Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ool1i98Z_J0

In order to celebrate the upcoming "Five Year Anniversary" of The Slingshot Channel, a very special project was launched: A rubber based interpretation of Girion's tower mounted Anti Smaug Double Crossbow Ballista!

Tolkien's original story has the plot: Girion, the last Lord of Dale, tried to kill Smaug when the fearsome dragon first arrived at the Lonely Mountain and destroyed the nearby human kingdom. The huge ballista fired long, black arrows, but they all got deflected by the scales of the dragon skin - except the very last one, which destroyed one of the scales but failed to kill the beast. Dale was devastated and became the Desolation of Smaug.

150 years later, Bilbo Baggins noticed the missing scale and duly told Bard the Bowman, a descendant of Girion. Bard shot an arrow into this one vulnerable spot and killed Smaug.

The giant double crossbow ballista is shown very briefly in the extended versions of the two first episodes of "The Hobbit" that are out by now - in fact, only a few frames can be seen. It is expected that the third movie will have a lot of additional coverage though.

From the few scenes, it already comes clear that the weapon is windlass operated, fires huge black arrows, and can be freely aimed in all directions. Further, it can be handled by just one man.

This is the goal of the current project.

This first video introduces the weapon and one of the test arrows, plus the test "dragon scales", a half inch furniture grade plywood board armored with stainless steel. The second part will contain all of tests and will be filmed in the presence of a camera team that will film for a North American TV channel. That part will be published on Jan. 22nd, 2014.

Stay tuned!

A "The Slingshot Channel" production.