Today, I want to talk about something I’ve been working on recently: my web shooter. Yes, the Spider-Man kind. Not exactly a real one, obviously, because making something that actually works like Spider-Man’s web shooters is surprisingly difficult. But I’ve managed to make something pretty close, and the whole idea actually started with a school project from my old school.
One of the most memorable projects I did at my old school was a month-long assignment where we had to create a movie trailer. We had to film everything, edit it, and try to make it look as realistic as possible. My group decided to make a Spider-Man: Brand New Day trailer. I don’t even remember exactly which version of the trailer we ended up following, but I do remember that Peter Parker was the main character, obviously. And I definitely did not want to be the actor. Let’s be real. Our Spider-Man costume cost exactly ten dollars. You can’t expect amazing fabric quality from a ten-dollar costume. We couldn’t afford a proper face-shell mask either, so our actor ended up wearing something that looked like a robber’s mask, except it was green so we could edit it afterward. He could barely see through it. Basically, he was cooked.
Of course, Spider-Man needed web shooters, and that was where I came in. Obviously, we couldn’t afford the expensive ones that could actually shoot and retract something, so I decided to make the closest version possible. I went online, looked through a bunch of designs, and eventually found one that seemed pretty good. Instead of designing the entire thing from scratch, I basically borrowed someone else’s design and put my own mechanism inside it. I mean, what’s the point of reinventing the entire web shooter when you can just improve an existing design? It took me about a week to finish, and honestly, it worked okay. Not amazing, but definitely usable.
In the final trailer, my web shooter was used in exactly five shots. Some were close-ups, and in others, our actor just made the classic Spider-Man hand movement while we added the web effects later. The problem was that we needed green material for the editing process, and we couldn’t find any green yarn. So we decided to use dental floss. Yes, dental floss. But we needed green dental floss, which apparently was one of the hardest things in the universe to find. Eventually, we just took ordinary dental floss and colored it with a green Sharpie. Do you understand how ridiculous that was? We were literally coloring dental floss with a marker. And somehow, after all that effort, it actually worked. The green floss wasn’t a complete failure. We managed to use it in the filming and editing, and the trailer turned out all right.
Recently, during visual arts, I suddenly remembered that entire project. I think the word I’m looking for is nostalgia. All those memories came rushing back, and I started thinking about building another web shooter, except this time I wanted something more realistic and properly 3D-printed. So I started designing one, and I actually managed to make it. But, of course, there was a problem. There is always a problem.
My design teacher has a problem with anything that shoots. He seems to think that almost every launching mechanism is dangerous. And, to be fair, he’s not completely wrong. If I were in charge of making laws, I’d probably support some pretty serious restrictions on guns myself. I mean, why can people buy AR-15s? I genuinely don’t understand that. What makes the whole situation even stranger is how much dangerous technical information you can find on the internet. There are tutorials about weapons, rockets, and all kinds of things that probably shouldn’t be treated like ordinary DIY projects. Some of these videos make extremely complicated and dangerous machines sound surprisingly simple. I remember watching one and thinking, how is this even available online?
But that’s also what makes engineering interesting to me. There is a difference between understanding how something works and actually building something dangerous. I’m interested in the mechanisms, the moving parts, the physics, and the design. I like figuring out how people turn an idea into a working object. That doesn’t mean I want to make a weapon. I want to make a Spider-Man web shooter. Preferably one that looks realistic, works mechanically, and doesn’t get me into trouble at school.
Unfortunately, my teacher doesn’t seem particularly convinced. Another problem is that I need a fairly large spring for my design, and he doesn’t seem very enthusiastic about giving me one. Maybe I’ve bothered him too many times. Maybe he thinks the whole idea is dangerous. Maybe he’s just tired of hearing me talk about web shooters. I honestly don’t know. But at this point, I don’t think I’m getting that spring anytime soon.
And that’s where my project currently stands. I have the design, I have the 3D-printing ideas, and I have a pretty good understanding of what I want the finished web shooter to look like. What I don’t have is the spring I originally wanted. So now I have to figure out another way to make it work, possibly with a safer mechanism. I guess that’s what engineering is about. You come up with an idea, spend hours trying to make it real, discover that something doesn’t work, and then spend even more hours fixing it.
Sometimes the biggest obstacle isn’t the technology. It’s getting permission to use a spring.
Seriously. A spring.
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