The Ballista kit (pictured) is built of laser-cut hardwood and is a real blast to assemble and fire. It’s a bit more difficult than the other two, due to the fact that you need to “power up” the ballista by twisting the torsion skein. The finished weapon measures six inches tall and fires small wooden projectiles 30 feet.

The Catapult (onager) and Trebuchet are fun to fire too — reaching 12 feet and 18 feet, respectively.

It’s put together with wood glue, so use one with good tack or you’ll do a lot of waiting. The instructions call for two clamps, but you’d be much better off with eight or more. Spring clamps provide suitable force and won’t mark up your wood parts.

After all your satisfying work, you end up with an impressive 34-inch trebuchet, capable of hurling a small, dense projectile a respectable 200 feet!

The kit comes with two ½”-thick boards that are CNC’ed out with all of the pieces of the ram, plus a dowel and some twine. All you need to do is carefully finish cutting out the pieces and glue them together.

Once you’ve assembled your battering ram you’re ready to storm the walls of the nearest cubicle.

The Desktop Trebuchet kit comes with four wooden balls to fire, and it shoots about 15 feet. I showed it to my engineering club, and we fired circus peanuts with it. (One of my club members ate all the peanuts.) It’s a great kit for the model hobbyist who’s just starting out. Overall, RLT has done a great job with this one!

The kits include everything you’ll need except for wood glue, plus a brief history of the atlatl and instructions for casting darts. The kits can be purchased with three or seven darts, or none at all for those adventurous enough to make and experiment with different dart lengths and sizes. Additional darts of various styles are available from Thunderbird.