Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Badassing a badass pencil launcher

I just had to do it. Against all odds.

I doubled up the rubber.

Now we are talking!

The stronger bandset pushes the weapon into the realm of deadly weapons. The pencils now go through a rubber door mat, which withstands the 20 mm steel ball hits from my strongest slingshots!

As a matter of coincidence, some better quality pencils arrived (Faber-Castell HB, 1,18 Euros for twelve pieces including tax). Much more solid. Just in time.

But in order to push the envelope even farther I took a damaged carbon fibre arrow shaft, sawed it into five pieces and glued tip holders in. Then I screwed the field tips in. The arrows now weigh 9,6 gramms (154 gr).

The impact is absolutely astounding. They go into a massive wooden plank and I need tools to get them out again. They even pierced through a PET water bottle and still stuck in the plank. Distance 8 meters, the flight is absolutely stable.

I reinforced the string catchers (glued in a steel nail in fact), so the weapon withstands the much harder impact of the 300% pretensed bands (3,5 cm x 2,5 cm x 11 cm relaxed length).





12 comments:

  1. You gotta post a video of the modified version!

    -79zombies

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  2. Please post a video of the modified version. I'd like to see the new version fired at fruit. Your videos are awesome. Thanks!

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  3. Can you post a instructable to make this beauty?
    and of course i'd like to see a video of this version :)

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  4. Treble the rubber!, ;-), seriously, please poat a video, thankyou.

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  5. Can't wait to see the updated version in action !
    FV

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  6. You are gonna poke your eye out someday.

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  7. Perfect timing, I have an essay due soon XD

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  8. LOL, like everyone else, I also urge you to make a video of this 'improved version'. I think of it as one of the best examples of just how much fun an innovative mind can be. Well done, Joerg.
    Now, like everyone else, I also want to see the blueprints for this so I can make my own.

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  9. Joerg, beautiful job on the repeater. The ammo is very interesting. I have done something similar, making darts with arrow field tips, but using shafts made of soda straws instead of sections of carbon tubing. I think the soda straws shafts would be much too fragile in your repeating slingbow, but they work perfectly when launched from a blowgun using a sabot. From 10 meters, the field points can punch a hole all the way through an apple, with the entire dart exiting the apple. You can view the darts and sabot at http://blowgun.lefora.com/2010/01/18/screw-in-field-points-for-arrows-used-in-darts
    Scroll down a ways and you can see the hole punched through the apple, as well as holes punched in an empty soda can.

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  10. Besides the field points, a trocar tip is another way to make a projectile with amazing penetrative powers. More sabot-launched blowgun darts, this time with trocar tips, can be viewed at http://blowgun.lefora.com/2010/01/18/curare-five-owwwww

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  11. Joerg, somehow your badass pencil launcher reminded me a "chu ko nu".
    A Repeating crossbow from China
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repeating_crossbow
    And here is a tip...
    if you wanna make the revenche look even more nerdly, try to adapt a automatic system to shoot.
    something like this guy did.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=QS4RKoRyTik

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  12. The pencil Launcher looks great but once you shoot it looks better it shoots cool and powerful

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