garage would be better, but may be a bit brisk, and less than ideal for gluing, although contact cement is ideal adn nto too picky about temp.

i'm not sure what we'd need that i don't have, circ saw, jig saw, drill driver, hammers, mallets, saw horses.... a portable propane heater would do it. i'm near the quarry for target adn home despot, adn there's a menards nto too far up central.

and no an epilog lazer engraver/cutter. it's a baby one, but still would rock.

think of all the steps, makign cherries, laminating, tensioning springs....

so.... assumign a grapefruit sized bean bag, how much force do we need to exert to fling it abotu 50' assuming 40% efficiency. suppose that's about a pound of beans?

i used to be able to solve that sorta thing in my head in college, but the abacus up there is a bit rusty.

or do we want to get serious and do this with rope instead of springs?

I don't know how well a rope spring would scale down. We could try starting with loops of twine or string.

it works ok, part of the tension is actually the wooden frame but it's a might bit more prone to nonpassive failure, although less violent when experiencing that than a metal spring.

Sounds like we'd need to take care to make it right, then.
Another thought: Once built, the spoonapult would need to live someplace. (in storage)

well, if it's backseat portable, i do have room in the garage.

figure ~6" cherries will be maybe 5' total for the whole shebang. wouldnt' be more than ~3' wide.

this is probably a multi day process....

anyone *built* a catapult before? i've only done a ballista and a few trebucets.

Maybe a desktop sized prototype is in order, wait I think I just got an idea for a kit.

http://www.catapultkits.com/10901

I'm printing out plans from:

http://www.open2.net/diyscience/mangone ... wnload.pdf

We can look at it tonight.