Slingshot for another project

About two weeks ago during the school holidays, my niece asked me to help her make a slingshot. I was half excited about the school project mainly because I'm into making stuff. And, the reason for the half excitement was because it was merely a slingshot, supposedly made out of a cut piece of wood that had a letter Y like shape.

So, last week we began the search for this Y like shape wood thingy. Actually I had been delaying it because it was either raining or not the right situation because I had so much work to do. Last week when I had more free time off work I brought all the kids (three kids) out to walk around in the neighborhood. We started looking at our mango trees but the branches were either too big or too thin. We went slightly further away on that beautiful afternoon.

Of course, we didn't forget to play around a bit.

I found this cassava tree, and there was just a right Y shaped branch of the right size. But, then, I realized we'd left our saw at the house. I asked my nephew to get it for us. While he was running as fast as he could to get the saw, the rest of us went hiding. He came back to where he left off to find we weren't there. He walked back home asking if my mom knew where we left. We saw that. We went back to the cassava tree and shouted to him who was still at the house talking to my mom, to come back to us. I know, right, how evil was that! But, after, I promised him Marbles -his favorite candy. So, yea, it was fair enough ;p

BTW, this is what we got.
There was a problem. I noticed that the wood didn't feel so strong as it was also pretty dried from being dead. It was actually from a dead branch.

So, I decided not to return home yet and give it another go to see if there was a much better branch that could offer more strength. Obviously, I wasn't looking for the same type of tree or plant.

The search for the second option was not easy. Most of the mango trees grow so tall so there was no way we could reach the branch that we needed.

We thought we should just be happy with the one that we only got from the cassava tree and spent a little bit more time enjoying the surroundings. Here are some photos of what was around us:

Look at that little corn farm. We thought it was so cute that it was located right on the corner between two houses.

Just across from where the corn farm was located, was this another farm. I didn't actually pay attention to finding out what was growing. Not that I wasn't curious. Probably because there wasn't really anything growing yet.

And, just behind the second farm there were those rice fields. Actually, the rice fields are quite long that one of the ends was right behind our house. We can view it from one of our windows upstairs and also from the balcony of my room. Oh, speaking of my room, take a look at the P.S. (Post Scriptum) at the end of the post ;)
Out of our expectation, my niece randomly said to me after finding something on the ground, "Hey, we might be able to get something out of this burned branches."

And, I quickly noticed they were actually branches of a mango tree by the shape and type of the leaves.
FYI, there have been strong winds over the last... I can't recall when it all started. So, a lot of people cut down some big branches of their big trees so that the trees won't collapse from having too much weight due to the branches and leaves when there are strong winds.

BTW, the one on the left is the new one. We decided to work on it instead of the first one simply for the strength that it had.

Once home, we cleansed it and peeled off the rough skin. Here's how it looked. Clean, white, smooth, and sexy! ;))
On a different day and evening (which was just yesterday!), we continued working on the catapult.

Earlier on the day I went out to get these colorful rubber bands. We didn't have and were too lazy to get one of those flexible spaghetti sized and shaped rubber thingy to be used as the ummm shooter? sling? what's the word for that stretchable part of a slingshot. LOL. You know what I'm being so clueless about(!).

So, yea, here's after we tied the rubbers and stuff.

Afterwards, I didn't want to leave it all smooth and boring. So, I decided to draw my niece's name and mine including the date of the making, using a pencil.

I then layered the drawn surface with PVA glue so that the pencil details wouldn't get smudged. The PVA glue would work to not only cover the details but also give a nice glassy effect on the surface. I've been using the glue for those two reasons for some of my art works.

We hung the 'wet' slingshot on to my niece's bed frame and left it overnight before she brought it to her school in the next morning.

And, here's us with the slingshot!
Well, that's it what I had to share with you all.

Good night!
It's like the middle of the night over here right now.

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Post Scriptum

Here's, I believe, our first blogged project. We made a car out of ice cream sticks: click here for the post.

Today I just finished painting the second coat on my walls. I've been quite slow working on the renovation of my room due to work and, obviously, laziness/tiredness. I had a different color on the walls for many, many years before, and this time I wanted white for the sake of cleaner look. I'm also going to place a couple of furniture and decorate the room a bit. I'll make a post about it once it's all done and clean.

Oh, today's Japanese class went so cool! We learnt a lot today. Well, now we know how to differentiate "this is my book", "that bag over there is mine", and "here is an office".