Slingshot design part 2, finishing

After putting away my advanced design tools, I went out to the garage and cut out the template.  I used a jigsaw, and contrary to my warning in my last post, I really didn't have the right blade for the material I was cutting, so it ended up splintering quite a bit.  No worries though, I just got my trusty Dremel tool out with a sanding wheel and touched it up.

I sanded the surface with a piece of 220 grit sand paper, trying to smooth out any of the rough spots.  I don't put a final finish on these yet.  Once I get a final design that I want to replicate, then I think I'll just sand them to 600 grit and then put a clear poly coat on them.  I am not sure I like the bottom of this slingshot that much, but that is a topic for another post on another day.

Using a chainsaw file I cut a notch around the tops of both forks about 1/4 of an inch down.  For some reason I don't have a good picture of this step, but you will see the notches later on in the pictures below.  After getting it sanded and the notches cut out, I was able to shake some saw dust off my clothes and come inside where it was much cooler and finish the process.  You can see the notches in this picture, they are there to help hold the bands in place.

Okay, we now have a slingshot frame, what about bands?  Here is what I use to make my bands and pouches.

 As you can see here, I have some scrap upholstery grade leather, a 6 foot length of Black Thera-Band material, a safety ruler, a circular cutter, and a self-healing cutting mat.

You can buy ready-made band sets online, some that even come with pouches that are already attached.  I find it is cheaper and just as easy to make your own.  I'm by far not an expert at the process, but when attached to my slingshots, they seem capable of flinging my projectiles down range with a satisfactory velocity, so I guess they work.  I like tapered bands, so I usually make them wider at the fork end than at the pouch end.  For this particular sling shot, the bands I made are 1 and 3/4 inches wide at the fork end and 1 1/4 inches wide at the pouch end.  I folded them before attaching them and they have a nice firm pull weight.

After marking the lines I cut them out using the ruler as a straight edge. 

Now the attachment of these bands is not something that I can photograph with any real success.  This is also the part where I tend to get frustrated and grumpy.  After a few deep calming breaths though, we are left with a set of bands that are now attached to our slingshot forks.  There are videos online that you can look at to see the process.  Trust me, they do it a lot faster and better than I ever do.  Notice the way these bands are attached, they are placed so that when the slingshot is drawn, the bands extend up and over the forks.  This produces a natural whipping action that sends the pouch and the projectile up and over the forks, preventing fork hits, but also allowing you to make a slingshot with a much lower fork profile.

Now, we need a pouch.  I just cut mine out of a small scrap of buffalo upholstery leather that I had here at the house.  It is 3 ounce leather, making it about 3/16 of an inch thick.  It is perfect for pouch material, very durable, very flexible and easy to cut.  I just cut out a square of leather, this particular pouch measured 4 inches long and 1 and 1/4 inch wide.  I folded it in half and punched two holes in it using a leather punch.  I also took a pair of scissors and rounded the corners.  This was more of an aesthetic modification than something that is done to make it perform better. 

From here, you just need to attach the bands to the pouch, making sure that they are tight and straight.  Again, I would suggest looking online for a video of pouch attachment.  I wound a bit of paracord around the handle for this last picture.  I didn't have a chance to shoot it, the day ended up being busier than I expected.  I'll take it out in the backyard and see how it shoots hopefully tomorrow.

This has been a long post, filled with a ton of pictures.  But before you click away and look for something else to read, here is a picture taken from my back deck facing down into my back yard.  We have a family of white tailed deer that come through almost every night.  I was finally able to get a nice picture of one of the bucks that came through a week or so ago, notice he still has velvet on his horns.  Truly a beautiful animal.

Thanks for reading, happy carving, or slingshooting, or doing whatever it is that makes you happy.

Slingshot design part 1, template design.

I read a post by Kepis Bushcraft earlier tonight about a slingshot that he had made and it got me thinking about the basics of designing a slingshot.  I had taken a few pictures of my most recent slingshot, designed a week or so ago.  I have spent quite a bit of time over at the Slingshot Forum reading posts and looking at custom designs.  The most important thing that I have learned about slingshot design is that a slingshot is a simple thing.  It's not much more than a forked piece of wood with some elastic bands and a leather pouch.

 

 Please take a look at my advanced tool set for my slingshot design.  It is a piece of white paper, a pencil, and a large plastic cup.

There isn't much more to it than that.  I just used the rim of the cup to draw circles on the paper.  I folded it in half and just worried about designing one side.  After cutting it out I simply unfolded it and had a completed slingshot pattern.

I traced the template onto a piece of 1/2 inch laminated plywood.  I'll cut it out with a coping saw or a jigsaw, following the lines as closely as possible.

One suggestion if you are using a jig saw or other power tool to cut out your design, make sure you have a blade that is specifically designed for cutting plywood.  Using a normal blade results in a lot of splintering.  I'll show you the rest of the process in part two of this post in a few days.

