Did You know - outdoor edition

[doc henderson]

 

 

 

I still have about 30 to 40 feet in the roll. used it to make a big slingshot for water balloons with a funnel.  yes I had a little fun in a previous life.     

[caveman]

Howard, I have not launched a projectile from a slingshot in a long time, but I was thinking (Pop used to tell me that "every time you think, the other team scores") that if you could find the appropriately sized crimps for the tubing, that that (Tom) may work better than trying to tie it.

There is a tool used to turn larger bulls into stags/steers called a calicrate bander that uses surgical tubing and crimps.  I've used it to repair dozens of rectal prolapses on show hogs.  The crimps hold the tubing and do not slip. Callicrate Bander Kit (circlecsupply.com) 

Back when I was a boy and dinosaurs roamed the earth and smelled of molten sulfur, my granddaddy used to help keep me well-supplied in homemade slingshots.  The first wrist rocket slingshot he got with steel shot put us at the top of the heap in the neighborhood arms race.  They were so much more powerful than the homemade ones from wood and innertubes.

Anyway, sometime while in elementary school, we started making small slingshots out of wire clothes hangers, a small piece of leather and the long, relatively thick rubber bands my daddy used to hold file folders together with.  With a pocketful of BB's and these, a lot of mischief could be created at the schoolhouse or anywhere else a 10-year-old would find himself.

[WV Sawmiller]

Cavey,

   I checked online last night and I can buy several years supply of replacement bands for what I paid for the 2 yesterday so when those are used up that will be my source in the future. I could probably take regular tubing like Doc shows and just run the end through the pouch and fold it back and tie them tight with dental floss instead of crimping as you describe.

   I remember the spitball days with a good medium duty rubber band looped between the thumb and index finger and shooting folded spitballs with it.

   I used to have a slingshot with just one band made out of an old inner tube. The handle was a singe stick about an inch square like a cut off stack sticker. It worked pretty well. I think I broke the handle and would just fold the rubber over the top of my thumb and hold the end int he palm of my hand. I could launch a piece of gravel pretty well and accurately with that. The gravel would fly right over the end of my thumb till that day it didn't. : After that I found a new wooden handle!

[Don P]

You're closing in on the only use I could make of a slide rule nowadays  .

I guess eraser bag wars are gone too  :D

[WV Sawmiller]

Don,

I had to think about that eraser bag comment. We never used bags but eraser wars were common and it was common to come to class after recess and see the guy sitting next to you with a 3" X 6" yellow dust stain on the side of his head. I guess white boards ended those days. :

You'd think we never studied but through it all we did graduate with the skills to make change!

Okay, back on topic.

Did you know there is a big difference between a sling and a slingshot? Many young people apparently do not know that. A slingshot uses elastic (Usually rubber as discussed previously) with a forked handle to propel a relatively small ball or rock. A marble sized shot is about as effective as you can get. Glass marbles, ball bearings, 1/4" -3/8" steel or lead balls, gravel, etc are the normal ammo. Some people use .177 diameter BBs but I was never successful with them as they lacked the weight or I did not pull back the bands far enough.

A sling, sometimes called a rock sling or shepherd's sling, is an ancient weapon used for hunting, protecting the flocks from predators and for warfare. It is a simple pouch, apparently about 3" wide X 6" long, with a cord tied on each end. The length of the two cords can be about the width of your outspread arms or as short as about 2' on a side. The sling is used to hurl larger rocks or lead balls for warfare. I never understood how they worked till the wee hours of this morning when I could not sleep and looked them up. Apparently you tie a loop in one end and slide it over your index or second finger (I saw examples of both) and on the other end you tie a simple knot that you pinch tight between your thumb and index finger.

A golf ball sized rock seems to be about the normal size used. You place the rock in the pouch and swing the loaded sling around to get some momentum (and I saw several variations to do that) then you throw like throwing a baseball and release at the appropriate point. The sling opens up with the free end flying away you from while the stationary end with the loop over your finger keeps it in place. The sling basically serves as an extension of your arm and allows you to throw the projectile further just like an atlatl allows you to throw a spear/dart much further.

Apparently the longer the cords on the sling, the greater distance you get but you sacrifice accuracy. The shorter cords are more accurate but you sacrifice distance/power.

Apparently slings are still commonly used in Israel and the mideast to protect the flocks from wolves and jackals and such.

I remember a sermon in church one time where the preacher talked about David and Goliath and read where David went and collected 5 smooth stones before he went to battle Goliath. It turns out David was not worried about his accuracy and ability. Goliath had 4 brothers and David came prepared for them to enter the fray too!

