Slingshots?

[rking22]

Flipping out slingshots was the one I was thinking about, Simpleshot no longer sells them but they have a farcebook page. Don’t know if they still sell, I don’t have Facebook account.

[W.R.Buchanan]

Biggin: if you are talking a Sling like David used to slay Goliath then you are looking at literally years of practice to get a projectile to go where you want it to. I have never been able to get anything to even go in the general direction desired.

Keep in mind that 3,000 years ago if you were a goat herder you had alot of free time on your hands. So guys like David who were essentially stranded with the herd for weeks at a time had plenty of free time to figure out the sling. Not to mention any meat they might get to eat had to come from their hunting with said sling.

The one advantage of the sling was its ability to throw big rocks. Goliath got drilled with at least a golf ball sized rock at less than 25 yards, and by the time the Goliath thing happened, David probably had 15-20 years of practice under his belt. A 4 foot long sling could probably generate 200-300+ fps with a 1 lb rock, so getting hit by one would seriously ruin your day. Getting hit in the forehead with said Rock,,, would seriously end you! Case in point.

Were lucky to have really neat latex rubbers to work with now, and as such it makes getting good with a slingshot relatively quick and easy. "Simple Shot" also produces a bunch of training videos that you can watch to help you get there faster. Once you can hit the end of a beer can 10 times in a row at 10 yards you are good to go. I'm at 8/10 right now and working to close up my last two.

Randy

[Biggin]

Biggin: if you are talking a Sling like David used to slay Goliath then you are looking at literally years of practice to get a projectile to go where you want it to. I have never been able to get anything to even go in the general direction desired.

Keep in mind that 3,000 years ago if you were a goat herder you had alot of free time on your hands. So guys like David who were essentially stranded with the herd for weeks at a time had plenty of free time to figure out the sling. Not to mention any meat they might get to eat had to come from their hunting with said sling.

The one advantage of the sling was its ability to throw big rocks. Goliath got drilled with at least a golf ball sized rock at less than 25 yards, and by the time the Goliath thing happened, David probably had 15-20 years of practice under his belt. A 4 foot long sling could probably generate 200-300+ fps with a 1 lb rock, so getting hit by one would seriously ruin your day. Getting hit in the forehead with said Rock,,, would seriously end you! Case in point.

Were lucky to have really neat latex rubbers to work with now, and as such it makes getting good with a slingshot relatively quick and easy. "Simple Shot" also produces a bunch of training videos that you can watch to help you get there faster. Once you can hit the end of a beer can 10 times in a row at 10 yards you are good to go. I'm at 8/10 right now and working to close up my last two.

Randy

Yessir that's what I was trying to accomplish. The local farm store sells the Daisy sling shots in several different flavors I just haven't been there when money and thinking about it has crossed paths. I too used sling shots as a young child. It's on my gita round to it list.

[rking22]

Flipping out slingshots was the one I was thinking about, Simpleshot no longer sells them but they have a farcebook page. Don’t know if they still sell, I don’t have Facebook account.

[W.R.Buchanan]

Rking22: what I got appears to be an evolution of what you posted.. It is rigged with the bands over the top or you can rig it with the bands around the sides as the band clamps work both ways. It really has some good features and is very comfortable to hold and draw.

I'd think someone who can work wood could easily make one of those as they are just not that hard. If you want to make a bunch you simply make a plastic template, double stick tape it to the wood you want to use, and cut them out on a Router Table.

Randy

[Nueces]

Man, what a neat thread. As a lad in the outskirts of Washington, DC, I made a walnut slingshot based on the Whammo design. Surgical rubber bands, patch from a Lee Jeans label, windage adjustable sight (!!) and a butt trap holding quarter inch ball bearings. Long range shots were taken with round lead balls from a Dixie Gun Works 58 caliber mould.

The sight worked. As a test, I attempted a shot at a tall, straight pine trunk, at maybe 80 yards. That lead ball made a loud thwack upon impact. I was the best armed kid in DC Northwest.

[Ramguy]

