Costume Creation: Gadget's Suction Cup Crossbow

            What I thought was going to be a "quick and dirty" cosplay prop turned into quite a little project. I bought a plunger to use as a suction cup and figured I could just fold some cardboard to make the pencil and use craft foam on either end to make the pencil tip and the eraser. I then bought some yellow vinyl with a sticky back to make the outside of the pencil.

For the spool of thread I used a cheap plastic bucket and a couple of lids, covering them with brown pleather. I then bought a crank handle and bolted it to the lid, and bought some rope to use as "thread."

For the comb, I used foamcore poster board sandwiched in Worbla thermoplastic, a process that I'd done before. 

The first problem was weight...the comb was big and bukly, as was the spool of thread. A simple cardboard shell for the pencil wasn't going to cut it, so I reinforced the interior by using a mailing tube. So now at least the thing wouldn't collapse.
 
The second problem was that the comb and spool of thread were perched very precariously on the narrow pencil. My plan was to screw them on, but I knew they'd likely tear right through the cardboard mailing tube.

In a perfect world, the interior of the pencil would have been solid, like a single piece of wood. (Gosh, like a pencil!) But I didn't have the woodworking tools to do that, and even if I did, I didn't want to carry around all that weight.

By now, some of you may be wondering about the lacrosse balls in the center picture there. :)

I went to a sporting goods store and discovered that lacrosse balls were just about the right size to fit neatly inside the mailing tube. So, I positioned them inside the tube exactly where I was going to screw the parts onto the pencil. The two on the left are at the front of the pencil, where I used two screws to attach the comb on top. Then from below, I used two more screws to attach the handle on the bottom, piercing the same two lacrosse balls. The two lacrosse balls towards the back were used to screw the bucket onto the pencil.

So far everything seems really stable, so fingers crossed. Time will tell!

And that's pretty much it! I used Velcro on the bucket lid so that I could open the bucket for storage, but it's already so heavy and unwieldy I'm reluctant to put much in there. But, still handy!

Taken on: May 30, 2022

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cosplay

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Gadget

Gadget Hackwrench

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