[Captions by Judy V. at Y Translator] Look at this. I let go of the cup,
and I don't even know if it's me or the other cups.
It's me.
Hey guys. I'm Nate.
Welcome back to the workshop.
Not too long ago, we showed you how to build a full-sized, functioning crossbow.
Well, today we are going to scale that way down, and make a desktop
crossbow using popsicle sticks, a clothespin, and a ballpoint pen.
In addition to the popsicle sticks, clothespin, and pen, we'll also have
some strong tape and two rubber bands: one regular rubber band,
and one wide rubber band.
The first step is going to be to take our pen apart into its individual pieces.
With some pens, the back will pop off easily, some, you'll need a small tool
like I'm using to fit in between the cap and the body of the pen, and sometimes,
it's going to be so stuck in there, you might have to use a drill to get it out.
For this build, we won't be using the front or back cap of the
pen, so you can discard those.
Now we want to take the body of the pen, and divide it into three equal pieces.
A hacksaw and a vise might be overkill, but it is going to make it pretty easy.
And don't worry.
If your divisions aren't perfectly in thirds,
it won't make a difference.
Let's just clean up the sawed-off ends of our pens
so they're nice and smooth again.
Now that we have our three sections of pen,
let's grab two of our popsicle sticks and start attaching them together.
We want to take two ends of the pen and sandwich them between the two
popsicle sticks using tape.
The tape I'm using is super sticky, and will stick to my gloves,
so I'm gonna take those off for a bit.
I'm just going to use a fairly thin piece of this tape because while
I do want it to wrap all the way around I don't want it to cover the
entire length of the popsicle sticks.
Let's see if we can get this to attach.
I think this is the trickiest part of the build – is getting these
pieces of pen to sandwich just right in between the two sticks.
Note that as I'm closing it, I'm leaving a slight gap between the
end of the popsicle sticks, and the edge of the pen barrel.
There we go.
We've got one side pretty well sandwiched in between there.
And you can see that I've only put tape on one edge.
I'm not covering up the entire barrel of the pen.
That's because we're going to be fitting something else in between
these popsicle sticks later, and they need to have some flex to them.
If we put tape all the way across, they won't be able to spread out enough.
This right here is going to be the crossarm of our crossbow.
Next up, we'll want two more popsicle sticks, and a clothespin.
We want to attach one popsicle stick to either side
of the outside of our clothespin.
We're going to use the tape again to attach it to the clothespin,
but because we still need the clothespin to be able to open,
we can't just wrap tape around the whole thing.
That would keep it closed.
So we need to attach the sticks one at a time, wrapping the tape
through the inside of the clothespin.
Our popsicle stick should overlap the clothespin by about one inch.
Our popsicle sticks are now attached to the clothespin and they can still
open and close with ease.
We now want to take the third piece of the pen barrel, and secure that
between the two ends of the two popsicle sticks.
However, before that gets secured in place, we need to take our wide
rubber band, and put it between the two sticks.
Once our barrel is attached, we won't be able to get the rubber band
in and out anymore.
Before when we attach the pen barrel between two sticks,
we left a small gap between the edge of the sticks and where the pen was.
We now want to have the barrel of the pen extend a little bit
beyond the popsicle sticks.
With the ends of the popsicle sticks, secure it around the barrel of the pen.
The clothespin can't open the same way it did before but it should still
be able to open enough to work as a firing mechanism.
We now need to fit this end of the pen barrel and popsicle sticks
in between these two popsicle sticks.
It's gonna be a pretty tight fit, and these popsicle sticks will need to
flex quite a bit before it really gets in there.
Let's now use our regular rubber band to secure the attachment point between
the crossarm and the rest of the body of our crossbow.
Take the wide rubber band and stretch it around the two ends of the crossarm.
This is why we left a gap between the end of the pen, and the
end of the popsicle sticks.
It will hold the wide rubber band securely in place.
We can now see that when we draw the rubber band back
and place it between the jaws of the clothespin, we can squeeze
on the back, and it'll fire.
We still should have this plastic collar, that was a part of our pen,
and we can fit that into the barrel in the front of the crossbow.
This will help our crossbow fire just a little bit more accurately.
Now let's draw back the rubber band and fit the pen in through
the collar at the front.
I find the easiest way to load this thing so it will accurately fire
is to first fit the pen into the jaws of the clothespin, and then draw
the rubber band back behind it.
