This weekend, make a human powered siege weapon. Using a human as a counter-weight and PVC piping for the structure, this catapult can hurl water balloons 100 yards or more.

For this project I joined forces with siege weapon builder William Gurstelle. As soon as we had cut the pieces, we loose fit them together and started hurling balloons. We built this at Maker Faire and after nearly hitting a human target, it didn’t take long for the safety officer to come along and tell us to move along. We found an out of the way spot and switched from firing water balloons to firing a plastic cow! Fetchez La Vaca!

Weekend Projects is sponsored by Microchip Technology. Check out their seminars and 16 bit contest.

Sidenote to the audio engineers out there: It was a windy day. I wish I’d had a wind sock!

Make sure to download the pdf and read the article for all the background and step by step instructions! These instructions are an excerpt from William’s bok The Art of the Catapult. If you want to get the Make: Video Podcast and PDFcast downloaded automatically, you can subscribe in itunes. – Link