Uruk-Hai Ballista

So you want an Uruk-Hai Ballista? You don’t fancy spending money that could be well spent on troops and heroes on a model that can only be used in sieges, do you? Then this is the article for you!
I have made an Uruk-Hai Ballista from scrap pieces of plywood but you can use thick balsa wood instead, it is much easier to work with.

Cut out the pieces of plywood as indicated in Fig. 1
Start with piece no. 3 and glue no. 4 in the middle of it to form an inverted T-shape using PVA glue. Now take your two no. 2’s and glue them as shown in Fig. 2 below, with the slanting edge in contact with the standing beam again using PVA glue. Repeat this process and you should have the supports for your Ballista!


Next take the two no. 1’s and glue them together. Once these are dry glue the resulting piece to your supports as shown in Fig. 3

Cut out the pieces as shown in Fig. 4 above. Now take 2 of piece no. 5 and glue them on top of each other as you did with piece no. 1. Once these are dry you can glue no. 6 to the resulting piece. Piece no. 6 should protrude by about 2.5cm. The next step is to glue piece no. 7 as shown in Fig. 5 below. Next stick a piece of bamboo skewer about 3cm long at the other end of the shaft(i.e. the one without pieces 6 and 7 glued to it!).

Cut out the pieces as shown in Fig. 6 above.
Now you can take your two no. 8’s and cut each of them up into 3 sections of 2cm each. These are glued onto each other with an overlap of 0.5cm as shown in Fig. 7

Now the best part, putting your Ballista together!
Take the two halves of your arc and glue them with PVA glue to the front of the shaft(i.e. parts no. 6 and 7) so that they are 0.5cm apart as shown in Fig. 10 below:


Take the shaft and glue it onto the bamboo skewer that you placed between the vertical beams on your base. Make the inclination so that the tail end of the shaft is about 1cm off the ground. Next on your “to do” list is making supports for the shaft. These are made of bamboo skewers and should be placed about 2cm from the tail end of the shaft. The height of these supports depends on the inclination you gave to your shaft so I can’t give a specific measurement.

There you have it, you have completed your Uruk-Hai Ballista without incurring too much fiscal damage! Now go to Helm’s Deep and be sure to impale a few Rohirrim on the bolts of your Ballista, make Saruman proud!!!