The trebuchet in the video took less than 20 hours of construction over about a week by mostly two people. A lot of time was spent playing with different trebuchet simulators and scanning the Internet for secrets prior to building.
The main axle is a heavy duty wooden clothes rod.
Easy constructions with 2.5" and 3" drywall screws.
Built from scraps lying around and less than $20 of new materials from the hardware store.
Tools:
Saws
Drills
wrenches
vise
saw horse
square
pencil
tape measure
1.5" hole saw (drill attachment)
Knife
Screw driver
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True story about Just-In-Time projects:
Due to procrastination and bad weather, we only had time to test about 10 throws with the trebuchet (the first one we ever built) prior to the media showing up: 2 throws backwards, 5 stuck in the sling, 1 straight up and 2 less than 10 feet forward.
We then changed two things at once and tried one more shot- it went about 60 feet. Then the media showed up and all three shots while they were there were flights of beauty of at least 40 feet.
Murphy's law had actually taken the day off.
