Seems like someone’s Spidey senses were tingling in the right direction after all…
Fans of superhero movies are always finding ways to build cool gadgets in real life so they can experience the superhero life themselves. There have been many attempts to make Batman’s grappling hook or even a working version of Captain America’s shield and this time, it seems like someone has been successful in creating a real-life version of Spiderman’s web-shooters, yes, the very technique that lets Spiderman swing from building to building.
A South African Youtuber and engineer known as JT (Built IRL), has successfully designed the web-shooters which are the closest thing to the real deal right now. The shooters were made as part of his university’s thesis project (how cool is that?!) and have since then gone viral on the internet after he posted a video showing how the web-shooters actually work.
As explained by JT, the shooters are designed with a series of metal cylinders with workout straps attached to them. Each cylinder has a 100 feet ‘hooky chain’ inside it which accelerates out with a fuel-powered burst of energy, allowing a full adult to swing freely from one beam to another. In his demonstration, he can be seen swinging over a foam pit (because it’s too early to start swinging from buildings just yet) While he was successful most of the time, there were attempts where the spidey gadget failed to shoot out “webs” and resulted in him falling in the pit. While there is still a lot of work to be done to perfect the web-shooters, it seems like JT’s two years of efforts were not in vain and hopefully one day, his web-shooter will be at par with the real Spiderman gadgets.