How to Make Your Own Crossbow

If you want to make your own crossbow, you've come to the right place. Crossbows, like a bow, are a neat way to shoot things like arrows, which can be used for target practice. Be very careful while making your own crossbow, and while using it too. This tutorial is for how to make a mini-crossbow using only a few household items.

Difficulty:

Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• 4 square wood chopsticks
• 2 wooden skewer sticks
• a clothes pin that works
• duct tape
• string
• mini-saw or x-acto knife
• hot glue

1. To begin to make your own crossbow, boil water on the stove in a large pot. After the water starts to bubble, turn the heat down to low and insert the 2 skewer sticks. Let sit for 45 minutes.

2. 

   After 45 minutes, carefully take out the skewers and slowly bend both of them into a crescent shape together. If you have clamps, use those to keep the crescent shape until your sticks dry. If not, you can simply duct tape them onto a piece of cardboard while keeping their crescent shape. After dried, you have made your bow part of the crossbow. Make sure you duct tape each skewer together, one on top of the other. This can be done before or after they are dry.

3. 

   Duct tape the 4 square wooden chopsticks together as shown in the diagram.

4. 

   Cut a slot in the now taped set of chopsticks that is the same width of one of the skewers, just a few centimeters deep.

5. 

   Place the center of the skewers into the chopsticks.

6. About 1/4" from both ends of the bent skewers, wrap a 1/2" piece of string around the skewers and hot glue the string so it sets into place. You can also use rubber cement to make your own crossbow with.

7. Measure a piece of string that is a straight line from either end of the skewers. Tie a loop onto both ends of the string. Place the loops over the glued piece of string wrapped around your skewers.

8. 

   Duct tape a clothes pin to the chopsticks so the alligator teeth are facing the bow. The clothes pin should be placed on the opposite end of the chopsticks. Duct tape it over the teeth, just enough where you can still barely open the clothes pin.

9. 

   Make you own crossbow arrows by getting toothpicks and placing "flags" on one end. you can make these out of paper, or even duct tape. Glue of tape the flags and you're almost set to start target practice.

10. To load your crossbow, pull the string back and insert it into clothespin. Place a toothpick arrow directly in front of the clothespin. To fire, open the clothespin to release the string and shoot the arrow forward. Have fun!

Tips & Warnings

• Try making your own targets. Fruits and veggies are cool because the toothpicks will stick to them.

• Please be extremely careful when using your chopstick crossbow. You can cause major damage to anyone that you may be near, so please take precaution before shooting, and also make sure you store it in a safe place where only you can reach it.

• Again, don't shoot at anybody. You should be over 18 to operate this device.