Friday, August 13, 2010

One Good Thing About Illinois

Chief AJ lives there!

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....

8 comments:

Overload in Colorado said...

Would marbles make good ammo?

Roberta X said...

I'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!

I 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.

og said...

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.

Sarah said...

Overload, 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).

Roberta X said...

I 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.

...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.

Stranger said...

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.

Eye 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

Tam said...

Chief AJ's recommended technique seems a lot closer to sighted fire than it does to point-shooting. ;)

Roberta X said...

IMO, it is sighted fire -- you hold the Y-shape sideways, bracketing the target, and pull the band back to your eye.

It 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.