Crossbows were a major development in the history of weaponry. They enabled lesser-skilled soldiers to shoot arrows at great speed in a compact form-factor. You can now build your own tiny version, thanks to this creation from [Maciej Nowak].
The main body of the crossbow was cut from a piece of aluminium bar stock, being shaped with an angle grinder. A slot was then machined to mount the crossbar and pulleys. A round piece of aluminium tube serves as a spring holder, and the spring is tensioned via pulling back a length of sailing rope to rest on a latch. The latch is released by a small trigger, just like on a full-size crossbow.
The arrows (or bolts, more typically) were made by machining skewers and giving them hard metal tips cut from nails. This enables them to penetrate apples, and presumably other fruits. They fly straight enough to reliably hit a target from a meter or two away.
We’ve seen other crossbow builds before, like this one that fires cannonballs! Just be careful where you aim, and don’t get yourself or anyone else hurt.
I hope he scrapped it after making the video. According to polish penal code this is an illegal manufacture of firearms (sic!)
“You’ll shoot your eye out kid!”
-Santa Claus
If you carried it around in your pocket long enough that the mild steel rusted up, you might get tetanus if you nicked yourself on it.
:)
I’m assuming this is missing the /s.
But, if not, it is caused by a spore forming bacterium, C tetani, and the rusty nail myth really has to do with the fact that it is an aerobe and deep wounds allow for better conditions for it to survive.
Take your “solder sucker”, make a small hole in the plunger end. Put a “hobby blade” on a wooden swab. Pretty much the same idea. Sticks well in acoustic ceiling tiles.
Best suppress this quickly before the Russians get any ideas… though these plans might require a bit more competence than we’ve seen recently…
Considering that a 1.5mm ricin-laced pellet was used in 1978 to assasinate Georgi Markov, delivery of a fatal dose seems to be very possble using this little crossbow.
People that want Ricin should follow the instructions in ‘The Anarchists Cookbook’.
Because those aren’t deliberately wrong and designed to kill the cook at all. If you can’t trust the author of that book, who can you trust?
I liked the examples of working metal with hand tools, would love to learn more about how to do that. Does anyone know of other video series doing that?
It’s not a video series, but the book “$50 Knife Shop” by Wayne Goddard is a useful reference.
$13 shipped in the US for a used copy on abebooks.com.
This is an elegant little design, I like it :)
I’ll stick with the classic umbrella designs.
In the Drinking Garage, we always discussed using a leaf spring from a truck to propel a ground rod. Never got around to it.
hahah i saw this in a movie and had to think a little while to remember which one. it’s at the end of The Gods Must Be Crazy, a tiny bow is used to deliver needles with sleeping drug
Folks, this is obviously a toy crossbow.
I deleted a number of posts that suggested using this to kill people — that’s not at all what Hackaday is about.
I CEEEL U!
Is there *not* a cute little totenkopf death’s-head in the website’s logo? ;)