Everyone has a hobby that brings them joy outside of the daily grind of work. Some people like building computers, some like to bake, and others build automatic weapons in their garage. Joerg Sprave is a fan of building such weapons, and throughout his career as a DIY weapons engineer he’s created many interesting and terrifying death machines. In the past, he’s created a Coke bottle gatling gun, an air-powered bazooka and a rifled slingshot that shoots knives.
His latest creation, and his most ambitious and creative one, is the fully-automatic slingshot crossbow. The YouTuber, whose channel goes by his own name, has been trying to achieve this fully automatic firing system for his crossbow for quite sometime. As he explains in the video, before he found his final solution, he was using a design that was automatic only to an extent, and it forced him to use a very cluttered system of rubber bands.
In the video, titled “A Dream Came True”, he cheerfully explains how he came about the answer. It was thanks to a simple gearing mechanism, which uses a rack and a pinion instead of two circular gears. The new system helped him achieve a more efficient reloading system where he can use a drill to power the firing of the shots.
It’s an incredible technical feat, and one that took a lot of time and patience to achieve.
In the video, Joerg explains that the automatic crossbow’s reloading and firing system is possible thanks to an automatic drill that he attached to the side of the wooden weapon. Thanks to the circular motion, the crossbow reloads itself.
He also walks us through the loading process before the shooting begins. He puts a handful of dart-sized arrows in the machine, which is simply a gap on top of the crossbow, then pushes them all down using a slate and rubber bands. He explains that the pressure of the rubber bands in important because “gravity is not quick enough to feed the mechanism in time.”
Joerg is clearly thrilled by his achievement, and his followers now await eagerly to see what his new project will be. As one YouTube user put it: “If you weren’t already scared of robbing this guy, you will be now.”
