From a tiny, steel Stirling to a dry-ice-powered turboprop, YouTuber Al Zh has long had a knack for miniature modeling. But his latest creation – a working V6 engine made of of paper – is a thing of beauty. Purr baby, purr.

Using a simple, fan-like mechanism to feed compressed air to the cylinders, the model is powered by nothing more than a balloon and some breath. It took about two weeks to put together, and it’s not hard to see why. “When I have an inspiration, I can spend all my free time on modeling,” says Zh. The crankshaft itself is made of a paper axis and cardboard knees, all folded by hand, and bounded together with superglue.

The response from viewers can be summarized by Reddit user Kittendorf’s comment: “Please, for the love of all things you hold sacred, we beg of you, share the plans with us.” But despite the outcry, our master modeler is keeping things under wraps for now. He has, however, uploaded a GIF illustrating the air distribution mechanism for all to see:

“Pattern creation takes quite a lot of time,” he explains. “And unfortunately I don’t have it right now. I can’t say this was easy to make, but as you can see it is possible. You need quite a lot of patience, and be prepared to rebuild it from scratch.”

If you want to take a stab at something a bit easier, you can find instructions for one of ZH’s simpler engines here. Just please, sweet mother of Darwin, watch out for the hellspawn that are paper cuts.

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IMAGES: Al Zh/YouTube