No Tools, No Drilling, No Cutting, No Lumber, No Saw, No Hardware, No Need to wait for your allowance, Super Easy, Super Cheap, Fast Build.
You probably already have everything necessary to build this Trebuchet in your house right now.
It's made out of:
9 Chopsticks*
2 Toothpicks
3/4" or larger masking tape
2 rubberbands
3 paper clips
string
Something for a weight - I used a fishing weight 5.75oz or 166g - it could handle twice that though.
The complete tool list:
Scissors
This video lets you see it fly.
You probably already have everything necessary to build this Trebuchet in your house right now.
It's made out of:
9 Chopsticks*
2 Toothpicks
3/4" or larger masking tape
2 rubberbands
3 paper clips
string
Something for a weight - I used a fishing weight 5.75oz or 166g - it could handle twice that though.
The complete tool list:
Scissors
- I used the better Bamboo ones you buy - 20 for 3.50 at Amazon. I didn't buy these, I've had them for years. They also make imitations of this style in hard plastic. They would probably work great also. The ones I used are 10.25" or 26cm. They are not fancy, no artwork or lacquer. This was an ideal length. You could probably use the free ones from take away, but they are shorter and lighter. You probably wouldn't be able to do quite as much weight, or fling as far. You could probably use lacquer ones also but they are expensive and it would be harder to keep it together as the tape wouldn't stick to the lacquer as easily. They are often shorter also. You could also try it with pencils but once again, they are shorter so you wouldn't get the performance that you get out of these chopsticks.
This video lets you see it fly.
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These are the parts I used:
9 Bamboo chop sticks
3 paper clips
2 rubber bands
3/4" masking tape - wider is fine
2 toothpicks
some string
and a weight
The only tool I used was a pair of scissors. (you could probably use a pocket knife instead)
I don't have any plans or measurements except the chopsticks are 10.75" or 26mm. The weight I'm using in the video is 5.75 oz or 166g. It's a fishing weight. I tried a heavier weight but it goes 20' and hits the wall. My longest space in my apartment is 20', so I can't check right now how far it would go.
I also didn't try to tune it or see how much weight it could handle, so It might be capable of more.
9 Bamboo chop sticks
3 paper clips
2 rubber bands
3/4" masking tape - wider is fine
2 toothpicks
some string
and a weight
The only tool I used was a pair of scissors. (you could probably use a pocket knife instead)
I don't have any plans or measurements except the chopsticks are 10.75" or 26mm. The weight I'm using in the video is 5.75 oz or 166g. It's a fishing weight. I tried a heavier weight but it goes 20' and hits the wall. My longest space in my apartment is 20', so I can't check right now how far it would go.
I also didn't try to tune it or see how much weight it could handle, so It might be capable of more.
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A quarter weighed on my little cooking scale weighs 5.7g (2 to 3x as heavy as the 2-3g pen cap). Your tennis ball weighs 58g. 20 to 30x heavier than my pen cap. If you scaled this trebuchet up proportionately it would need to be at least 20x larger to throw a tennis ball.
Try throwing something that weighs less than 2 quarters and use a weight of at least 1.5 lbs.
- This is not scientific measurements. It's just an approximation to illustrate the problem with your design.
Part of a project like this is doing the calculations. 4x size requires 4x the weight and can only throw 4x the weight that I threw.Crumple up a single piece of paper and cover it with a little bit of aluminum foil and try to throw that. If it's still too heavy, tear the paper in half and try again.