by Tom Gaylord
Writing as B.B. Pelletier
This report covers:
- Is it real?
- How far?
- Some assembly required
- How does it work?
- Fletched arrows?
- No sale!
- A secret
- Dense styrofoam
- Velocity, cocking effort, trigger pull?
- Summary
Well, what’s it going to be today? What sort of craziness has BB Pelletier dreamed up for you?
Some of you call me the Great Enabler. Maybe I am, but I’m not alone in that. Some of you say stuff that enables me, too. I don’t know where it was, or even if it was on this blog, but sometime in the past few months I became aware of the toothpick crossbow. That’s right — a tiny crossbow that shoots toothpicks instead of arrows or bolts.
Is it real?
I didn’t believe it, so I went on eBay and entered the search term “toothpick crossbow.” Sure enough, several toothpick crossbows came up, along with a number of Victorinox Swiss Army knives. Some research turned up that the crossbow is an official or quasi-official stamp of quality for Swiss-made products. Victorinox stopped using it in 2005, but several of my larger knives have the mark. It looks something like an umbrella and many people call it that.