A couple of days back my son asked me if I could build him a crossbow, after checking the internet I found it would be far too dangerous (if I actually could make it work).
However, knowing how much he loves playing rts games, I offered him a compromise, I offered him to build a working 1/25 scale model of a midieval Trebuchet. He accepted and the search for knowledge started again (thank Google). When I started my research, I had no idea that trebuchet-building is a hobby (or sport) on its own and most of the drawings I found were for modern-day equivalents of trebuchets that had near to nothing in common with the historical ones. Till I found a downloadable free paper model... it looked perfect for what I had in mind.
So, all that needed to be done now was getting wood... off to the local hobby shop, and dad came back with 6 beams of 10x10 wood (all dimension I use are metrical !)
The fun could begin...
The first two pieces glued together 
The base of the machine almost ready (about 1.5 hour later) 
Starting to resamble the midieval equivalent of a B52 bomber 
And the business-end of the machine 
And at that very moment I realized something was buggering me about the whole thing, and than I realized that I was making it too clean, using machined beams, while the real thing was make with the aid of axes instead of cnc cutters. So, I had to do something about this.
Today after I came home from work I started the process of making the wook look like it was handcrafted strait from the trees, using nothing else than my trusted nr11 blade. The next 2 pictures are to be considered as "before" and "after"
And applied to the whole machine it gives this as a result 
While typing this report, the next pieces are already drying, so it won't take long before the next progress will be posted here.