If anyone is feeling particularly generous this year…

As both my regular readers at Hitting Metal With A Hammer know I'm a poor student living on noodles and mouldy bread and I have to walk 8 miles through the snow to get to school (which is damned hard in mid summer I can assure you!) My catapulting is entirely funded by what I can find down the back of the cushions and several very generous donations from military types who shamelessly encourage my violent tendencies which I then pass on to the local youth disguised as "history". So once again I’m holding my hand out as I have a pressing need for two particular books:

Greek And Roman Artillery, Technical Treaties
E. W. Marsden
And
Greek and Roman Artillery. Historical Development
E. W. Marsden

For those in the business Marsden is the bible for ancient catapults and you're either a disciple or a heretic, but Marsdens is The Word you're fighting over.

These books are of course quite expensive so if you feel inclined to help out with the cause but don't have the loose change to go about buying books for strangers you can donate through paypal to the 22AD Research Fund. The research fund goes towards building new machines and research material which can include research into the effects of alcohol at post event bbq's.

"Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing."
Albert Einstein

I believe beer helps this research process at the "what the hell am I doing" end of the scale. While I don't believe in the something for nothing principle I'm happy to give anyone who donates anything a copy of my tennis ball ballista plan. which you can view here and here.

Just out of interest if everyone who had downloaded my trebuchet plan had donated $1 I could have bought both these books, all the text books (23) for my next year at university... and a car.

In catapult related news I'm working on two books at the moment based on my research and this may well be related to the two books mentioned above. I'm writing a boring academic one and I'm editing a kids version of it written by a friend of mine who is much better at getting to the point and not waffling a load of verbose bollocks. they should be available mid next year. Email me if you're interested in a copy and I’ll put you on a notification list. 22adartillery AT gmail DOT com