Introduction: How to Make a Cobra Weave

A cobra chain (a type of stick bomb) is a great date activity or something to do with friends and kids. By weaving popsicle sticks together, you’ll get a long chain of tension that’s ready to come up like a cobra and explode!

What you need:

  • Popsicle sticks
  • Carpeted floor

Put your chain together on a carpeted floor for the easiest build.

Step 1: The First Two Sticks

Overlap two sticks to form an X, in this manner.

Step 2: The First Weave

Place blue A under purple A, then lay the blue stick on top of the

orange stick. The sticks will be in tension, so hold them down on one end.

Step 3: Weave From Right to Left

Place yellow B under purple B and lay the yellow stick on top of the blue stick.

Step 4: Weave Again

Place red A under orange A, and lay the red stick across the yellow

stick.

Step 5: Continue As You Began

Continue steps 3 and 4 until you run out of Popsicle sticks. In this case, you would put a stick under the blue stick and over the red stick. Then you would put a another stick under the yellow stick and over the other stick you just put down, etc. Try to keep the weave as wide as possible.

Step 6: Stop Weaving

To end the chain, place the open end of your final stick under the remaining open end of the previously laid stick. (In ours, we weaved our final stick, the blue one, across the three last sticks of our chain.)

Step 7: Explode!

To set off the chain reaction, remove the very first stick, in this case the purple stick in step one, and step back!