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I have shot a lot of darts, Snipersling are the best by a mile but I also made my own copies of Snipersling and a couple of other designs.
Safety is a problem with darts. I luckily never had a RTS or heaven forbid a hand strike, but I changed from the leather and metal plate gloves, through the Kevlar gloves and I tried the Snipersling Dragonscale glove (which is worth buying as an object of desire, whether you shoot darts or not) - but I was never really happy.
I recently had an incident which has made me re-asses my attitude to personal safety and hence I concluded that I could no longer shoot darts - sending something pointy and fast between your finger and thumb now seems insanely dangerous to me.
But, damn if they weren't fun - I needed to recapture that. I shoot a 50lb recurve bow and I'd always eschewed the idea of shooting arrows from my slingshot, but getting out of darts gave me the impetus to look again.
My slingshot is a converted Leatherman Rebar, which has several advantages - it's fork width is adjustable so I can alter my impact point without altering my anchor, it is also very strong so it can take heavy bands and I'd previously made a wrist brace for it to help me out with those heavy bands.
How to convert the frame for arrows? I had some help. Herr Sprave has a video where he shows a heavy hitting slingbow he made that utilises a whisker biscuit arrow rest placed behind the frame because the bands want to follow the arrow and would smash the whisker biscuit if it was at the front. So I knew I couldn't just 3D print an arrow rest because it wouldn't survive. Creek Stewart's excellent little pocket field guide shows a simple arrow rest made from a piece of thick leather, which of course is flexible.
For heavy bands I'd previously designed and printed out plastic grips which gave a more comfortable hold
Form all of this I had the idea to modify the lower comfort grip to have a block with two holes (which I threaded to M5), to which I could attach an arrow rest cut from 4mm cow hide. The leather is strong enough to support the arrow, but flexible enough to not get damaged by the bands flying at it and it should last a long time . It's easy to replace and I made a cardboard template so I can cut more whenever I need them.
what about the bands? I only use Theraband Gold, I thought I wanted some decent pull so I cut 50-40 x 180mm bands. The knock is a short length of paracord melted and flared at the ends and the D loop is a section of 2mm nylon "silky string", knotted over, cut and melted to seal the knots. The arrow knocks very positively between the D loop knots. The bands pull out at 30lbs at 30".
I've ordered an archery release aid to use with the D loop, the bands are too heavy to pull fully without one.
How does it shoot? Fantastically well I'm happy to say!
I'm using one of my Recurve arrows which at 600gn are too heavy for this rig, but enable me to get up and running.
I've ordered some of the Pocket Shot 3 piece takedown arrows, they don't state the weight but I'm hoping they'll be more at the 400gn point which would be about perfect.
When the arrows and the release aid arrive I'll chrono everything and report back.
Safety wise it should be completely safe (for me), the pointy bit of the arrow starts in front of my hand and just gets further away when the shot is loosed.
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Safety is a problem with darts. I luckily never had a RTS or heaven forbid a hand strike, but I changed from the leather and metal plate gloves, through the Kevlar gloves and I tried the Snipersling Dragonscale glove (which is worth buying as an object of desire, whether you shoot darts or not) - but I was never really happy.
I recently had an incident which has made me re-asses my attitude to personal safety and hence I concluded that I could no longer shoot darts - sending something pointy and fast between your finger and thumb now seems insanely dangerous to me.
But, damn if they weren't fun - I needed to recapture that. I shoot a 50lb recurve bow and I'd always eschewed the idea of shooting arrows from my slingshot, but getting out of darts gave me the impetus to look again.
My slingshot is a converted Leatherman Rebar, which has several advantages - it's fork width is adjustable so I can alter my impact point without altering my anchor, it is also very strong so it can take heavy bands and I'd previously made a wrist brace for it to help me out with those heavy bands.
How to convert the frame for arrows? I had some help. Herr Sprave has a video where he shows a heavy hitting slingbow he made that utilises a whisker biscuit arrow rest placed behind the frame because the bands want to follow the arrow and would smash the whisker biscuit if it was at the front. So I knew I couldn't just 3D print an arrow rest because it wouldn't survive. Creek Stewart's excellent little pocket field guide shows a simple arrow rest made from a piece of thick leather, which of course is flexible.
For heavy bands I'd previously designed and printed out plastic grips which gave a more comfortable hold
Form all of this I had the idea to modify the lower comfort grip to have a block with two holes (which I threaded to M5), to which I could attach an arrow rest cut from 4mm cow hide. The leather is strong enough to support the arrow, but flexible enough to not get damaged by the bands flying at it and it should last a long time . It's easy to replace and I made a cardboard template so I can cut more whenever I need them.
what about the bands? I only use Theraband Gold, I thought I wanted some decent pull so I cut 50-40 x 180mm bands. The knock is a short length of paracord melted and flared at the ends and the D loop is a section of 2mm nylon "silky string", knotted over, cut and melted to seal the knots. The arrow knocks very positively between the D loop knots. The bands pull out at 30lbs at 30".
I've ordered an archery release aid to use with the D loop, the bands are too heavy to pull fully without one.
How does it shoot? Fantastically well I'm happy to say!
I'm using one of my Recurve arrows which at 600gn are too heavy for this rig, but enable me to get up and running.
I've ordered some of the Pocket Shot 3 piece takedown arrows, they don't state the weight but I'm hoping they'll be more at the 400gn point which would be about perfect.
When the arrows and the release aid arrive I'll chrono everything and report back.
Safety wise it should be completely safe (for me), the pointy bit of the arrow starts in front of my hand and just gets further away when the shot is loosed.
