A fun little weekend project with the kids
Last week a (very very non-technical or handy man) friend called. His eldest son (12) is doing medieval times at school, and as part of a report he needed to do an art/craft project on long bows or cross bows and they had no idea what to do so were asking me for ideas. My brain immediately thinks mini working crossbow, so off to Google I go. Five mins later I find the following link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoNqkiQQHzc
On Friday I draw up the pieces per the vid and head out into the garage to find some scraps of wood. I arranged for them to come over and I’ll help him build it, plus get him used to power tools for the first time. Overnight my brain simplifies the design and Saturday we get cracking. It still needs a quick trip to Home Depot for the PVC pipe to make the Lath and some 5 min epoxy so we can make it one day and not have to wait for Gorilla glue to dry. The results can be seen below. We made 2 of them, one for his son and one for my daughter. Range isn’t much right now, only about 20’ before falling to the ground. With a sharp pencil it might pierce a can at 5’. to a single main piece of wood and routering a groove rather than the popsicle sticks. I made the body out of ¾ ply, the trigger from 5/8 ply and the sides from 1/8 ply. The lath is ¾” PVC (1” external diameter).
The funny thing is I e-mailed out the link to the you tube vid and my drawings on Friday night to some friends and got a ton of responses. One friend called Saturday morning and wanted to get together and make a couple, but I’d already promised to help the other friend and his kid. The result is I feel a group of ‘adults’ (I use that term in the loosest possible sense) building a modified version of the double lath compound version that can be seen in the next vid after the one linked.
