Ballista Jr is Team Tormentum's first ballista, and first torsion machine.

Construction started in 1999. It took us a very very long time to find all the parts that worked. We thought we'd build a medium size, cheap machine to experiment with, but we were wrong. After many failed attempts to twist up the rope without breaking everything, we eventually got a nice pair of metal rope holders (Modioli) made from channel and plate steel cut kindly cut to shape by my brother.

Our first successful day of shooting stuff with the ballista. The 8 to one pulley (used on Juggernaut 2) came in handy for pulling back on this burly machine.

Here is a close up of our draw back system. That odd looking gizmo pulling back the bowstring failed horribly as a trigger mechanism.

Roger attempts to extract our pin from the trigger. Pull! Harder! Yearg! Turns out, he could not pull out the trigger pin.

Kevin pulls back on the bowstring.

A picture from the front.

A close up of a rope bundle at night. It appears we were also trying to shoot down the cat.

On Ballista Jr's final days before deconstruction, I snapped a few more close up pictures of its parts. Here are a couple

One of Ballista Jr's engines. The metal system was made using cutting torches and grinders only. No pieces were welded together.
The Epizygis was cut off a bridge I beam I found in the woods (near a bridge, naturally.)
The Modiolus was made from some channel with a hole cut in it, and two slots in the angled part to hold the Epizygis.
The washer below the Modiolus is two strips of metal, also cut off the I beam. We hoped the two strips would cut down of friction.
Inside the metal is a PVC plastic sleeve designed to protect the rope from the rougher bits.

A close up one rope bundle.