I took a few pictures of some mushrooms that popped up in the front yard.  After doing some research I found that they were not edible, not that I was planning on eating them anyway.  I can identify a grand total of two edible mushroom species.  Anything else I wouldn't risk eating.  Mushrooms are certainly something you do not want to take chances with.

I hope you all have a great weekend and are finding ways to stay cool on these hot summer days.

The wonders of nature

It's late, I've been driving for the last two days, but finally made it home to VA this afternoon.  We spent the last two weeks in Missouri visiting family and friends and although it was a wonderful trip there is something to be said about making that final turn into your driveway and being home. While I was gone, I bought a new camera and had an opportunity to take a few pictures with it.  Here are two of them.  Click on them to see a larger picture.

Columbia, MO.

St Louis, MO

I'm pretty happy with the new camera for sure.  I need to get out and take a lot more pictures.  I have a lot of things on my mind this week, lots of things that I need to post about.  Watch this space!

Slingshot! The Sequel

Well, it took all of about two days to become totally, completely, absolutely obsessed with slingshots.  Maybe it is the fact that I can get the wood to make them from a craft store or the local Home Depot or Lowes.  Maybe it is because holding a slingshot takes you back in time, or at least it takes me back. 

I remember as a kid walking up to the railroad tracks that ran above my home.  I'd get up to the tracks, and get down in my hands and knees and crawl along looking for these small round balls.  I don't know what they even were, I think my brother told me at one point, but they were black and round, and made the perfect slingshot ammo that you could ever hope to find.  I'd come home, knees black from the creosote on the ties, with a pocket full.  I kept them in an old coffee can, and shot them out into the woods past where we parked the cars.  I looked for them the last time I was at the tracks, and I didn't see any.

I thought about that train track ammo as I stood at my work bench and cut my latest slingshot out of a piece of laminated birch plywood.  I also thought about how there should be an easier way of cutting out these shapes.  I'll see what I can come up with for when I make number three! 

Enough of my rambling!  Let there be pictures!

First off, I drew this on a piece of white computer paper, I used the ruler pictured and a child's cup to draw out the circle.  Both arcs are made from the same cup.  I like the way it flows.  I ended up extending the forks higher than in my drawing.  Probably by about 1/2 of an inch.

Here is the cutout and sanded slingshot.  I sanded down the finger supports to make them feel a little more comfortable in the hand.  As an afterthought I drilled a hole in the bottom, thinking that it would be nice to add some sort of lanyard.

Just another random shot, on the deck out back.  What does this picture tell you?  It tells you that my deck needs to be stained ASAP!

Here I am holding it, gangsta style.  This sideways style of shooting is actually pretty popular in the slingshot community.  You are able to use the lower fork to aim and it makes for a more natural wrist and arm position.  Plus it is really cool to tell people that you shoot gangsta. 

Finally the completed slingshot.  I just put a single flat band on it, it makes for a very easy draw weight.  I also made a pouch out of some 3 ounce buffalo leather.  I punched holes into the pouch with a leather punch.

 

I'm going smaller with my third slingshot.  I want something that is much more portable.  More on that later. Happy carving!

Setting my sites on a slingshot - Part 2

The time it takes to have a package shipped to you is directly proportional to how badly you want it.  I've been waiting for my band material for what has seemed like forever, but it finally came today.  A quick refresher on band installation techniques from the Slingshot Forum and away I went!  Well not quite.  I had to cut the bands first.  I need to get a circular cutter this weekend, using normal scissors just isn't the best way to cut latex band.  I used a ruler to lay out my bands on the Thera-band black I was using and cut them out.  They are tapered, 1 inch wide at one end and 3/4 of an inch at the other.  Why?  No clue, but the guys at the forum suggest that a tapered band works better.  Who am I to disagree?  Abyway, after some careful cutting, I had a set of slingshot bands.

Band installation is actually pretty simple, but I know that I still have some practicing to do there.  I fumbled around a good bit before getting them installed.  It is one of those things that after you do it one time, you immediately see ways to do it better.

I cut out a pouch from my 3 ounce buffalo upholstery grade leather and punched two holes into it to attach the bands.  I had to do a quick study on the constrictor knot and I am not 100% sure that I have it down yet, but the pouch seems to be fairly secure.  I'll check that out tomorrow when I shoot it a few times. 

So here you go, my first slingshot.  I hope it shoots okay.  Even if it doesn't I have learned a lot from making it.  Things that you can't understand until you experience them first.

I added a coat of polyurethane to the slingshot frame.  Not sure it will be my finish of choice though.

I used a double thickness of bands on each side.  In retrospect one would have been plenty, and a lot easier to tie.  I saw in a video that one option would be to just make the bands wider and fold them.  I might do that as well the next time.

