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Recently I made some 1/4 inch aluminum bent-rod frames for AJW and a couple extra to experiment with. While the 1/4 inch rod is easier to bend than 5/16, if you plan to try it, you should know that my pattern will not be strong enough to avoid unwanted bending unless you wrap it, or insert a wooden handle, or build up a handle with Fimo.
The first one I made from 1/4 inch rod has a Fimo handle and extra long TB Yellow tubes, so I decided to try flats on the other one. First I wrapped the handle with Desert Camo Paracord, then worked a length of TB Red over each fork and tied off the ends. This step is not really necessary, but I'm hoping it will increase band life. Then because I had seen others do it, I reversed the fork so the ends were pointing forward and tied on a 107 bandset. Here's what that looked like.
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105 downloadsIt only took a few rounds of 3/8 (9.5mm) lead to realize that this configuration is a champion hand-slapper. When it was still painful with .429 (11 mm) lead, I turned the fork back to normal, retied, and voila!, the handslap was gone even with 1/4 (6.4mm) steel, though that ammo did produce some stiff recoil which was not present with 3/8 lead. Here's a couple of pics of the finished product.
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106 downloads
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72 downloadsThe 107s are cut for a 7 inch length from tie to pouch and are secured to the frame with Alliance Sterling #64 rubber bands. They are tied as side shooters to eliminate twist.
This is a good shooter and I anticipate good band life.
