly well for the first attempt and a surprisingly great spread to the darts!

Love your enthusiasm!

I wish I had as much passion for my work as you do Todd. ✊🏾✊🏾✊🏾

That was awesome Tod ! I knew it would work when I suggested this but I was thinking about using those 6-8 foot throwing darts. It has to be heavy enough to stick in when falling from the sky. You demonstrated the ability to get range and a nice spread with the burning bundle string method I suggested. Who could ask for more😊👍👍thanks for that great demonstration 🏹❤️

Imagine using plumbata instead of those bolts. That could put a bucket of rocks to shame, I reckon

Showing how versatile a weapon the trebuchet is? Awsome!

Wow you get to have all the fun! So awesome! Reminds me of the Hercules Episode when I was a kid!

I think that a bag/box of caltrops would be more likely.

I'd love to see more experimentation with different projectiles as Tod promises. My thoughts on why you would do something like this are along the same reason machine guns were/are used. Not necessarily to kill the enemy, but to break up formations or charges and try to get the opposition to take cover. In that role the shorter range might not be that much of an issue, in fact maybe a good thing. The trebuchet(s) is "sighted in" hurling rocks at the walls and the enemy opens a sally port and sends out a group to attack said artillery. The operators grab a couple of bundles of arrows or darts and you have death from above. I'm pretty sure horses would not like it.

Finally a video that gets to the point. Action first, talk later. Great composition. Very interesting content.

One of the coolest, cleverest things I have ever seen. Bravo!

Hard to find an adult man with a wider smile than this chap 💪😄

That was both amazing and scary! I'm very curious how long it took to gather all these bolts afterwards, though :D Also, I had a thought. If Tod ever went crazy and became a major threat, I'd make sure to stay as close as possible to cardboard soldiers and as a far as possible from any GoPro :D

Thank you thank you, one of the coolest things I've seen in a while! Cheers!

Love your excitement.

Sweet. And I really like the „cheap arrow“ idea at the end. Btw, could you measure the bolt velocity from the footage? Would be interesting just to know what kind of energy these deliver, seeing them sticking in the ground like that… Sure they would not have done much against armour, but flesh is another matter. Put a few of those in some unarmoured horseback or a few bad-protected infantry soldiers, and the enemy has a few extra problems on his hands.

Terror, or anti-morale, weapon perhaps. Being able to break the fighting cohesion of an enemy is quite valuable.

COOL, never grows old. Keep up the excellent work.

Wow - another cool Trebuchet experiment which gives such joy to Tod and therefore to us! I'm smiling as I type because joy is infectious.

I haven't seen the video yet but I love these experiment videos. My favourite and I think the most eye-opening ones for me are the plumbata. Once you had them dialled in I could easily imagine just how devastatingly effective they could be in the right hands. And defensively I was amazed how much the addition of a simple Y shape on a piece of armour could alter the trajectory of a broken arrow shaft away from the neck. Your videos do an excellent job illustrating just how brilliant these people were. Thank you 🙂

At the end of the day, when it comes to weapons, someone has always asked "How might I turn this big weapon for big things, into a much bigger version of a small weapon for small things" - be that out of tactical value or just plain coolness it's not hard to find examples. In modern history you can see all sorts of developments to try and give tanks/artillery a shotgun-like effect for anti-personnel use. Hence 'beehive' rounds. And a few hundred years earlier you've got grape and canister shot with cannons. But perhaps more important is this universal idea of 'mucking about'. A lot of folks have tried to make flechette ammunition work, but I'll bet the first were undocumented shithousery from guys with too much time and a 12 gauge shotgun on their hands. Same goes for wax slugs. So I've absolutely no doubt that some king or lord or warmaster or whatever out there, will have thrown almost anything conceivable out of a trebuchet. In the case of bolts/darts it may have been a funny gag but deemed impractical and of no real use. But what of dead animals and such - I mean they had no great idea about disease and infections and probably just saw it as big heavy rocks except they're grim and splatter everywhere with smelly foulness - but it wasn't long before everyone picked up on the idea for sieges right. (At least so I think, no idea if they really did throw bits of rotting corpses and such) I mean let's be real. You're camped outside a big old castle. You're gonna be there for weeks battering the walls down for an assault. You fire maybe a dozen stones an hour, but it's probably more like 3 or 4 at best. It's tedious, laborious, unfulfilling work. Eventually somebody's gonna have the funny idea to put something 'stupid' in the sling instead. Soldiers will be soldiers after-all - just look at the case of the MAS 36 bayonet if you need an example of what I mean

Awesome video,wish I had that much fun doing work.

