For Christmas, India and Shianne got me a book called, “Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction: Build Implements of Spitball Warfare.” It is AWESOME. I spend a fair amount of time throwing things at the people I work with (they deserve it!), this will allow me to launch things at them! I mean, I’m amazingly accurate and forceful with a flicked penny, but this way I’ll have springs and mouse traps and rubber bands and stuff backing me up!
So yeah, it’s a pretty badass present. Still, I’m starting to wonder about the authors. It’s pretty well illustrated, but I’ve built four of the launchers from it already, and three of them have required major modifications before they were usable!
Did they actually test these items? One of them was clearly a concept piece that in no way could work they way they designed it! I could definitely have done better . . .
My plan has been to build everything in this book ever since I opened it. I’ll still do that, but in the end I think I’m going to end up making a blog or instructables post about how to make each of the mini weapons better–small changes to the initial instructions designed to make things work better, or just to make them work. The second one I made didn’t work at all until I changed the design!
Anyway, criticisms aside, this is a really awesome book. I love to build things, and this book is chalk full of fantastic little machines to build. I’ve only made the small ones so far, but I’m planning on working my way up to building some little catapults and trebuches before too long! Fear me, co-workers!
