Timber framer joins NOVA's Highland Fling

Timber framer Derwyn Hanney left Sisters on October 15 to join 30 other timber framers and another 15 of their European counterparts in Inverness, Scotland - a long stone's fling from the shores of Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands.

Hanney, who works at Earthwood Homes, went to Scotland to help build a medieval siege machine called a trebuchet. The project was filmed by NOVA for their Secrets of Lost Empires series, to be shown on PBS television.

"I responded to a notice of the project in our guild news- letter," Hanney said. "My application was accepted, and 47 hours after I flew out of Redmond, I arrived at Urquhart Castle, on the shores of Lock Ness."

A trebuchet is a massive wooden catapult. Built in proportion to the length of its long throwing arm, it harnesses gravity to fling huge stones with enough speed, accuracy and power to knock down a castle wall.

"Two teams were to build separate, competing trebuchets using a variety of traditional hand tools - axes, adzes, draw knives," Hanney said. "NOVA hoped to demonstrate the tools and techniques available to a 13th century carpenter and to prove the historical claim of the trebuchet's power.

"We went to work almost immediately," Hanney said. "We started by unloading by hand a barge load of timbers brought in by sea and through the locks, their only access to the site."

Hanney said that some of the timbers were too huge for the men to roll up the bank and required block-and-tackle.

"By the third day, with everything pretty well set up, we began cutting. At that point, the information we needed was kind of trickling down to us," Hanney said. "For the next week-and-a-half we continued with construction of both the hinged machine with its 22-foot-tall framework, and the shorter fixed machine with its shorter arm."

Two days before they were scheduled to leave, the group learned that they would be able to "fire" the completed fixed machine at the mock-up of a castle wall, five feet thick, 20 feet tall, and 14 feet wide.

Cocking the machine was time-consuming and took a lot of effort, but two rounded limestone boulders, carved by Scottish stonemasons, were launched at the 200-yard-distant wall.

"The first flew about 170 yards," Hanney said. "We shortened the sling that held the boulder, and greased the tip, and the second boulder flew about 200 yards, clocked on the radar gun at 126 miles per hour."

Laughing, Hanney added, "We flung the boulder, and it worked. It really smashed that wall."

The thing that stands out in Hanney's mind about the venture is the teamwork and camaraderie among the participants that made it work.

"The weather was not very nice; it was rainy and cold, and the mud was knee deep by the time we finished," Hanney said. "It was a labor of love, but the group really pulled together and made it happen."

For further information consult web site http://www.tfguild.org; or, http://tfguild.org/photo112b.jpg.