I have had a ton of fun making this slingshot.  I have found a wonderful group of people over at the Slingshot Forum.  I have learned a lot about frame design, shooting styles, band materials, pouch manufacture, and most importantly perhaps, a good working understanding of how to make a slingshot.  Happy Carving all, and may your bands never break and your shots fly straight.

Setting my sites on a slingshot - Part 1

I had one as a kid, did you?  My first slingshot was homemade from a tree fork, an old piece of leather, and some rubber bands that my Aunt gave me.  She made ceramics and held her molds together with huge rubber bands.  They just screamed slingshot whenever I looked at them.  I can't remember it being very accurate, but I sent more than my fair share of rocks flying out into the woods near my house.  A few weeks later, I upgraded to a Daisy Wrist Rocket and used it until the bands broke.  I didn't have enough money to buy new ones, so my slingshot career was over.  That was probably 25 years ago and I don't think I've even thought about a slingshot in those 25 years, not until a few weeks ago at least. 

There I was, minding my own business, watching a Youtube video about starting a fire by rubbing two sticks together, when over in the right hand column under "suggestions" I saw a video by Joerg Sprave.  A few hours and many many videos later, I was hooked.  I just HAD to make a slingshot.  Joerg has a tutorial video on his channel that includes a PDF template of a generic slingshot called the Phoenix.  It is his own design, but he offers the template to people as long as they are making it for personal use and not to resell.  I printed the template out, traced it on cardboard to make it a bit stronger, and then headed out to my local home improvement store for some 3/4 inch laminated birch plywood.  I traced the design and cut it out using my jigsaw.

At this point, I rounded the edges of the slingshot blank, using a wood rasp and my carving knife.  Laminated plywood isn't really something that you can carve very well, so mainly I used the wood rasp to do the rounding of the blank.  After working for about 30 minutes with the rasp, I ended up with something that looked much more like a slingshot.

I did a bit more rounding, some initial sanding with 100 grit sand paper, and cut two grooves in the end of the forks to hold the bands when they are installed.  It is still pretty rough, but I am ready for band attachment.

I ordered some band material and some upholstery grade leather to make the pouch, they should be here in the next day or so.  I plan on smoothing out some of the rough spots and coating the whole thing with polyurethane to protect it once I am happy with the way the frame looks.  I'll be back in a few days with the finished product and some more ideas about my own design.  Until then, happy carving, and may your bands stay strong and your shots fly straight.

Words from the Barefoot Carver

I asked my brother Jim if he would do a guest post for my blog.  He agreed pretty quickly, which surprised me a bit, but then I remembered that he had just gotten a new knife and was anxious to talk about it.  So here you go, words from the Barefoot Carver himself, my big brother.

Ka-Bar Becker BK2 Campanion Fixed Blade Knife

I consider myself a bushcrafter, a camper, and fairly self sufficient. I just started building a survival "kit". A survival kit (as the experts call it) has a list of things that you need in order to survive if you become lost or stranded and have to wait for help or initiate self rescue.  Any kit must contain at least some basic survival needs.  These are often referred to as the 10 C's.  The first five "C"s are Cutting, Covering, Cordage, Container, Combustion. You need a cutting tool like a knife or an axe.  A container for water, preferably metal so you can boil water in it..  A Combustion device used to make fire. A Covering to keep you warm and dry.  The covering could be a tent, a tarp, a wool blanket, a plastic trash bag, or a combination of several of these things. Cordage can be used for many different purposes in a survival situation.  Dave Canturbury, from the Pathfinder School, explains the kit building process in this video. 

Today I would like to talk about the first and foremost item in any survival kit, a cutting tool.  I like a knife as my cutting tool and here is a review for the knife that I just purchased to go into my kit.

Ka-Bar Becker BK2 Campanion Fixed Blade Knife

Price $58.00 to $100.00
Knife with drop point shape, 20-degree blade
Made of 1095 cro-van steel for strength
Handle made of Grivory material
Blade measures 5.5 inches; knife is 10.5 inches long

This knife is a bear.  The blade is 1/4 inch thick . I used it to split small logs with a mallet. The blade is painted black and the paint scuffs up easy, but doesn't appear to cause any issues. It fits nice in your hand but has a heavy feel. It weighs almost a  pound.  It comes very sharp out of the box and ready to use.

The sheath is the part I hate. Its made of molded Kydex. The knife is made in the USA but the sheath is made in China.  I think that Ka-Bar should have made a leather sheath for this knife and charged a few more bucks for the set.  Once the knife is in the sheath it is very hard to get back out.  It takes two hands, one to hold the sheath and the other to pull very hard. I almost cut my thumb trying to unsheathe it the first time.

Overall, I am happy with me new knife.  I'm not a fan of Kydex though, so I will be replacing the sheath as soon as I can.  If you what a nice heavy knife that will chop cut and take a lot of abuse this knife is for you.

And there you have it folks.  My first ever guest post.  Go check out what else the Barefoot Carver has to say if you have time.  In the meantime, stay safe, get working on your survival kit, and happy carving.