Slingshots?

[Bigscot]

Anyone try casting a round ball for shooting in a slingshot. My son and I enjoy playing with slingshots from time to time. Paint balls are really fun.

Bigscot

[BD]

We used the .44 cal round balls and a wrist rocket for chasing off stuff we didn't want to kill until my daughter got her first BB gun for christmas. Now we use that instead. BD

[Buckshot]

.............When we had our horses I always carried a pistol when we rode. My wife, when she rode with her girlfriends carried a slingshot! A Wrist Rocket to be exact. Having had at one time a Ruger Old Army cap n ball, I had a DC mould for .457" RB's and cast her up a big bunch of'em. For several weeks after she got it she'd practice with it off the deck shooting at 1 gallon plastic plant pots. She got kinda good with it, but I never ever saw her shoot it again.

................Buckshot

[beagle]

Aw man..... We're talking juvembers here now, huh?

The best ammo I've found for them is once fired solid .38 wadcutters ( not hollow base) from the police range back when they were sing .38 Specials and .357 Magnums.

Then for charging targets of opportunity, I've used recoverd 230 grain FMJ .45 ACP bullets. You have to use a magnum charge (rubbers) with these though as that added weight takes something to get them started. But, the remaining kinetic energy is awesome./beagle

[Willbird]

Actually for wrist rockets I always preferred 5/8 glass marbles, they show up nicely in flight to about any range (tracers) and the size gives you a nice grip to hold and fire them.

If there is a glass fiber plant nearby there is usually a nice supply of them to be had.

Bill

[StarMetal]

Ball bearings...plenty of them in the junk yard and they're ready made, no casting.

Joe

[beagle]

Joe, where's all the fun in that?/beagle

[StarMetal]

beagle,

I reckon in breaking the races apart to get the ball bearing out.

Also getting to scout around the junkyard for chevy parts.

Joe

[Jumptrap]

You can't beat a marble.....'marvels' as we called'em. Go to Dollar Tree and get a sackful....probably be 50 in it for a buck or less. They're easy to find except in tall grass and unless you bust one, will always be nice and round, fly perfect and will knock the **** out of whatever they hit. Heaven forbid wasting Pb on slingshot balls! We also used to shoot iron ore pellets we scavenged from the railroad tracks....they were lopsided a hair and flew in sideways arcs, but still a lot of fun to shoot. A marvel will kill any sitting rabbit with a good hit. We called sligshots a 'gumsling'.....because that is what our daddy called them, because that is what his daddy called them....back when inner tubes were made from pure gum rubber and had lots of stretch. We used surgical tubing....get it at the drug store for cheap back then. Dogwood forks makes the bestest, Bend up in a good 'U' and tie it in place and then stick it in the oven for awhile.....then they'll stay that way. Tongue from an old shoe makes a good pouch or pocket whatever you want to call it. I'll never forget the first 'factory' gumsling I ever saw.......it was a Whamo and used big wide, flat black rubber bands. Wasn't worth a hoot compared to what we were making...but the shaped grip was nice.

[Willbird]

The Ole wrist rocket was my constant companion when I was a kid, My Dad and I were walking one night and he spied a rabbita LONG ways off, he hyper elevated the wrist rocket and fired a way......the marble flew...it looked good, it looked DARN good.....it looked BETTER......*wack*....Mr rabbit started a floppity floppity death dance, by the time we paced off the 200 long paces he was still, we did not find a mark on him but he was stone dead.....My dad told me to remember that because nobody would belive him if he told the story, Dad passed in 86 so only I remember it now.

aimed up at 45 degrees I would have to guess a wrist rocket with 5/8 marble is good for 500-600 yards...we used to just barely be able to get them into the chrysler plymouth dealer's back lot from our backyard and that was a far piece off.

I also shot a hole in another kids plastic batting helmet with one, he was coming over a chainlink fence to beat the tar out of me with a wiffle ball bat, he changed his plans real quicklike, and only He, I, and GOD know today that he is still alive because it hit right where I aimed. *sheesh* the crap kids get away with.