Anyway I am about ready to find some paracord and make me a sling and try it even at my advanced age. With all the rocks we have here in WV I will never run short of ammo. I can throw them south to Don and he can send them further south to Patrick and Ted and the other NC members. :D

One note of caution - if you watch the old Mountain Men episodes on TV and you see the ones where Eustice Conway was always worried about making payments to the tax man - IIRC it was not property taxes he was battling. He was showing a group of tourists at his Turtle Island workshops how a sling worked and a stone flew loose and hit a lady in the eye and put it out and he lost the law suit and the State put a lien on his place till it was paid. At least that is the gist of the way I read about it. So if you see me practicing with a sling wear your safety glasses and hard hat.

EDIT/Add on:

BTW - if you have any experience using a sling please reply even if it is to 'fess up to broken windows or such. ;)

[Don P]

Hmm, stretching it a bit. This is just an evolution. The arm get's longer and stronger but it's just a sling.
This is a trebuchet.
bigtreb - YouTube

One string of the sling is tied to the throwing arm the other is a loop slipped over a bent nail. The release point is tuned by bending the hook angle of the nail, that determines where in the arc the loop slips off the nail and releases the projectile from the pocket.


The last time we drug this out and got it working the sling was rotted but an old pocketbook and some parachord and we got it dialed in to throw those little watermelons... as skeet  ;D.

[WV Sawmiller]

   Yeah, that is stretching it a bit. : :-\ :D

[WV Sawmiller]

   Did you know you can make your own ammo for a sling using a wet clay and a mold? I spotted one trick on a website where a guy had a hemisphere shaped cup about 2" in diameter. He could fill and empty it twice with wet clay and press the two pieces together and let them air dry or even better kiln dry them like making small round bricks. I am assuming in medieval times these were made and stockpiled for ammo for defense or offensive purposes. 

   I guess if you had a bigger 2 sided mold like used for casting bullets or lead fish fishing weights you could really turn out a lot of them quickly and I assume that is the technique they used in the past. 

[WV Sawmiller]

    Okay, since nobody but Don P even wants to comment about slings (and I am not sure he did not just return from a recreational weekend trip to Colorado  :) I will move on to something new and see if we can generate some interest:

  Did you know choke sizes on shotguns indicate the degree of constriction of the bore? As I understand the choke is applied to the end of the barrel. The more constriction the more the shot holds together after it leaves the barrel of the shotgun. So if you know the type game you are hunting and normal shot ranges you would buy or set the choke for that range. The most common choke sizes I always heard of were Full, Modified, Improved Cylinder and Cylinder (Open bore - no constriction).

  While reading about them I also found several others and that Europe has even different ones. I came across Trap, Extra full, Improved Modified, etc.

  Anyway a full choke has tighter constriction and would hold the shot pattern together for longer distances and is preferred for hunting game like turkeys, doves, and ducks. It is not ideal for buckshot or slugs and may even distort a solid slug and make it fly off center and slugs could even damage the choke.

 Modified holds the shot together less but is probably a good all around choice if you are shooting small game at various ranges. It will accept slugs but will not give the best performance with them.

  Improved cylinder is more open and used for game like quail where the shots a closer and you need a wider shot pattern up close. It works well with slugs and buckshot.

  Skeet or Trap is the next with a wide shot patten for killing tasteless clay disks.

  Cylinder is no constriction and shoots a very open pattern and is preferred for slugs and buckshot.

   I know it was common on side by side double barrel shotguns to have 2 chokes so the hunter could select which barrel to use for different ranges. Some Old timers used to keep a buckshot load in the left barrel and small small shot in the right and shoot small with the small shot and be ready for a deer if one jumped up. (That was fine till they'd forget and shoot a rabbit 10' away with the wrong barrel and demolish him with a load of double ought buckshot).

 Many shotguns now have adjustable chokes that can be screwed into the end of the barrel to change to different choke sizes. My first shotgun was an 870 Remington 20 gauge pump and a ventilated rib and a Poly choke on the end. I could just rotate the Poly choke to change the choke sizes on the fly.

(I lost that barrel out the window of a Chevy II in a canal in Dixie County Fla on Christmas Day when we had a blowout and sunk the car with us in it but that is another story).

 A buddy of mine said with steel shot you need to use an open choke to prevent damage to the barrel but several articles I read indicated that is not the case. I have not used steel shot so I cannot verify one way or another.

[doc henderson]

well tell about "losing the barrel".

[Don P]

That was a few years ago. As I was towing that to the field the news on the truck radio that day was about a mexican drug bust. They were using a catapult to throw bags over the border. I'm thinking, "This looks bad!" about then I passed a deputy  :D. Look closer, that thing is just a sling flinger. I guess it would be the end of that line of development.

Shot always brings this to mind since it is in the neighborhood.

