North Shore boys become TikTok-famous after building backyard trebuchet

Friday, 19 August 2022

Three teens from Auckland's North Shore have become famous on TikTok for their medieval backyard machinery after they built a trebuchet that can launch boulders 150 metres.

Three North Shore boys have been catapulted to online stardom for their backyard built mediaeval machinery.

The siege started when Pinehurst School students James Harrison, Daniel Hickey and Philipp Lyanguzov were aged 13.

They surprised their teachers by building a large mounted crossbow, called a ballista, as a project for their studies on Ancient Greece.

Harrison said his parents didn't mind, until their garage began to fill with offcuts and sawdust. Now 18, the boys have refined their designs and built a working trebuchet that can fling boulders 150 metres.

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A large mounted crossbow, called a ballista, was among the creations the boys made in the garage.

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“I don’t think it could take down castle walls, but maybe a house,” Harrison said.

Harrison posted videos of their attempts to hurl projectiles online, under the name “Trebutok”, and he’s picked up 20,000 followers and 20 million views, and has been featured in news media overseas.

He attributes the friends’ passion for reviving the lost art of mediaeval siege weaponry to a particularly supportive teacher. But, he said the school took strict safety measures.

Even though the hurled rocks take chunks out of the ground where they land, the school allowed the boys to use the sports field and would close it to hold test fires, putting up a fence around the edge to prevent anyone from straying into the path of a flying boulder.

He recalls junior college students of a nearby classroom pressing their faces against the windows, hoping to see the action.

The three best mates have spent “hundreds” of hours perfecting the designs of their siege weaponry.

The boys used a large bike lock to secure the trebuchet to ensure it couldn’t be fired while it was stored overnight at school.

The only time they got in trouble for bringing their weapons to school was when they used them to shoot sausages at their classmates.

In the early days of testing, the trebuchet was prone to firing rocks directly up in the air, which would then rain back down onto the boys, so they built helmets out of rubbish cans stuffed with cloth.

Without instruction manuals for their machines, they had to figure out most things for themselves, and do things the old way, heating up metal bars and hammering them into shape.

“We had to scour the internet to find information about how they were designed and come up with it ourselves,” Harrison said.

The key to a working trebuchet is to time the release of the rock at the right point in the arc of its swinging arm, he said.

“It feels unreal to set a boulder loose into the air. Mainly it’s satisfying to see that it works after all the trial and error.”

Have you made an incredible backyard creation? Contact jonathan.killick@stuff.co.nz

Unsurprisingly, Harrison is now a classics student at university, while his friend Hickey studies engineering. Lyanguzov is pursuing science.

Harrison said that the boys intend to reunite soon to build a second generation ballista crossbow. A paddock in Coatesville is about to suffer.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story contained an incorrect spelling of Phillip Lyanguzov’s name. (Amended at 11.04am on August 22, 2022)