Wonderful Tod, thank you! Please commision a drone, throw the same stuffs, we will watch it again! 👌

Rocks might be more effective but to lightly armored troops those bolts would have been terrifying. Just think of it being used on a bright sunny day, you see the enemy launch a large object but then it breaks up into all those bolts which are extremely difficult to see as they spread out while coming towards you. The most effective parts of someone those bolts could hit would be the hands & feet which were rarely covered in anything more than a thin layer of leather for most soldiers.

This has me wondering. Could they have thrown bundles of caltrops? Thrown in front of cavalry or infantry formations they would be detrimental.

I love your trebuchet videos. Thanks for making me smile.🙂

awesome video as always 👌 thank you

Ooooh! :) I still think the most effect system would be throwing lots of lead "glandes" as they are extremely damaging en masse, dense so you could fit many in a launcher, potentially long ranged, but yeah sorting out HOW to do that effectively would be a serious pain, as you showed with bolts!?

Congratulations, you have invented medieval flechettes. I can't imagine them using them, given the likely flight properties of them, and what they had available. Would a bunch of bolts falling from the sky be any more serious of a threat than stones or a piece of rubble? Experimenting I bet took place, but figuring out just how to do it reliably, when loading a stone is just as effective... eh... not until exploding munitions is that going to be an effective strategy. Not being able to control the release especially so.

Great work Sir thank you

I kind of like that crude dart thing you made at the end. I might try making that later this week and testing it out.

Well that is indeed very fun! But I did a double take when Tod said _"They had fuses"_ at 0:58. When did they have fuses? Before cannons? I really wasn't expecting that! And if they had cannons at the same time/before fuses, then it would make more sense to me to shove the bolts into the cannon as a cannister-type ammunition.

Basically, this is far worse than just shooting with a formation of archers or crossbowmen. Bad accuracy, bad range, low power. Maybe could be of use if you had trebuchets but didn't have the manpower for a formation of archers, but it's a pretty poor substitute. Even if that was the situation, as mentioned it would be better to just lob rocks instead. Definitely cool though.

Very cool! Great video Todd.

This just makes me happy inside!

If we want to talk simple, a bundle of cut rebar could be pretty devastating.

I think a bundle of plombatas would fly farther and do a lot more damage. Actually, a bundle of pieces of rebar sharpened in both ends would be at least as good, cheaper and much faster to manufacture.

Yup! That was awesome!

The perfect answer to a question I never asked... but should have. Awesome.

I see “Trabichet” in the title and click instantly.

i couldn’t imagine this with the plumbata. the weight behind them failing from such a high distance would be devastating. maybe still not practical for actual warfare. but imagine how frightened a line would be seeing it hail pointy metal spikes. knowing they could be landing on top of you with the next flurry in other thoughts it changes an offensive siege weapon into a infantry/calvary deterrent. a practical use would be to slow down an advancing line from pushing further. allowing a team of 5 men per construct to have the same volume of 50 archers. where usually the tactic is to wait them out or hurdle and inch forward. i wonder what kind of distances can be achieved and if there are any other spread/delay techniques. all theoretical / fictional of course, but i’m sure the implications were there.

Oh my, Tod! This is AWS-8Q awesome! And here I thought that your incendiary tests were great. This is absolutely great!

Awesome thanks for the great work Sir

Thank you , Tod .

Awesome video tod!

RU-vid videos like this are great: short and To the point.

DUDE, one of your best sir! Huzzah!

Do you have a video launching a bundle of the things you threw in the end? I'd be interested to see that.

"Trebuchet - 100 Darts" is a title not to be ignored. Thanks again, Tod. greetings from another workshop (musical instruments) in Vienna, Scott

Hell yes! I’ve often wondered if this was done.

Thanks Tom

I need this new lawn darts game for parties!

Wow this was really amazing, it looks like sooooooooooo much fun !

This was the lawn dart shotgun content I didn't know I needed.

This was awesome

im 100% sure some medieval siege engineer tried something like this. I want to believe. Also love your channel Tod. The fact that we you bring history back to life is amazing. Cheers from Estonia

Very cool! I too thought that they would not have used expensive quarrels and would have used something like a cheap plumbata with a ribbon tail. I am so excited for further testing! I had thought of this idea several years ago but dismissed it as unworkable. So happy to be proven wrong. Great work again, Tod.

I enjoyed the video. It's my first time seeing a "unisex trebuchet mug" for sale. Something new everyday!

I love you and your trebuchet!

That was great, Tod.

@tod’sworkshop another fantastic vid! As a kid I always wanted a trebuchet (pronounced Tree-bucket until I watched my first documentary 🤣🤷) and I’m loving you doing all the things I’ve wanted for 40yrs to do 😄👍

The ultimate game of lawn darts!

That was really cool

That was insanely cool

Too cool. Looks fun

Todd's getting crafty with the cliffhangers.

Man, I can only imagine how exciting it's going to be when you finally hit one of your targets! :D haha Love these videos, and love the channel!