You know that old expression, “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”? Well, as a Glowforge owner, that happens quite a bit. “How can I solve this problem with a laser?”
My son came home this past weekend with an assignment for his history class (7th grade): make a trebuchet. No plans. No size requirements. Just “make a trebuchet”. According to my son, the teacher said he does this every year and sees everything from small cardboard and string ones to large backyard ones made with 2x4s.
There are quite a few places onine with instructions on how to build trebuchets, but a lot of them require quite a bit of material. I wasn’t planning on spending a ton of money for a one-off school project, so I looked around for what I had on hand that we could use to design/build one from scratch. A few bits of scrap lumber here and there, but plenty of 1/8" plywood.
So rather than making the side out of a vertical supports out of lumber (which would have to be braced with diagonals), I just designed a plywood gusset in a CAD program. Each side is made of three individual pieces. The two interior pieces have a hole at the top that accepts a dowel.
It ended up with a simple/clean look that came together super easy. The only think we needed to buy were some weights, a dowel, and some hardware. Not bad!!
And of course, we had to make a cool name to attach to throwing arm!
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) My wife did not suggest that it might not need to make the trip to the new house 
She’s been remarkably hands-off with my “stuff” even as we sort through and dispose of 40 years of accumulated detritus.