[WV Sawmiller]

   OK. We were visiting my grandparents and had catfish lines out in the Suwannee River but I was going squirrel hunting up in Old Town Hammock. I went to load the tube magazine on my shotgun and did not push the shell far enough in and it slipped back behind the loading gate. We could not figure how to get it out and removed the barrel but still could not access the shell. I also could not get the barrel back on so I had the gun on the back shelf of the car. We dropped my younger brother off in the woods and I went with Dad and older brother to run the catfish lines. We caught a good mess of catfish and loaded them in the trunk of the car. We started home and were driving down a typical limestone rock road with a canal on the right. My older brother was about 15 and had his learners permit and was driving. He evidently had a blowout on the front right tire and the car swerved hard to the right into the canal which was about 8' deep. My shotgun barrel went out the open right passenger window - it was a warm day even for Christmas. The car was floating and when it got close to the road side bank I crawled out, grabbed my gun and a shot sack full of shells then said to myself - Naah, they're plastic (which was a fairly new improvement back then when most shells were paper) and threw them back in the floor. 

    The car floated back out in the middle and my brother tried to open the driver's door but more water rushed in so he and Dad crawled over into the back seat. They finally opened the left rear door and water was rushing in and my brother got out. As Dad got out the car had sunk till his nose was just above the water level. The car sunk nose down with only the trunk floating. A pocket of air trapped there kept it above water. They went back to the fish camp we had just left and called around and found someone with a log skidder who came and pulled it out. Dad drained and replaced the oil and the car cranked. He took it to his first cousin's garage and changed the oil again. 

   They got in Grandpa's car and went back to Old Town Hammock to look for my younger brother. I remember my grandmother called someone and told them we had run the car off in the lake and Dad, my brother and I had gotten out okay now were were going to look for my younger brother. I am sure whoever she was talking too were convinced he was drowned back at the canal.

   We got the car running but it had the old 4 on the tree shifter and we could either get it in Reverse and 2nd or 1st & 3rd so we opted for the 1st and third and skipped second and made sure to park where we could circle out. We had a 300 mile trip home in it. When we got home Dad sold it as he figured there were plenty of problems ahead.

   On the shotgun I learned it was a simple task to free the shell. You just pop 2 pins on the trigger assembly and pull it out and the shell fell free. Actually we could have removed plug and magazine spring and slid the shell out but at 12 y/o I did not know that.

   We went back and looked for the barrel with a rake and extended handle but no luck. I really needed one of those big magnets. Dad bought me a 28" modified barrel for my gun which I still have to this day but I sure miss that polychoke with the vent rib.

  BTW - the catfish in the trunk were in good shape.

[WV Sawmiller]

Don,

   I think I remember reading about the drug runners throwing the drugs over the wall or river or such with their catapult. I don't remember how they stopped them.

   I think I have passed the sign to that park above on I-77 as we go south and back to Charlotte. Maybe we will have to swing by and check it out. You need to check out Wolf Creek Indian Village at Exit 58 behind the Loves truck stop some time. It is well marked and run by the county.

   BTW - in Africa the locals called their slingshots Catapults. My wife's redneck uncle in north Ala used to call his a "Flip".

[Don P]

I've heard the forked stick slingshot called a flip a time or two but can't recall where.

Yup, that's the same shot tower. Take some time and wander around to the iron furnace, Foster Falls on the river and the childrens home, all down there near the tower.

I stopped at Wolf Creek years ago when it was just starting out, i need to go again. When they were building 77, right in there was an old burial ground.

[Hilltop366]

WV I'm surprised you guys didn't just harness up those catfish to pull the car to shore. :D 

[WV Sawmiller]

Hilltop,

  They were Fla catfish, not WV catfish. :D

Don,

  I don't know about a burial ground but there were several graves found at the old village site. It was a palisaded village and they mapped it out and reconstructed it at the current site.

   We have been to it many times and learn something new every time. Last time I asked about DNA testing of the bones they recovered because they don't know which tribe was there. They said if they do the DNA test and can identify the tribe the county could have to turn over the site to the tribe and the county would lose it.

[beenthere]

Wisconsin also has a shot tower.

History | Tower Hill State Park | Wisconsin DNR

[Don P]

Dang, I've been within a mile of that and never knew it was around the corner. I've heard the hot lead has to fall for 3 seconds.

