This is a view of our seige engineer's guild/porch. That's my cool bike in the background. You can also clearly see the 2 A-frames made out of 2" by 4" bolted together. Bolts hold better than screws or nails. The counterweight can also be seen. It is made out of 3/4" plywood which is screwed together (this caused problems and demanded the need for bracings) and bolted onto the 2" by 4"s attaching the beam to the counterweight. The beam is 3 2" by 4"s bolted together. The 2 on the outside of the middle are shorter than the middle one (this means that the counterweight end is thicker than the throwing end). The beam is based on a ratio of roughly 1:4. This means that the longer end of the beam is 4 times as long as the one attached to the counterweight.
