Cube Farm Ordnance?

In a humorous departure from the normal question fare, B747SP asks: "In my office, we have a healthy disrespect for the comfort and safety of our colleagues, and the accompanying arms race is strong, and competitive. We've tried everything from hurling balls of paper back and forth, to stress balls, flying torpedoes, Nerf weaponry al-la thinkgeek.com, and even Air Soft guns (I did say no respect for safety!!!). OK, so that's my office. What about other Slashdotters? What ordnance do you use in your office to keep that sucker in the next cube on his toes? Do you build your weapons from stuff around the office, or do you buy from a store?"

Comments

War at work

[Why Should I]

I once got dared to make a working weapon out of things that could be found in the office. I wasn't allowed to use anything from outside the office at all (not the materials, nor the tools to build it), and I had to do it in an hour.

I ended up building a miniture cross-bow that shot real life arrows a distance of about 2 meters on a relatively true path.

It worked so well that Above my desk there would be a collection of about half a dozen projectiles stuck in the pinboard-like ceiling panels.

How did I make it?

Basically it was constructed out of the metal clips used to hold together reams of paper which have been punched to fit in a ring binder. You know the things that go where the rings in a ring binder would usually go.

The clip was made out of aluminium and came in 3 parts.

• The binder pice - A long flat piece with points on either end. This was used as the actual rings in the ring binder. Each end was bent up to make it into a 'U' shape, and these ends were inserted into the holes in the paper. this was used as the cross section of the bow.
• The sleeve pice - Another shorter piece which had the side edges bent up and around to make a sort of sleeve for the first piece. It also had 2 holes at either side where the binder piece would go through. used as the 'barrel' of the weapon.
• The lock in piece - a flat pice of metal the same length of the sleeve which was used to slide into the sleeve piece and cover the ends of the binder piece (which were bent flat against the sleeve after being inserted in the holes). these were the projectiles.

I had to find a way to attach the cross sectoin to the barrel. I did this by using a hammered out T-Clip. I then attached a rubber band across the cross section of the bow, cut arrow heads into the projectiles and wolla... A miniture cross bow.