Secret Altoids Catapult

hey guys I’m Nate welcome back to the
workshop where today we’re going to be
making a small desktop catapult that
[Applause]
for this build we’re going to need our
tin of mints Altoids or something
similar a small binder clip a plastic
spoon and some thin cardboard maybe a
playing card that you have lying around
or I’ll be getting mine from this empty
cereal box
we’ll need a pair of scissors to cut
things and some hot glue and tape to
attach stuff together there’s plenty of
options for what you can use as
ammunition but since our tin of mints
comes full of mints that are the right
size
we’ll try using that as ammo to get
started let’s empty all of the mints
out of our tin and into a fire we won’t
need this piece of paper throw that out
now let’s just clean out our tin a
little bit so it’s not so full of mint
dust we are going to be gluing onto this
surface so we really want to make sure
it’s clean enough that the glue will
stick our binder clip is going to be the
mechanism that gives our catapult some
extra spring so that’s going to fit
inside our box and then our spoon will
be the little basket at the back of our
catapult that holds our ammunition let’s
take our plastic spoon measure how long
we want it to be and then cut it off so
it fits within our tin now what we need
to do is attach our plastic spoon onto
one side of the binder clip we’ll use
our strong tape for that there we go
take through the spin flip this away
from the binder clip so we can easily
wrap it all the way around the spoon and
the handle of the clip
[Music]
all right I think we’re getting a pretty
good idea of how this catapult mechanism
is going to work if I hold down the back
of the binder clip we can see that by
pushing down on the spoon it stretches
the binder clip open and that’s giving
us a lot of spring power now using
whatever our source of cardboard is we
want to cut out a piece that’s the same
width as the inside of our tin let’s
trace around our tin and then cut a
little bit smaller than that so the
cardboard is the size of the inside
rather than the outside we don’t even
need the entire bottom we will need
about half of it so I think right about
there should be fine
there we go our piece of cardboard now
fits pretty perfectly inside the bottom
of our tin we now want to divide our
cardboard into two pieces based on the
size of this binder clip with the
cardboard in the tin and the binder clip
on top of it pressed all the way up
against the tin our dividing line should
be right near the back of the binder
clip the smaller piece of cardboard will
fit inside of our binder clip and the
larger piece will go over the second
silver handle and overlap onto the tin
let’s use some of our hot glue to attach
this first piece of cardboard to the
inside of the binder clip now a little
bit more hot glue on top of this second
handle and then we’ll put this piece of
cardboard down on top of that we should
be able to fit our whole mechanism down
inside of our Altoid tin and where you
can start to see how this is going to
work
we’ll use some more hot glue to attach
all of that cardboard down to the tin
and that should do a good job of holding
our catapulting mechanism in place now
at this point we can pull back on the
spoon and we see the spring effect
starting to take place but if we look at
the front it looks like our cardboard is
just peeling up despite the hot glue so
let’s try reinforcing that by adding
more glue around the edge of our
cardboard but on top of the cardboard
now you can see that we’ve filled the
corners all the way up so there’s glue
on top of the cardboard and hopefully
that will give it a secure enough fold
against the tin that it should give us
some resistance as we pull back on the
spoon with our glue cooled and holding
everything down we should be ready to
start firing off some Altoids go for a
smaller shot
there we go little less power it
actually shot up quite a bit more I’ll
take it I hit the monitor on the camera
that’s pretty good now this works
alright but I think there are some
improvements that we can add to it
because of the high resistance level in
one of these binder clips I don’t think
it’s actually possible to fold this down
far enough that we can really close the
whole tin and if we do they can just pop
right open again so let’s see if we
can’t modify this to have a little bit
less resistance so that we can conceal
the whole thing inside our tin for this
upgraded version of the mint tin
catapult we’ve got another tin we have
another spoon we’ll be using an even
smaller binder clip and we’ll also use a
paperclip and a piece of a paint stick
we also have another piece of the same
cardboard cut from our cereal box
we’ll start the same way by measuring
our spoon and cutting it short enough
that it should be able to fit entirely
inside our tin we will attach our spoon
to our binder clip much the same way we
did before we can see the same extending
action on our binder clip that we had
before let’s cut out our cardboard the
same way before as well that seemed to
fit
this step is also the same we fit our
mechanism inside onto the piece of
cardboard and we mark where the dividing
line is of course this is a smaller
