Randy Griffin - very nice work!  Sorry to hear about your situation.  Did you ever think of selling them?  Would that be helpful to you or is it just something you simply enjoy to pass time?  They are very nice looking and appear to be very well made.

Nice Randy. You just reminded me of the old slingshot I found in my grandfathers things. Not sure if it was his or my great grandfathers lol. Anyway it hangs in my shop with some other old stuff. Haven't seen anyone make them out of wood. We got ours from the hardware stores when we were kids. We got the metal kind with the wrist rests. 

I'll have to look up how to make the bungees some time and put my grandfathers back to working condition. 

"Wrist Rocket" was a common commercial one with the wrist brace and used rubber surgical tubing from the pharmacy for the power bands.

Old forked stick type was called a "bean flip" where I was from.

Thanks Kexel. I just make them because I enjoy them. I still have quite a few to make for more kids. My payment is to see the smiles on their faces.

Daswulf, Message me a pic and some dimensions of it and your address and I can send you some bands. As long as it doesn't use tubes that is. All mine shoot flat bands and most are forks from trees that fell during the storms last year.

20 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

Most of Theophilus' techniques I've tried have worked.  Some I have avoided due to changes in longevity expectations and then there is the one on how to soften quartz for carving... 

  Do you have a laymans link to Theophilus and in particular the quartz softening?  I truly tried searching but got lost in the maelstrom of it.

Why yes of course: you go into my study and in the bookcase dedicated to smithing and historical metallurgy it's a blue book between "Pirotechnica" and "Sources for the History of the Science of Steel, 1532-1786"

I have the Dover edition...IIRC the section doesn't mention "quartz" but describes carving of "crystal" which back then was quarts crystal.  Supposedly removing the heart of a rooster and replacing it with the crystal and letting it sit was supposed to make it soft and easily carveable.  Weird in that the rest of of the book has tried and true methods and nothing like this "mumbo jumbo method".  There is some discussion about how it got into the book in the first place.

  I did not know it was from a book.  Perhaps that's why I got nowhere with my "searching".  I realize there are many things that are not part of the all mighty internet, a lot of it I have no access to.  Such as your collection.  I pass on the rooster heart method.    Just asking.

The text in both Latin and English is available HERE.

A bean flip eh? Haha I don't know what ever happened to mine but it used the surgical tube sling. They still make the style I had today. Crossman might make them now iirc. 

Randy I'll try to get pictures and dimensions tonight. Pretty sure it would take the flat band type not a tube type.  It was made from a fork branch as well. Looks very similar to the ones lower right in your picture. 

Nice slingshots. Ours growing up were just a forked stick, they would be fancy if we took the bark off the stick. We used to cut pieces of inner tube for the bands. 

  Maybe there is no crevice the web hasn't wound it's tendrils into.    Thank you.

14 minutes ago, JHCC said:

The text in both Latin and English is available HERE.

 

Billy Bones, just a question about using inner tubes on slingshots. Do you know the difference between red striped tubes and blue stripe tubes? When I was a kid red stripe tubes were getting scarce around the farm but with the natural rubber in the red stripe tubes, they would shoot faster and further. Bill D. 

Billybones, inner tubes were good back in the day. They're not the same material now. I order my supplies from a company that does nothing but slingshots.

2 minutes ago, lazyassforge said:

Billy Bones, just a question about using inner tubes on slingshots. Do you know the difference between red striped tubes and blue stripe tubes?

I don't know the answer but just a guess would be thickness. For certain weight ammo, thinner will sometimes be faster than thicker.

Theophilus' "On Divers Arts" is one of the great sources for information on studio crafts from that time period, (1120 CE). This is very much a "from the ground up" description: How to build the Bellows you use in the furnace you build to melt the bronze for casting the bells whose molds you have made...

The translation from Latin to English by Cyril Stanley Smith is quite readable and CSS was renowned for his work on historical Metallurgy.  (Usually you get translations by people who know Latin but not Metalworking and so making a sad hash of things.)

This is also the source of "quenching in the urine of a small redheaded boy or a goat fed ferns for 3 days"

Just remember that medieval descriptions are known for leaving out the stuff that *everybody* already knows is in it!

  Thank you Thomas.  It seems I have developed a "ground up" interest in the origins of metal and that is why I asked.  Your comment just piqued my curiosity.

47 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said:

Just remember that medieval descriptions are known for leaving out the stuff that *everybody* already knows is in it!

  Is this where the good stuff is?  

Made another forging hammer today. 2lb. This time its for my own use and not for sale so I dont need to go through the bother of polishing!

Well my experience was: I was trying one of Theophilus' methods of polishing bone with sifted wood ashes and a strip of woolen cloth. I started to shoeshine the bone and got a nasty gummy mess. So I thought a bit and knowing that A: Theophilus' methods usually work and B: Medieval recipes often leave out some common ingredient(s); I thought what might be  common and available---so I spit on it and BOOM! suddenly I had a slightly abrasive slurry with built in NaOH to help degrease the bone.  I shoeshined it and got a finish I had people claiming I had used a modern buffer on to get that shine! 

7 hours ago, Will-I-am said:

I build 20ft diameter earthship cabin at 4000ft

How many tires does it take to reach 4,000'?

My parents built a house at 6,200' in the Sierras and one of my Mother's favorite snappy comebacks when someone would point out there was snow at say 4,000' was, "You mean the snow is 2,000' deep at the house?" 

I learned to love straight lines from Mother. I just got a mental image of a 20' diameter earthship 4,000' tall. 

Frosty The Lucky.

That’s a good one frosty.  I pounded too many tires to count for that earthship cabin. I also dig out the 10’ deep hole with a shovel and mattock.  That was when my back was younger; I still thrashed my back on a few pounding sessions.  It took an entire summer to build.  I drew the plans myself and presented it to building department.  Each tire holds over 300 lbs of sledge hammer rammed earth. It’s subterranean and all you see is metal solo roof.  Takes 45 minutes to reach cabin from my monolithic dome home in flat.  When I got the final ok from the grizzled old timer building inspector he commented “ you’ve come a long way boy”.  

i had no clue about the inner tube stripes. I just new that the best ones were off of  a 10 speed bike. I also did not know that the material had changed. Guess that shows my age...again.

14 hours ago, lazyassforge said:

just a question about using inner tubes on slingshots.

I've been using surgical tubing for years. I used to hunt small game with them regularly. 

Pnut

pnut, do you still shoot? I found that I enjoy the target practice. Some days I shoot thousands of shots. I'm going to order some tubing in the future and try it.

Well, that’s one way to do a ball bearing test. 

5 minutes ago, JHCC said:

Well, that’s one way to do a ball bearing test. 

You can't imagine the rebound I get with a 3/8" ball bearing. 

1970's Wham-O Powermaster (wrist rocket), when I was a destructive little monster, I carried it everywhere with me. Ball or roller bearings, or lead sinkers, were my favorite ammo. At the time I was pretty good with it. The surgical tubing seemed to have more stretch and power than the replacement stuff I can get at wally world now.

Edited February 19, 20215 yr by rustyanchor
Corrected name