After viewing a video online of someone creating a batarang out of an old saw blade I decided to give it a try. However seeing as it was my first attempt at any form of metal work my first attempt... left something to be desired. It was meant to look like the batarangs from the Christian Bale Batman movies, however between correcting mistakes and attempting to even things out. It ended up being too small, wonky, and a totally different shape. 

My second attempt went considerably better. It was the right shape, size, and was less wonky. 

After that my brother and father recommended I make any more out of aluminium because its easier to work with. The two pictures below represent my efforts to create my own design with aluminium. I wanted a batarang that could fold but that could also snap open when flicked, like the batrangs in various other Batman incarnations. My design used something similar to what you would see on a folding knife; when the blade of the knife moves far enough a piece of metal snaps into place below it to lock the knife in place. Same idea here only there is a clip on both parts of the batarang. At first you couldn't really flick it and snap it in place because the pressure from the clips actually kept it closed, but after fiddling with it a while everything became loser and worked better. It wasn't perfect and the clip system looked ugly but I'm still happy with how it came out. 

This is the last batarang I made; like the previous it is made of aluminium and was designed to fold and flick open. However unlike the previous design, this batrang employs a slightly more complex locking system.  In the middle circular part of the batarang there is 2 holes on one wing and 2 pins on the other. When both halves are slid into the proper position the pins fit into the holes and hold the batarang in place. There is also a spring in the middle; one end of the spring is attached to one of the wings, the other end is attached to a moving disk. When the batarang is closed the pins are not in their holes, instead they sit on top of one of the wings. In addition, the inner spring is pulled on slightly, meaning once the pins are lined up with the holes the spring will pull the two halves of the batarang together and lock everything in place. 

The system is much better in function and appearance, however due to a misjudgement of thinking super glue could hold certain parts together it does not function as well as it could. Inside the middle there is a bolt going through the middle of the spring as well as a ring that goes around the outside of the spring. Both of these were in place to keep the pins on the correct path to fall into the holes. However the ring was glued in with super glue and eventually came off. Because of that the flicking action doesn't always work. But when it does work it looks bloody cool. 

All four of these is the cumulative effort of about one month of work. Working on a new batarang each week.