I remember... as a teenager growing up in northern Indiana, I helped Dad around the farm after school. I ran an open cab Oliver 1800 and pulled a 5 bottom plow with a packer on the very back. I wasn't much into farming back then, I would rather be shooting stuff with my BB guns or .22 when I had money for shells. I noticed one time while running the plow outfit that I was plowing through some material that looked a lot like clay. Well, being a young and dumb teenager, on my next pass, I got out of the tractor seat, climbed out onto the plow, walked the beam and the packer tongue and jumped off, yes, the tractor was moving. I collected some big clods of this clay and then retraced my steps back onto the packer, up the tongue, down the beam and back into the tractor seat. Then I started rolling this clay into balls and laid these balls up against the engine and "fired" them. They got pretty hard and since I had my slingshot in my pocket, plowing kinda became fun for me. I would shoot mostly grackles or starlings, sometimes mice, all pretty challenging from a moving tractor. I would collect some of my bounty and take it back to the farm and throw it to our barn cats who much appreciated the meal.
Dad never liked the tractor stopping, so that was why i did the stupid thing of climbing across the moving equipment.... Lord must have been watching over me a lot back then seeing as how I left the farm with all my appendages intact.
I really like the idea here of using lead balls for ammo, I rarely used anything other than my clay balls or rocks. Marbles were too valuable a commodity, since we played for keepsies as kids.
Later in life when I was working as a LEO, we had a company in our town that had a large punch press and they punched out different sized holes in metal bars. There were always piles of these knockouts laying around their trash bin and we started using the knockouts as ammo in our slingshots which we carried in our briefcases. Our favorite targets were the city pigeons that made such a mess in their roosting areas. This was all back in the day when "community service" meant a lot of different things. Glad cell phones and cameras weren't around back then or we probably wouldn't be collecting our pensions today.... I am sure someone would have complained about our community service. Thanks for bringing back these great memories Mr. Buchanan.

[besk]

A homemade slingshot was my weapon of choice back in my youth and I was pretty good at it.
Last year my son-in-law was shooting a wrist rocket at a pie plate (and missing) at a good 25 yards. He asked if I would like
to try. One shot and I centered the pie plate. He was impressed.

He wanted me to shoot more but I demurred. Didn't tell him but didn't want to push my luck plus had pulled a muscle in my 76 year old shoulder in the process.

[roadie]

I find slingshots very interesting, played with them as a kid, but never really kept it up.

What is the best, most accurate way to hold a slingshot? Without taking a chunk out of your hand while shooting it? I was tagged a couple of times, never fun.

[trebor44]

Started with a flat band Whamo and on to Wrist Rockets. It is indeed a weapon. Practice makes it awesome! I prefer .32 caliber round balls store in a pellet can or pill bottle. Lots of options for 'ammo' and as long as there are 'rocks' you won't have to worry about panic buying!

[Jedman]

I too am a former sling shootist. Still own a couple that need new bands, can't get rid of stuff like that. One shot that stays sharp in my memory is knocking a pidgeon out of the air with a marble and leading it just like wing shooting and watching the marble in flight and the puff of feathers and seeing the dead bird tumbling to the ground.
May need to start playing with one again.

Jedman

[Jedman]

I too am a former sling shootist. Still own a couple that need new bands, can't get rid of stuff like that. One shot that stays sharp in my memory is knocking a pidgeon out of the air with a marble and leading it just like wing shooting and watching the marble in flight and the puff of feathers and seeing the dead bird tumbling to the ground.
May need to start playing with one again.

Jedman. SORRY FOR THE DOUBLE POST ? With this iPad you don't know why things just happen ?

[W.R.Buchanan]

When I started, the instructions that came with the Whamo Slingshot said to hold the thing with your thumb and fore finger straddling the yoke, your other 3 fingers wrapped around the handle. Then when you'd draw it and hold it at a 45 degree angle aiming over the corner of the top leg.. I carried this over to the Wrist Rockets and my Folding Wrist Rocket,, called a "Pocket Rocket" became my primary slingshot from age 25 until recently.

With this new one I am holding the yoke at 90 degrees and aiming over the top of the upper leg. This allows me to make sure the bands are equal length before firing. This is critical to accuracy because the longer leg will have more force and throw the shot the opposite direction, but in this case that becomes an elevation error which is more desirable than a windage error .

Like Archery, it is necessary to keep your upper body strength up with frequent practice. I find that after laying off for a few months it became hard for me to hold the Wrist Rocket at full draw with surgical tubing bands. When I was younger the material I used yielded a 35 lb draw weight. I'm lucky to do 20 lb. now. I switched to the premade bands that are available at Big 5 or Walmart. They come in yellow and black with the black being the strongest. Biggest problem is the limited band life due to UV destruction of the bands. I can get about 6 months out of a set unless you keep them in the dark..

This new flat band material is cut so the bands are tapered from widest at the yoke down to about 3/8" wide at the pouch. Theraband is the material of choice if you make them at home. Kind of challenging to get a strait cut in the stuff as it likes to move around but with the right tools it is doable. Still it is much easier to just buy the band sets premade from Simple Shot and they even come in UV protected bags so they don't go off before you use them. The advantage of this new bands is that they accelerate the payload much faster that surgical tubing does. Mine will do 250 fps with a 3/8" steel ball which is big enough to take down anything up to a squirrel or a dove. I've been carrying 5ea. 1/2" balls with me during my outings right now simply because a prospective target would be a person and I want to make as big an impression as possible with the first shot. Believe me, You never know what you will run into at the Walmart in Oxnard CA, and ethnicity does play a role in most altercations we've seen. We've had to leave that store twice due to scuffles that took place involving others to avoid the chaos before the cops got there. The Parking Lot can be hazardous day or night with Bums Panhandling and other no goods approaching you looking for handouts, you need your head on a swivel every time you go.

