This is in the same vein as the one day builds created by Adam Savage (Of Mythbusters fame), In as much as it only took me a short time to build. I probably could have built it in a day if work and the kids taxi duties hadn't interfered. 
I Started by collecting some off-cuts of wood, the longest pieces were around 3ft long, which determined the overall scale of the device. Without really planning too much I built what I felt a catapult should be, added bungee cords and was roundly disappointed in the results! It turns out Bungee cords don't actually have very much stretch, and even with dozens of them attached to the catapult I couldn't get any power into the throw.
The day before the cubs were due to use it I dismantled the entire thing and rebuilt it into a mangonel style of siege engine, one that uses a twisted rope for power.
This worked brilliantly, a few test fires of soft sponge balls out into the road showed the potential, so the entire thing was then loaded up into the back of the car. Fortunately the next evening at cubs was warm and sunny, so after the cubs had made their own marshmallow firing catapults, we all went outside, where armed with 30 or so water balloons we challenged the cubs to try and catch as many as they could!
As you can see we did have one or two misfires, but on the whole it was a massive success. It's still sitting in the cub hut as we hadn't got the heart to break it up.
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