Hello everybody. This is my first post here, so a quick introduction of myself. I'm 27 years old and i come from Bavaria in Germany. Currently I am studying mechanical engineering which i will finish in March next year. I got my first slingshot (a natural fork banded with office rubber) from my grandpa when I was a kid. As I was writing this I thought it had to be somewhere because I knew I never gave it away. So after fishing in my box with leftovers from my youth I finally found it
The rubber is literally falling apart. No wonder because it lay in the box for about 20 years. The next slingshot I got as a birthday gift when I was around 12 years old. It was a Barnett Cobra banded with tubes. I remember having great fun with it. I had great luck that my dad is a versatile craftsman and that he taught me a lot. I learnt the fundamentals of woodworking and he told me how to operate the tools in our workshop. As time moved on I made my own creations like garden furniture, small tables and benches. Later on I invested in an attachment for my Stihl chainsaw so I can mill my own boards (I have a small forest). For me it is most pleasing when I can do the whole process from the living tree to the finished woodwork by myself.
This is my first work of milling own wood (plum tree) and laminating stripes to make a solid board. That board has no finish on it because I don't know yet what to make out of it
So as I cleaned up our workshop in winter I found some "scrap" leftovers of plum and put it aside. I've already browsed alot on this forum and read a lot about slingshots and all the different methods of how you guys build them. When I watched the gallery I got stuck at Nathan Master's masterpieces. I found his "Axiom" and "Omega" were so aesthetic that I immediately fell in love with that design. I emailed Nathan and told him that I wanted to try to build a copy of his design for myself. As I already imagined he could have his concerns about this, we agreed to the following I want to make clear to everybody:
- The design belongs to Nathan Masters
- I do not reproduce his designs for profit
- I do not represent my work as an "Axiom" "FlippinOut" or otherwise
- This rebuild based on the "Axiom" is only a challenge for myself to learn new techniques and imrove on laminating an finishing
Why is this important? As I said I am going to be an engineer I am fully aware what it means when you "steal" an idea, reproduce a patent etc. I don't distinguish between industrial and artificial design here. Patents are a superb tool for research and inspiration though. To be honest if I ever made an invention and i would see a company reproducing my idea I would sue them. Enough said, back to the topic.
Here are some pictures of my building process (took 20+ hours to complete)
1. Cutting plum-leftovers with bench saw to equal measurements / Aluminum core already cut out with jigsaw and roughly filed
2. Laminating the wood stripes together with wood glue + transferring core shape to the boards
3. Sawing out
4. Laminating boards to core with epoxy glue / picking palmswell (ebony)
5. Edges rounded and surface sanded to 240 grit / Notice the crack on the right - front surfaces were not perfectly parallel -> filled the crack with mixture of sawdust and superglue
6. Final sanding up to 600 grit - 3 days in linseed oil bath and letting it dry outside
7. Tried to finish with "shellack" we had at home - looks very nice on restored furniture also makes a durable surface and a deep shine - It turned out to be a very difficult job, in my opinion better for flat large surfaces (it's also called "French polish") - not too happy with that - next time i try waxing and buffing.. Banded up with TB Gold one layer
Back view, cracks are visible - this is also the reason I had to use a stiff core
I like how bulky it turned out (I shortened the handle to fit my hand)
This is my setup:
TB Gold 1 layer: 21cm(8.2") x 23mm(0.9") x 18mm(0.7")
I am shooting 8mm stellballs, and I guess this doesn' fit because I get handslap also when flipping. I will try larger ammo and different bandsets to figure it out.
What do you guys think? Pouch too big? Bands too long?
By the way the slingshot shoots really nice, after a few days of shooting I can hit a tin can at a distance of 10 meters every 3-4 times.
Soo far I hope you liked it and if you've got some tipps on reducing handslaps just tell me.
Cheers, Simon.
