He has got the inside track on shooting a slingshot and his design is The Ritz. I picked up some ammo for mine today and within 3 shots, I was puttin' 'em on target. The slingshot will bury a lead ball in a styrofoam archery target at 6-7 yards, too!
I got a few lead muzzle-loader balls, some glass slingshot ammo and a few paintballs. ...Might be time to repaint the fence....
Would marbles make good ammo?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure. Crosman's "glass ammo" is marble-like, but I think you'd want some kind of trap-type target backing even for it. Eye protection is a must -- my first shot was a clean miss; bounced off a 4x4 and cam zingin' past my head to hit the house and that was a lead ball; glass might've shattered!
ReplyDeleteI suspect a cardboard box with the flaps turned in at 45-degrees or so and paper targets stretched across the front would work (I'm going to try it today). You'd still want a backing with some oomph, they'll go right through one layer of corrugated cardboard.
I used to save bearings when I changed them. 6mm Abec 7 bearings rock in a wrist rocket; 8mm ceramic high speed bearings are AMAZING. Light, flat trajectory, hit like a hammer, won't shatter like glass.
ReplyDeleteOverload, marbles make good ammo, yes. Mom started my sibs and me off with Crossman slingshots (the ones with the wrist support) when we were fairly young; she gave us big bags of marbles, sans shooters (they're kind of large, IMO).
ReplyDeleteI remember trying a wrist rocket when I was in junior high. Hans [last name forgotten] lived in the next addition over and thought it would be fun to let me try -- he bet I couldn't draw it, I knew I could 'cos we had just completed an archery segment in Phys. Ed. and (thanks to the very same advice I was to receive later about racking a 1911, thank you, Dad!), I could draw a pretty heavy bow for a 14-year-old.
ReplyDelete...I could draw his fancy slingshot, too; what I couldn't do was hit the broad side of a barn with it. My few shots were so scary wild that he hastily ended trying to show me how, for fear I'd break a window or worse and land him in a pack of trouble.
Doin' better with the new one. So far, anyway.
OK, now do the same thing with a BB pistole, airsoft peashooter, or whatever. It takes about as long to learn to hit a reasonably sized target with one of those, snapshooting, as it does to hit the same target with a forked stick catapult. As it was known and loved by the Depression generation.
ReplyDeleteEye protection is necessary - and if the backing will not trap the projectile, an umpires padding helps.
And IF the *&* hosting co will ever get my website back up I will post full instructions with pix.
But if you can point, you can hit your target.
Stranger
Chief AJ's recommended technique seems a lot closer to sighted fire than it does to point-shooting. ;)
ReplyDeleteIMO, it is sighted fire -- you hold the Y-shape sideways, bracketing the target, and pull the band back to your eye.
ReplyDeleteIt is, however, very "instinctive" sighting; anyone who does as much of it as he does is snappin' shots as quickly as he can load, draw and look.