Howard, I can't recall us ever giving land back even when we knew good and darn well who owned it  :D.
I've heard that was probably Cherokee or Shawnee and some say the Shawnee come from the oldest people. The survey the village is based on was the one done in 1970 when they built the road. I'm pretty sure our old loader is a stranded relic from that period  :D

*Others say we all come from the oldest people, but what do i know 

[WV Sawmiller]

   They found the village while widening I-77 then called in the archeologists who mapped it out exactly where every hut, cairn, grave, and perimeter pole was located then went and reconstructed it about 1/4 mile or so away. Some of the graves were found inside the village and some outside including one canine. They speculate the graves outside may have been enemy warriors. They indicated on each reconstructed grave it it was an adult male, juvenile female. etc and the position and direction it was found. From the size of the huts they can speculate if it was a family hut or a community building. They don't know if the huts were covered with bark or skins or what was used. 

    After the mapping the roadwork on I-77 resumed and destroyed the original site. 

    In each hut they have a display. One will be about pottery making, another about basket making, another about the foods and plants grown and used, another would have animal skins. one for weapons, fire starting etc. It is entertaining for the kids and interesting/educational for the adults. 

    I don't want to get off track or make this political but returning sites like this are falling under new rules than they used to do. : Anyway the site is well worth a visit if you have a couple hours and the weather is decent. 

[barbender]

I don't know that DNA testing could identify a specific tribe anyways. A tribe is a social construct that has genetic implications, but Native tribes very freely captured women and children from other tribes to replace ones they had lost themselves. So there was a pretty constant flow of genes between any that were in close proximity to each other.

[Ianab]

What DNA testing would show is a relationship to any living descendants. But it might also show the descendants aren't the current local tribe or some other "inconvenient" fact. Like you say there was the mingling of related tribes and home territories weren't 100% fixed either. So maybe it's a potential can-o-worms that no one is really that keen to open.  ???

[TroyC]

Skeet or Trap is the next with a wide shot patten for killing tasteless clay disks.

Not to be picky, but skeet and trap are two different games. Different guns, different chokes. Skeet is shot with an open choke as the birds are close up. Skeet barrels are in the 28" range. Think shorter barrel to swing fast, wide pattern, smaller shot size.
Trap entails a bird thrown basically away from the shooter and is going away, albeit at slight left/right, up/down angles. Trap guns typically have around 32" barrels and full chokes to 'reach out there'. They don't need to swing as fast as a skeet gun.
Either game uses 'clay pigeons' and they do require special cooking techniques.

[WV Sawmiller]

Troy,

  I shot skeet a time or two while I was in the USMC and related it more to dove shooting and it was as you described passing from left to right. I saw the trap house at the same range but there was nobody to operate it when we were there. I was under the impression it was more like shooting at a covey of quail rising in front of you and would have thought shorter barrels and more open chokes. From your description it sounds like shooters shoot them at longer ranges than I thought. Maybe it is more like shooting pheasant which would be at longer ranges and heavier shot.

  I went back and checked my sources and mispoke when I listed "Trap" as the charts I just looked up only showed Skeet as slightly more constricted than cylinder and more open than improved cylinder. There is not an actual choke size listed as Trap that I could find.

  What I have not checked would be how the barrel length affects the shot pattern so if you wingshooters can chime in this is a good time.

   My understanding is the longer the barrel the more the shot holds together. I don't think it has any overall effect on the actual range of the shot. If that is correct how would a 26" barrel with a full choke compare to a 30" barrel with a modified choke? It sounds like you'd be better served to buy a shorter barrel with an adjustable choke. Of course it is probably a little more accurate to sight down a longer barrel.

  My old neighbor used to have a "Long Tom" 12 gauge which IIRC had a 36" barrel. He died and his widow traded it for a small pistol she figured she could use. I always hated I did not know she was interested as I'd love to have had it and she'd have wanted me to have it. I used to shoot squirrels and give to her husband and she'd make me chocolate cake in return. She also had a standing order for a channel catfish "that big" (about 2 lbs) so when I'd catch one that size I'd set it aside for them. I told her I fished specifically for that size but of course it was generally what hit the bait first.

[WV Sawmiller]

Ian,


   You pretty much nailed the DNA issue. I doubt anybody in America is 100% anything. (I tell everybody my DNA showed 10% Scotch/Irish, 30% Neanderthal, 35% Sasquatch, and 25% Unknown :). 

   Anyway with our current social issues it would open a big can of worms. They would not have to surrender the land as it is a reconstructed site anyway but I think it was the bones they said they would have to surrender if the DNA showed a clear origin. There are all kind of rights groups and such who would love to stir up hate and discontent and just looking for any excuse. Right now the bones are being treated with dignity and respect and held for scientific purposes.

   Some of the graves/skeletons found outside the wall may have been captured slaves who did not rate burial inside the camp but had enough status and were respected enough to be buried instead of just dragged away and left in the elements.

[Walnut Beast]

Purdey shotguns are some of the most expensive in the world. Absolutely beautiful but very expensive. A new one starts in the six figures.  I've seen them at a show.