The rubber band should be pushing up against the back of the pen so that
when we squeeze the clothespin, it will fire.
Weeee.
I think went about 25 feet.
Not too bad.
It may also work to take the pen barrel and just press it all the way
back into the clothespin jaws, but sometimes, sometimes that might happen.
But also sometimes the body of the pen isn't quite strong enough to push
against the rubber band and it may end up bending, and you may have a hard time
getting it all the way back into the clothespin.
Worked pretty well that time.
Let's shoot this styrofoam cup.
This is working pretty well, but I think we can clean this up,
make it pretty, and just all-around have a slightly nicer build.
Let's see what we can come up with.
Our first crossbow is built,
and for our second updated one,
we've got the same basic materials: four popsicle sticks, a clothespin,
a pen, and a wide rubber band.
Same first step as well, let's disassemble our pen,
and let's chop this pen down into pieces.
I'll have one piece the same length as the three that I cut out the first time,
but the other two pieces, I'm actually going to cut a little bit
shorter so they're just attached to the ends of the popsicle stick's arms,
and not all the way into the middle.
Now let's take two of our popsicle sticks and our two short pieces,
and try and secure that all together using some super glue.
To make the glue adhere a little bit better to the pen body,
let's scuff it up with some sandpaper.
Super glue is quite strong but it doesn't cure instantly,
so while the first two pieces of the pen tube are gluing on to the
popsicle stick, let's also attach our two popsicle sticks onto our clothespin.
It's holding all right, so let's put glue on the top of the pens,
and then the other side of the popsicle stick on top of that.
Let's fit our rubber band in between our popsicle sticks into the clothespin,
and then add our third piece of pen body in between those sticks.
Now, super glue can be pretty strong stuff, but I want to make sure that
this isn't going to tear itself apart when I'm firing,
so let's reinforce it with some hot glue.
We've got the two halves of our crossbow ready,
so now let's mount them together pretty much the same way we did before,
only instead of a rubber band, we're gonna use glue to make it permanent.
I find the easiest way to fit it through the gap is to push it in
sideways, and then twist it.
So use a couple drops of super glue, and then reinforce
it using our hot glue.
Let's insert the collar the same way we did before.
The main build of this crossbow is coming along nicely,
so it's time to add on a few upgrades.
Let's take apart another pen, and we'll save the collar and
the ink cartridge that we use as our ammunition.
Let's take a bit of hot glue, and use that to attach the plastic
collar underneath the arm of the crossbow.
The second collar on the bottom of our crossbow can now be used to hold
extra ammunition so your crossbow is just one shot before you have to
go find where your pen landed.
Another modification I want to make to this crossbow is
to give it a laser sight.
So we're gonna mount a laser pointer right on top of this thing.
To make sure that our laser pointer isn't pointing in the wrong direction,
let's add another small piece of popsicle stick on the back
to keep our laser perfectly level with the rest of our crossbow.
Before we attach our laser pointer, you know that
we like to add some color to things here, so let's grab some paint,
and make this thing look really fancy.
I'm going to leave this spot, and most of this stick unpainted
because that's where I'm going to glue the laser pointer on.
But everything else, I think is gonna get painted.
This is just acrylic paint that usually costs about one dollar for
a bottle at any craft store.
Now, once we stretch our rubber band across the front of our bow,
it is ready to use.
Now we need to test out our laser-guided popsicle stick crossbow.
Let's grab a target, and start shooting.
We've got our two crossbows.
Let's test them out.
Three. Two. One.
Oh, it went -
right between the gap of the cups.
All right, no, I've got another shot right here.
Wish I were that good of a shot to do that on purpose.
All right, trying this again.
Three, two, one.
The exact same spot.
All right, let's try the other crossbow with the laser sight.
Maybe that'll fix the problem.
Here we go.
Three, two, one.
Ha!
All right.
Trying not to go through the gap.
Three, two, one.
Ha!
Cleared that top cover right off there.
Perfect.
A miniature crossbow made from popsicle sticks, a clothespin,
and a rubber band.
And of course, the upgraded version where we painted it, added a laser
guidance system, and an additional shot held on to the bottom.
These things work really well.
Get pretty good distance on them,
about 30 feet, and of course, they're great for target practice.
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Have fun, be safe, and see you tomorrow