Bill

[carpetman]

One night on Johnny Carson there was an older, overall wearing fellow from the Carolinas that was a sling shot expert. He carried his sling shot in his sock.(He was in the upper income bracket for the Carolinas as he wore socks). He was going to do a precision shooting demonstration,so I expected he would have uniform ammo--possibly ball bearings. Not so. He had a plastic jug full of rocks of all shapes. Didn't seem to matter. They had plates,eggs and other breakable stuff set up for his targets. He would tell which target and I don't think he ever got the slingshot higher than his waist--no sighting,just instinct shooting and he didn't miss. He made his own slingshot and I think hickory was his preference. He had made one he gave Johnny. His slingshot was always with him and he said most of the time when he walked home from town,he got his meal--rabbit squirrel or something. We didnt call them slingshots when I was growing up in Texas.

[StarMetal]

Ray,

Maybe he was picking up roadkill hahahahaha.

So what did you Texans called them?

Joe

[Scrounger]

One night on Johnny Carson there was an older, overall wearing fellow from the Carolinas that was a sling shot expert. He carried his sling shot in his sock.(He was in the upper income bracket for the Carolinas as he wore socks). He was going to do a precision shooting demonstration,so I expected he would have uniform ammo--possibly ball bearings. Not so. He had a plastic jug full of rocks of all shapes. Didn't seem to matter. They had plates,eggs and other breakable stuff set up for his targets. He would tell which target and I don't think he ever got the slingshot higher than his waist--no sighting,just instinct shooting and he didn't miss. He made his own slingshot and I think hickory was his preference. He had made one he gave Johnny. His slingshot was always with him and he said most of the time when he walked home from town,he got his meal--rabbit squirrel or something. We didnt call them slingshots when I was growing up in Texas.

There was another name for them in Indiana, too; probably the same name. Joe, the name is now considered politically incorrect...

[mroliver77]

I have a .313 RB mold for the .30s I use in the sling shot. It is fun for a while but I get tired of it quickly. My dad was a railroader for 30 years on the Detroit Toledo & Ironton RR. He used to bring home rabbit a fellow worker would shoot in the yard with a sling shot. There is a glass factory in the area and glass balls were plentifull back then. After that fellow was gone the ole man bought a Benjamin Franklin air rifle in .22 to bring the meat home. It shot .22 lead RB and would penetrate 1-1/2" pine with 12? pumps. It was very accurate too. Somehow I lost it. The ole man "put a toe in my ass" with gusto! Jay

[Willbird]

I assume your Dad must have had to wash his toe quite a bit MrOliver

I shot out the side mirror on my dads car by accident once, he did not get really mad, he just told me "just wait............"

about 5 years later I got my first car.......No lie dad said "NOW where is that slingshot"

He didnt shoot out my mirror....but in his own way he had made me pay hehe

Bill

[carpetman]

Know what a ball bearing mouse trap is called? A tom cat.

[Logan]

carpetman, I beleive that they are also a ball bearing backstop.

[Bigscot]

I liked that one Carpetman.

I have heard slingshots called bean shooters and flips.

When I started this thread I was curious about casting some ammo for a sling shot. Now I'm just enjoying the reading the stories about everyone's experiance using them.

Bigscot

[Willbird]

MAN,this reminded me of the MOST fun I had when I was a kid hehe, we discovered that you can shoot walnets with the green rind intact from a wrist rocket, and launch them 200 yards or more, the fun came in when we started launcing them onto a pole barn style roof on a shelter house at the local park, this racket greatly disturbed the people eating lunch and drinking beer there, they could not for the life of them figuire out where they were coming from.

we also used to fire crab apples at the guys in the outfield at the softball diamond, we did not aim to hit them, we were across a creek in the crabapple tree so they too could not easily detect the source of the missiles.

My next door neighbor this sour old woman had a slate roof, it doesnt take long to figuire a trajectory that lets stones fall on that slate "WACK"

Bill

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Somebody has got to make a crossbow for lead ball, which would overcome their biggest disadvantages, namely the cost of bolts and ease of losing or breaking them. Stonebows (actually most often used with lead or clay pellets) were in use from Shakespearian times at least, until the 19th century.

There are now fibreglass crossbows, at least in Britain, which have two separate limbs to the bow, and fire the bolt through the centre with minimal friction. It would also be possible to use two bows, with a shallow X-shaped string. A single-stage trigger would hzve to be complex and expensive, but it should be a natural for a double-set trigger.