Everyone has slow days at the office, so it’s only natural; each person has a unique way of coping with boredom. Some workers of the 90s had Solitaire on their early Windows PCs, the 2000s workforce had Full Tilt! Pinball installed on almost all computers, and almost everyone nowadays has a smartphone for playing just about anything.
But creator Alex Presley says “no” to all of these mind-numbing computer games. Instead of relying on digital software to solve his boredom, he created his own miniature trebuchet which he uses to launch projectiles at unsuspecting co-workers.
Made entirely out of aluminum save for the stainless steel counterweight, this trebuchet (or catapult, if you’re not feeling very medieval) is a thousand times smaller than its normal-sized variant but can still launch objects up to a good ten feet away.
After assembling the aluminum pieces—all of which were custom-designed by Alex—he creates a slingshot on the other end of the counterweight using some string and a bit of cloth cut from a pair of shorts. He sews this makeshift slingshot onto the counterweight and proceeds to launch some ball bearings from the trebuchet.
According to Alex, the mini trebuchet is amazingly accurate every time he fires it. The ball bearings land in almost the exact same spot despite the distance they travel, so you can be sure to hit your co-workers on the head as long as they aren’t moving.
He plans on increasing the trebuchet’s launch distance in the future as well as make a more effortless loading technique for the projectiles. If you want your own trebuchet for your work desk to deal with unexpected bouts of boredom, Alex Presley has made them available for purchase on his Etsy page.
