DIY Grabber Claw

Materials you’ll need

• Craft sticks with holes
• Craft sticks
• Metal brads
• Strong tape or hot glue
• Coloring utensils
• Scissors
• Pencil

Step-by-step tutorial

Step 1: Make 4 stacks of 2 sticks each, and place a metal brad through the center hole of each stack to connect them.

Tip! If you don’t have craft sticks handy or just want to customize this project, you can create your own links out of cardboard. Just cut a bunch of cardboard rectangles and then use a holepunch to create the holes for the brads.

Step 2: Make an X by pushing the sticks apart. Place all the Xs in a line.

Step 3: Connect the ends of each X to the next using brads. Secure all the brads by opening them.

Step 4: Mark 2 inches from the end of 2 plain craft sticks and cut, making 6 pieces total. Keep the 4 curved ends.

Step 5: Tape or glue the curved stick ends to one end of your line of Xs.

Step 6: Flip over and repeat.

Step 7: To use, squeeze and pull your grabber on the open end. When extended, the craft stick ends should touch. What can you pick up?

Learn more

This project is a fun way to play with an important concept in mechanical engineering: linkages. In engineering, a linkage mechanism is a series of moving parts that are connected together with joints. Here, we’re using the craft sticks as the moving parts (also called links), and we’re using brads for the joints.

Engineers can use linkages to turn one kind of motion into another kind of motion. The criss-cross design of our grabber turns the sideways motion of the handles into a forward motion for the grabber claw.