September 2009: Owing to the conspiracy of a number of different factors in my life and circumstances, I'm ashamed to say that the Snow Pea languished in my garage not only for the winter of 2007, but for the whole year of 2008 and most of the summer of 2009.

However, this is about to be remedied...

The purpose of this project was to design and create a working model trebuchet - capable of launching tennis balls - and manufactured from scrap materials in as short a time as possible.

With that in mind, it's not going to be a beautiful, efficient or durable machine, but hopefully it will still work...

In case you slept right through the 1970s (or weren't born then, perhaps), this is a machine that spins a piece of card, paper or canvas really fast, causing any paint applied to it (before spinning it, or while it is spinning) to splatter off in interesting and striking radial patterns. In this project, we're going to try to make one out of scavenged and upcycled parts.

As detailed on previous pages - the launch was a bit of a farce - the boat is very unstable. Several different solutions were considered, but it looks like an outrigger is going to be the best all-round fix for this boat.

More progress on building my little boat.  On this page, it gets a color, and a name...