OK, I found it - a Trumark WS-1

...and it's not vintage...

 

They've been produced in the same way for years. I think it was the first wrist braced slingshot (stand to be corrected)...

 

I have a Saunders Wrist Rocket that looks just like that one .

 

I love it - so simple and it shoots really nicely

I paid £5 for it, which I'm happy about - normally American stuff is double the price over here (C'mon Boris and Joe, let's get that trade deal sorted!)

Just watched Joerg's tour of the Trumark Factory video on youtube and it shows one of these being made - made me smile.

 

In the middle of the 50s, the Wrist-Rocket Company from Columbus, Nebraska started to produce the Wrist-Rocket. It was the first slingshot with a wristbrace and the surgical tubing with the "chinese handcuff" attachment on the fork ends, like almost all recent manufacturers employ because it is so easy and cost-efficient. The Wrist-Rocket was a success, and it is still available today: It's the Trumark Ws-1! No other slingshot could exist so long, bare the relatively unknown German "Hy-Power".

The inventor of the slingshot, Howard Ellenburg, first sold the slingshot as "Howard's Wrist Locker Slngshot". Later on, Mr. Ellenburg entered into an exclusive distributorship agreement with Saunders, and the slinghsot was sold as "Saunders Wrist Rocket". In 1971, Saunders started to make their own slingshots and from this time on, it was sold as the Trumark Wr-1.

If you want to know more about Trumark's history, visit their

 

legend has it that trumark & saunders came to an understanding. that trumark's version was east of the mississippi and saunder's version was west of the mississippi

 

Interesting stuff, I love it that a design can be so right from the off that it just keeps going and going.

 

My first slingshot was a Trumark FS-1 (folding brace, hollow handle to store ammo) - about 50 years ago. In addition to the WS-1 and FS-1, Trumark also manufactured the FSX-FO (fiber optics and rotating fork tips), FSX-200 (fiber optics, rotating fork tips and stabilizer), the S9 (no wrist brace) the Bat (an S9 mounted in a plastic frame w/ a single stabilizer and a mag light holder).

The Trumark plant that Jorg toured was in Boulder, CO. It closed a couple of years ago. Trumark's web site stayed active for some time.

Saunders originated the term "wrist-rocket." There was a series of trials and appeals between Saunders and Trumark over the use of the term. Eventually a judge ruled that Saunders had a common-law registration and entitled to use the term in those states "extending from Ohio and West Virginia across the northern Midwest and then from the Great Plains to the Pacific." Ellenburg, who had actually registered the term, was entitled to use it everywhere else.

 

I knew I had this link somewhere

http://melchiormenzel.de/

 

file:///F:/Slingshots%20of%20the%20world.html

sorry

 

I knew I had this link somewhere

http://melchiormenzel.de/

Try this link for Trumark slingshots:

http://slingshot-shooting.de/commercial/trumark/trumark.html

Here is a database of vintage slingshots

http://slingshot-shooting.de/vintage/database/vintage.html

 

Thank you.