Joined
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90 Posts
Hi, I'm new around here. I'm from NYS, and have been a shooter of numerous things as far back as I can remember.
I had been going a little stir crazy since my wife and I have been living like hermits since last March.
With the cost of ammo so high we haven't been to the range in forever, and It's illegal for me to even shoot my bow in my fully enclosed yard where my wife and I live.
So in early February I decided to give slingshots a try and found this forum.
I bought a torque and a scout from simpleshot, and while they are fine, I wanted to build my own as I like to DIY. Growing up my dad had a saying,"in this world you can either be wealthy or handy, and we ain't wealthy." So, it was kind of ingrained in my from childhood.
I tried a few designs in cheap plywood just to get the feel of it, and then picked up a sheet of 1/2 black HDPE. You can see my first efforts based on templates from this forum in the attached pics. Nothing exciting, but they worked well.
I've been known to make a knife or two, and I had a piece of carbon fiber laying around, so I took a swing at a PFS (pic attached) that I set up butterfly. Again, nothing exciting, but it works.
Then I came across Harry's design for the Pinky Knuckle, and decided to give that a little more effort. While I think I like big forks, I wanted to try it a bit smaller, so I shrunk it down to 95%. Not sure if it was the shrink or my baseball mitt hands, but it turned into a ring finger knuckle rather than a pinky knuckle.
Anyhow, the pics of that build should be attached. I used thin venom green g10 for the core, sandwiched between two pieces of white vulcanized knife handle liner, the front is black paper micarta, and for the back the handle is a piece of green/black dymondwood, and the forks are black canvas micarta. Pins are nickel silver. Bands are tapered TBG cut by myself with a cheapy pouch I took off of a set of amazon flatbands. I've chucked steel in 3/8, 7/16 and 1/2 through it, as well as lead in 00, 0000 and .40 musket balls. It seems to like the 7/16 steel and the 0000 buck the best.
I haven't done a final sanding or finishing yet as I couldn't stop myself from wanting to shoot it immediately.
I know it's got plenty of imperfections, but I'm satisfied with it considering my lack of experience. My big takeaway is that it is incredibly difficult to keep things symmetrical. Incredibly difficult.
I hope you all like what I've built, and I hope Harry is pleased with my take on his design. A full sized version with a few minor tweaks is on my drawing board for some point in the future.
I had been going a little stir crazy since my wife and I have been living like hermits since last March.
With the cost of ammo so high we haven't been to the range in forever, and It's illegal for me to even shoot my bow in my fully enclosed yard where my wife and I live.
So in early February I decided to give slingshots a try and found this forum.
I bought a torque and a scout from simpleshot, and while they are fine, I wanted to build my own as I like to DIY. Growing up my dad had a saying,"in this world you can either be wealthy or handy, and we ain't wealthy." So, it was kind of ingrained in my from childhood.
I tried a few designs in cheap plywood just to get the feel of it, and then picked up a sheet of 1/2 black HDPE. You can see my first efforts based on templates from this forum in the attached pics. Nothing exciting, but they worked well.
I've been known to make a knife or two, and I had a piece of carbon fiber laying around, so I took a swing at a PFS (pic attached) that I set up butterfly. Again, nothing exciting, but it works.
Then I came across Harry's design for the Pinky Knuckle, and decided to give that a little more effort. While I think I like big forks, I wanted to try it a bit smaller, so I shrunk it down to 95%. Not sure if it was the shrink or my baseball mitt hands, but it turned into a ring finger knuckle rather than a pinky knuckle.
Anyhow, the pics of that build should be attached. I used thin venom green g10 for the core, sandwiched between two pieces of white vulcanized knife handle liner, the front is black paper micarta, and for the back the handle is a piece of green/black dymondwood, and the forks are black canvas micarta. Pins are nickel silver. Bands are tapered TBG cut by myself with a cheapy pouch I took off of a set of amazon flatbands. I've chucked steel in 3/8, 7/16 and 1/2 through it, as well as lead in 00, 0000 and .40 musket balls. It seems to like the 7/16 steel and the 0000 buck the best.
I haven't done a final sanding or finishing yet as I couldn't stop myself from wanting to shoot it immediately.
I know it's got plenty of imperfections, but I'm satisfied with it considering my lack of experience. My big takeaway is that it is incredibly difficult to keep things symmetrical. Incredibly difficult.
I hope you all like what I've built, and I hope Harry is pleased with my take on his design. A full sized version with a few minor tweaks is on my drawing board for some point in the future.
