this is fantastic. spoonSiegecherry!

a sheetmetal spoon (with tubing for structure) might look a bit more aesthetic.
we'll see what we can scrounge i guess.

Hell, just launch the sporran! ELMO LOVES :spong!: TICKLIIIIIIIiiiiinnngggg.....

That's the problem--conduit bends. The "spoon" arm basically needs to be rigid. It'll be thwonking hard into a padded leather stop with every launch; I don't see conduit (or sheet metal) handling that gracefully.

Fill it with epoxy.

Epoxy doesn't have much rigidity on its own... but it gives me another idea: What if the spoon were made out of epoxy-laminated plywood strips? It'd require some pretty serious sculpting & sanding, but then it could be as solid & as rigid as we'd need it to be. Finish it with a coat of silver spray paint, then maybe another coat of glossy sealer. And stick a cherry on top!

Epoxy isn't rigid on it's own, but you can put lots of goodies in it like chopped glass fiber or even stuff the tube full of fiberglass mat and wet it out with epoxy.

Could maybe also wrap the conduit (or even a wood core) in glass.

I do like the laminate idea though too.

I've been wanting to play with wood laminates for a while now, even if it's just layered OSB and wood glue. A fiberglass wrap sounds like a lot less work, though. Probably better strength-to-weight ratio, too.

i do have elmo fur scraps i believe. i'll look this eve after the meeting(s). i think i even have some black rubber bungee kinda things that would work for stems. from the size of the things i'd imagine we could get (2) 6" stems out of each thingy. so that'd probably be a 6~9" ball.

brilliant ideas for a ball that size to wrap or somethign to stuff it with for an apt weight? beans for a bean bag kinda thing? anyone know of a local plastics mfg that would have a broken bag or two of some kind of pellets we coudl get cheap/free?

it wouldn't be hard to put a piece of steel strap down the center as an initial form, and to add some inherent spring.

somehow i'm seeing a catapult building party in my basement on teh 28th since i seem to have a lot of the bits.

OOOOOHH!!!!!

since a lot of this will be recycled materials, we could document this well and do the instructibles laser contest!

Yeah, I think it's time Siege Engine and Cherry got its own thread.

I like your garage better as a working space, with those two single bays and the double bay in the middle. We could still get it organized & free up some room.

I've got more shop gear here at my place than I can easily transport, though: table saw with shop-vac dust collection, band saw (which can also be hooked up to the vac), sawhorses (2 are fold-up), bunch of power tools & hand tools, and a modest supply of good scrap wood. Home Depot is nearby; there's an Ace Hardware even closer. It's half the size of yours, but my garage does have two separate 110V circuits; there's even a 220V outlet I've never used.

(...laser contest? What, you think the spoon-a-pult needs a rangefinder?)