"Post-Apoc" paintball crossbow project

Reading through the suggestions on my intro post, I think I've got an idea what I'm aiming for- but because I don't have the experience or tools to really do things 'by the book' as it were, i'm borrowing a page from my best friends projects book. Improvising

I salvaged a broken rib from one of our road signs off the work truck to use as a bow, with a little reinforcement (at this point, thinking epoxy the cracked end and then wrap both in a layer of duct tape and electrical tape) and cutting out the splintered middle section, I can get two serviceable arms to use.

My trade is essentially knots, attaching a bow string will probably be a pair of triple fisherman knots tied with either a heavy gauge clothesline I use for a dozen handy things, or a section of throwing line (rated probably significantly higher than the clothesline- most arborists I know will put on gloves to yank on this stuff when their throw-ball get's stuck)

I don't trust the rib to not split if i put a nail or screw through it, so to attach it to the end of the 2x4 inch plank I'm using as a stock i'm going to section off a couple slabs and pinch the arms between those

.....and that's as far as I've though, either late tomorrow or friday morning, I'll be able to get to a serviceable camera to try and post pictures of parts and what tools I have to deal with.

Good luck with that. Pics will definitely help us see what you're trying to do...

Pulled it all together with a little help from my brother on the back porch....needs some reworking, I think, definitely overestimated the wood strength, parts of it started splitting on me.













I didn't think the clothesline was small enough to leave much to tie to, so I left it unstringed for now, till I can get home and cut the throw line down to size

Got it together, finally. Took the plan down to Red, who's an electro-mechanical guru of sorts without the college courses and within a couple hours we had a functioning bow, trouble shot problems and laid plans for the next version.

We started with a 1x1 inch post, cut down to give us a body 24 inch long by 4 3/8 inch wide with a 1.5 inch gap in the middle. At the end, we cut two blocks from a 2x4 to serve as the mounting plate for the bow arms and mounted an 18 inch barrel made of 3/4 inch PVC pipeto the spacers in the frame. A slot was cut most of the way along the pipe to accommodate the screw drilled into the top of a dowel plug that serves as our driver for the paintball.

Everything was predrilled and screwed together, homemade washers supporting the fiberglass ribs at the front, though the mounting blocks twist when it's drawn. We also incorperated another section of dowel that screws to the front of the main driver, as a way to adjust velocity without having to restring every time based on how long the ball will be under acceleration.

Haven't had a chance to chrono this thing yet, or string it properly, but with a plastic coated wire clothesline we could break half solidified paintballs off the garage door- I didn't want to trust it even with fresh rounds on a live target just yet.

(documented pretty much everything, as soon as Red figure out how to hell to email them to me, will post up)