32 Replies to “Hew Kennedy Mucks About”

  3. These things are quite fascinating. We`ve built small scale trebuchets, less than a foot tall, that will easily hurl a large marble thirty or forty feet. Would love to build something bigger, but large timber costs are prohibitive to all but rich hobbyists like the gentelman featured in this clip. Imagine being able to hurl Greek fire at that noisy neighbour`s house!

  4. I want to be that rich and eccentric. Alls I got now is eccentric.
    Kevin, flinging a Prius around would be an environmental disaster with all the heavy metals in the batteries.

  5. Have the UK nannies and their Canadian counter parts got a Trebuchet registry in the wings??
    Mein Gut!! look what a LEVER can do!!!…we can’t allow these weapons of gross destruction to be used like this the destructive potenial from auto wreckers is staggering..oh the horror…the horror…the chldren!!
    We must ban LEVERS!!!

  6. I thought this was a new technology funded by Industry Canada. Care to guess how many Fibs on the B.O.D.?

  7. I thought this video was going to be about the camelot Kennedy’s and thier hi-jinks. A pleasant surprise.

  8. All my life this is what I have wanted. Someday I will have the time and resources to tackle such projects in the name of eccentricity. Soon pinky….. soon……….

  9. I get the normal neighbors.
    I’d love to try egging this character onto larger things…
    and as always, that understatedness that the english seem to have mastered is always welcome.

  11. The Liberals will be launching Stephane Dion into the St Lawrence River along with his dog Kyoto.

  12. With a name like Kennedy this man is not an anglo-saxon (rich Englishman) he is a Celt – Highland Scott or Irish. He also acts like a Celt. I am a Celt so I would know.

  13. I built a scale model of a trebuchet last year. It hurls small objects pretty well, but just imagine what you could hurl with Hew Kennedy’s magnificent machine. We could have a contest to see who would go the farthest: Jack Layton, Stephane Dion, Al Gore or Kooky Suzuki. Better not forget Dalton McGuilty.
    Or a bit less fun would be hurling some inanimate objects like a “smart” car or a Prius. How about a big bag of carbon credits? or a brown paper bag full of sponsorship funds? Oh the possibilities…

  14. For an idea of how big this thing really is (and a few pictures of some of the other things he’s thrown), there’s a picture with some scale at http://uk.geocities.com/osfuk/osf/treb.html I think he needs to adjust the angle of the release pin, because it seems to be holding onto the sling longer than it should, thereby reducing the range.

  17. Just got back from the celebration of my 52nd, Kate, and I must say, you couldn’t have selected a better birthday present for me than a trebuched flaming piano. Thank you so much 😉
    I built my first Meccano trebuchet, oh, about forty years ago. And y’all may not believe this, but after dinner earlier tonight I coincidentally actually brought up the subject of my building a trebuchet in the back of my Ranger next summer. ‘Course, if I wanted to include a piano, I’d have to upgrade to a half-ton.
    Perhaps I could just hurl a flaming hurdy-gurdy.
    I s’pose it depends on the exothermic impact reaction potential of what it’s filled with. (You did notice that the effect of the piano impacts was not purely mechanical, I’m sure.)
    Not that I’d do anything illegal of course — this proviso is prudent when discussing trebuchets and exothermic reaction potentials. I think that if one is going break the law then one had better have a danm good reason for it. Playing with a trebuched explosives is not a good reason — best to dot ones is and cross ones ts on that front.
    After all, I’m far too old to use the “but I didn’t know better” excuse that worked so well when I was making explosives, oh, about forty years ago 😉

  18. These catapults are fine I suppose. Civil War cannon and mortars… now those are cool. You can actually watch the cannon ball fly to the target hundreds of yards away. Remember though, it’s all fun till someone loses an eye….then it’s a sport.

  21. This is off the topic of trebuchets, but it is closely related to the charachter of Mr. Kenney. If anything, this guy is more real. Here’s a video of Wally Wallington showing you how he can raise Stonehenge by himself: video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7704458517657275619

  22. The similarity to Conrad Black is striking.
    Eccentric, egocentric, grandiose, yet quiantly clever as well. A natural engineer.
    I can see him manouvering for a royal knighthood from Buckingham for drawing world attention to British history.
    Hew seems odd as well. Isn*T it normally *Hugh*? Maybe Hew is for Hewlett, as in Hewlett Packard.
    Gotta hand it to him though. He can sure sling it. The car would have gone farther if the slack had been taken out of the lead line…
    We could use that rig for flinging jihadists to 72 virgins-land. = TG

  28. What a stress reliever. Reminds me of those idiots (in a good way) on MythBusters. Blowing up stuff is so much fun and theraputic to boot!

  29. With the huge “onus on the manufacturer” mess currently being flung at Canadians trying to import new 2008 cars from the U.S. by Transport Canada, the Registrar of Imported Vehicles (RIV) may want to use such a catapult for exporting newly deemed “inadmissible” cars back to the U.S. Of course, RIV would need to build a bigger catapult capable of tossing a car (like a Prius for example) far enough to clear customs…300ft should do. That’ll teach those greedy citizens to take advantage of NAFTA and the exchange rate!

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