Tonight – following the rules that the best pioneering projects are both dangerous and fun tonight we built a giant crossbow. Check out the footage at qik.com/lloydml The other half of the unit learned basic climbing skills as part of the climbers badge. Next week we swap and try to beat the distance fired record.
Do you have plans for how you did this? We’ve made a catapult easily enough (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E18FPMeGQk0) and I’m debating whether it’s actually possible to make a crossbow as there are a couple of issues (such as guiding the arrow in a sraight line when you fire it) that I’d like to check on before going ahead with it. I’ve checked the videos and I’ve got the basic idea, but I’d just like to make sure.
Hi Tim
Just spotted your post on our blog. To be honest we get so muych spam I haven’t noticed till now so sorry about the very slow reply. We didn’t have any issues in terms of guding the arrow. It’s just resting on the cross piece. The triangle formed in the bungy when you pull it back to fire keeps it reasonably straight. For an arrow we used a thick piece of bamboo with flighgts made from plastic bottles and metal tent pegs in the end to give it some weight. I may task the unit with creating a step by step guide on how to make it. You may be interested in this year’s Summer camp project which I will be uploading to youtube soon. Its a water ballon launcher made out of wild slings – you can buy them on amazon. We scared ourselves with how far they actually flew. You can play your own version of angry birds like we did at camp.