Another story: When I was 12 my family went to Las Vegas for a vacation. This was 1962 when Vegas was still cool. At Circus Circus me and my step Bro weren't allowed in the Casino proper so we had to hang out in the Carnival Midway where there were all kinds of games like darts, shooting galleries, coin tosses etc.

Well one of the games was shooting Beer Bottles with Whamo Slingshots with marbles at 10-15 feet. I could do this with my eyes closed! and it really wasn't even a challenge.

After I cleaned the place out and every little girl in the Midway had a Giant Pink Panda Bear, I was banned from the game and had to sit on a bench until my parents came out of the casino. I won 6, 3 foot tall Teddy Bears that day with a total cost to me of $1.50. (6 tries.) and if you hit all three shots they gave you 3 more and after 9 consecutive hits you got your choice of prizes. I didn't miss one shot that day and the next day they remembered me and wouldn't let me play! I even offered to stand another 20 feet behind the line and they still said no! It was fun to mess with them and about every hour or so I'd go back to see if there was a different guy there.

I have more tales of the slingshot.

Randy

[rockrat]

Used to make my own slingshots out of whatever wood Grandad had. Even made one in shop class. Had one break one time, one of the arms broke off when I was at full draw. Thought I had lost a few teeth when it hit me in the cheek. Only blood, but man, that thing hurt!!
Even had a pocket slingshot made of 3 rubber bands per side and a small piece of leather from an old wallet. got pretty good shooting BB's with that thing. Would loop one rubber band over the thumb and one over the index finger. Was a learning experience as I hit the web of skin between the two finger a few times with a BB. That really hurt!! But I learned quickly. Could hit a can at 10 paces easily.

[roadie]

I spent most of last night watching videos on shooting slingshots, and there are some guys who really know their stuff. Consistently hitting small targets from 25 yards.

It seems the current way of accurately shooting is holding it sideways and sighting down the band while using the top of the post for elevation. I can see an anchor point being needed for windage, same as archery.

[Nueces]

Now, I'm reminded of the 'berry poppers' I used to make from bent up coat hanger wire (used to be stouter material) and rubber bands. Some sort of shrub offered hard little berries in the Spring, so ammo grew on trees! Could safely shoot buddies with one and properly engage birds and bumble bees.

Now that I think back on it, it was nice to always have a projectile weapon on me that was silent and could be used nearly anywhere.

[W.R.Buchanan]

Roadie: Slingshots have alot in common with Conventional Archery. The anchor points are virtually identical, as are methods of sighting.

The biggest variable I can find is having the yoke perpendicular to the bands when at full draw. One of the strengths of the Wrist Rocket design, is the fact that it captures your forearm and holds the relationship between the yoke of the slingshot and the bands at full draw. This minimizes the deflection caused by the yoke being canted one way or the other in relation to the bands, and thus throwing the shot away from the longer band.

With an Unsupported Slingshot it is up to you to insure that the bands are at an equal draw length before you loose. This is where the practice comes in, as it is strictly muscle memory to be able to hold the proper alignment each time, when you're not thinking about it.

It's kind of like Golf. Small variances make big differences.

Randy

[W.R.Buchanan]

Now that I think back on it, it was nice to always have a projectile weapon on me that was silent and could be used nearly anywhere.

My thinking also, hence my current carry option.

Randy

[Nueces]

Even earlier, say 5 years old, in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, the neighborhood gang was armed with crossbow sorts of slingshots. My favorite was about a two foot long piece of 4x4, with a pair of large nails up front to anchor the bands, and a common wood clothes pin nailed to the 'butt', with the jaws extending above the top surface with the nails at the other end. A few bits of gravel could be held in the patch and pinched off with the clothes pin. Squeezing the clothes pin handles would release the charge, usually toward a wasp nest high in a nearby date palm. Escape was by unshod feet pounding the pavement.

[Martin Luber]

Gotta come back to this thread and read it all! Had one as a kid, had to beg my parents for it, still have it. We also cut out leather pocketbooks to make a real sling to throw 5# rocks into the fieldstone piles. Smaller slings for gravel. Golf balls and rope to make bolos. Declined on a real one while in Argentina. Wouldn't end well for someone. gawd we were dangerous as kids! No one was ever hurt tho