binder clip so the small portion in
front is even narrower now here’s where
we’re gonna start changing things that
aren’t just the size of the binder clip
even with the smaller binder clip that
doesn’t have as much strength we would
have a hard time getting this to stay
down inside our tin there’s a lot of
pressure on one of these clips so what
we want to do is figure something out
that we can put in the jaws of our
binder clip that will hold it open so
that it’s not just being held down by
the lid of our tin that’s the reason we
have our paint stick if we fit this
paint stick and maybe something else a
little bit wider down inside the jaws of
this binder clip it’s held open which
makes it lay flatter against the table
we can see that just by itself it’s
still sticking up quite a bit but if we
can get it to open a little bit more it
will stay
in a position that should be able to let
our team close let’s cut off a piece
approximately the size of our binder
clip our goal is to have our binder clip
attached to the tin slightly off-center
so that we have space to fit the piece
of the paint stick in between the jaws
when we want to switch from firing to
storing our catapult to make it easier
to move the piece of paint stick in and
out of the binder clip let’s take a
small paper clip and Bend that into an L
shape attached to our piece of painter
stick that should give us a little
handle we can hold on to to put it in
place when we’re ready to use it like
before we’ll have our small piece of
cardboard in the jaws of the binder clip
and when you combine that with the piece
of paint stick and the paper clip
hopefully will give us enough pressure
holding it open that we can close the
lid down on top of it our spoon is still
sticking up just a little bit but it
doesn’t have a lot of spring power to it
I’m betting that’ll be enough to hold it
closed we are going to need enough space
that we can fit our little wedge in and
out from inside the binder clips jaws so
we’re gonna want to offset our binder
clip so it’s easily out of the way that
seems like a pretty good spot to me so
that’s where we’ll attach our cardboard
to the binder clip
and I’ll attach this piece of cardboard
to the back handle of our binder clip
let’s apply hot glue all over the bottom
of this cardboard glue it down in place
into the tin and then of course we’ll
use the same reinforcing technique of
adding hot glue along this corner edge
[Music]
while we’re waiting for that glue to
cool down a little bit let’s work on
making a target for these launchers I’ve
got this piece of gray foam core and
these nine plastic cups let’s try and
make a bit of a grid that we can put
these cups into we’ll trace out circles
cut holes into the foam quart and then
sink the cups down into the foam core
and make sort of a target grid we can
assign different points to different
cups
beautiful a multicolored target board
ash we’re great all right we can pull
back on our catapult has a good amount
of spring it’s not pulling up the
cardboard let’s see if we can fit our
little barrier block in the jaws of our
binder clip yeah holds it open pretty
well we can still see the spoon is a
little bit above the top of the tin but
there’s not that much resistance on it
so let’s see if this will stay closed it
does beautiful tin holds itself closed
we can open it up and we can remove our
little support block whatever we want to
call that and we have our fully
functional catapult let’s get some mints
out try this bad boy nice that just flew
about 25 feet all right let’s see if we
can shoot some of our mints from our
catapult into our target I bet we can do
with both catapults all right let’s try
our first catapult first see we can get
this to go in I don’t know how little
power I’m gonna need let’s try this nope
that was too little that was way too
much
[Music]
back-up plan still nothing I shot like
six at once ah all right I’m gonna see
if I can lay this down a little flatter
we can get steep or shallow let’s try a
shallow angle yet mmm rolled down in
between them all yes ha ha it went in I
got one I got one finally
that’s like 55 shots and one of them
went in because that’s how good I am at
aiming that went it again
alright that’s like 3 out of 70 which is
not a good ratio but let’s try the other
catapult see if I can do any better this
one does have a little more give to it
so I feel like it should be easier to
adjust to the right range ha see it only
took like six or seven tries with this
one instead of like 50 with the other
one way better
these catapults are designed for power
look at this thing I was trying to
overshoot it and I overshot it and it
when we’re finished using our catapult
we can just put the block in place in
between the binder clip jaws add some
ammunition for later and close the whole
thing up it’s nicely self-contained and
if we want a mint well we can also just
hey guys thanks for watching if you want
to subscriber yet just hit the bomb to
get in the club if you missed our last
video or want to check it out again just
click up here at the top click down
there if you want to see what the
internet thinks that you’re supposed to
watch next that’s it for now have fun be
safe and see you tomorrow [Music]