Awesome Springs

Steel isn’t only strong; it’s one of the world’s most recyclable materials. In this video from Knives Project, he shows how he took a rusty leaf spring from a car’s suspension, heated it and reshaped it into a hunting knife. After hammering the glowing strip of steel, he ground its edges and honed it into a beast of a knife that would make Crocodile Dundee proud.

This unique desktop accessory from DOIO holds pens, pencils, scissors, and other skinny items inside an oversized spring. The metal spring looks like the ones used in coilover vehicle suspensions, making it an excellent gift for gearheads. Available in yellow or red.

The fastest production NERF blasters fire around 15 darts per second. It’ll Probably Work set his sights a little higher when he built a spring-loaded NERF weapon that can blast out hundreds of projectiles at once. By switching from foam darts to balls, he packed in 6x as much ammo. Fully loaded, it’ll hold up to 288 balls and launch them all in about a second.

There are good reasons that vehicles are driven on pneumatic rubber tires. But after seeing a rusty bike wheel wrapped in springs, the guys from Garage 54 thought it would be fun to test the idea by creating a set of tires from thick coil springs. They mounted them on a Mercedes G-Wagon to see if they could improve traction and off-road capabilities.

After the guys from the Hydraulic Press Channel got their new 300-ton press, they built an industrial-strength bunker around it to protect themselves and their workshop from flying debris. With the bunker in place, they used the machine to compress some large springs to see if they could make them go flying. It’s surprisingly harder than it looks.

The makers of Clash of Clans asked I did a thing to build something inspired by the game. He decided to build a real-world version of the strategy game’s hidden spring trap. Powered by a pair of car suspension springs and pulled into place with a winch, the final version won’t just launch victims into the air; it might break some bones.

We’ve seen a complicated machine that creates springs by bending stiff wire, but this machine appears to be a bit simpler. It’s fascinating to see how it twirls the metal into a perfect spring by feeding it through a small opening and pressing it against an angled tool to bend it.

Moon Shoes are toys that put a little extra spring in kids’ steps using elastic bands. Since they don’t really make kids jump much higher, maker Allen Pan decided it was time to create a more powerful version. After experimenting with springs and explosives, he settled on compressed air to propel them.

The guys from Douyin channel Rainbow Circle love to show off their skills using rainbow-colored slinky-type toys. Among their performances is this duo handling their colorful spring toys in perfect sync. And then there’s this triple-threat.

The always charming Tim Rowett of Grand Illusions shows off a silly plaything he created that produces a very long (though not truly endless) stream of fabric-covered springs from a small container. We’d like a longer bazooka packed with 5x as many snake-springs.