World's Smallest Snap Gun

[stick]

The amount of force that is transmitted to the shaft is what matters, and that will be the same whether it is concentrated on a point or spread out.

It's not the amount of force, it's the amount of time in which that force is applied. If the striker is correctly aligned, all the force will be transfered immediately into the blade. However, if the blade hits a slope before it hits the end of the snapping part, the blade will be dragged, and the force is applied over a longer period of time, which isn't desirable.

That problem is solved by either a good snapper, or excessive force.

[pip]

i'm off to wal-mart and see if i can find
some of those giant diaper pins

i hope no one is watching when i try
testing them for springyness

[Orange_Crusader]

I hereby declare bicycle spokes to be one of the springiest things I've made springs from. I got 3 spokes, and made 2 snap guns (one left handed, and one right handed), a very good tension tool, and I still have some scraps left over. For the snap guns, they were wound around a 5/8 copper pipe piece, and the picking end was filed and compressed down to fit into the narrowest keyway I could find. It's incredibly hard to "snap" the gun, the spring is very strong, and the gun rebounds to about a 90 degree angle when unsprung. My poor thumb... . I'll try bending them to be a bit closer to the rest of the gun (a 60 to 70 degree angle, for example), and adding a bit of padding to the spot my thumb sits on. It works, but it's a pain. Needs some modification. Oh, and the bike spokes were steel, not aluminium. It still seems very strong (the tip isn't hand-bendable) at the pikcing tip, despite losing about half its diameter in thickness.

On a slightly unrelated note, I got a few strips of brass (about the thickness of a hacksaw blade), and I'll see how well they work as pick material.