# GZK bra pouch and slingshot material of construction



## Darwins Child (Sep 30, 2021)

(If you usually need a sleep aid at night, wait to read the follwing until just before you go to bed. It will be the fast acting cure for insomnia.)

I should add two relevant facts to the above intro. First, I play the piano and I do not want to either wound my fingers by having balls hit them or have my fingers numbed or desensitized by any activity. For example, if I have to do yard or automotive or woodwork, I wear protective gloves ....... which may or may not be possible when "operating" a slingshot. I haven't seen any videos of shooters using gloves, but maybe I haven't searched long enough.

Second, I'm ignorant of many things about shooting a slingshot, but I have learned a few things in the last few weeks of shooting. Before shooting my first shot, while waiting for the delivery of my slingshot, I watched some very informative videos, including the great video by Bill Hayes in the sticky section of this forum. So I thought I had a pretty good idea of how to shoot ....... in theory, anyway.

My first shot in our garage at a makeshift catch box was an I-had-no-idea-where-it-went disaster, followed by several follow-up disasters consisting of frame-hits and flyers all over the place. Luckily, some 3/8" clay ammo was included with the slingshot, so I did not aputate a finger or remove skin on my left hand. 

I soon figured out that it was my release that was faulty, so I spent some more time on Utube watching all kinds of opinions on how to anchor, how to hold the ball in the pouch prior to release, as well as how to actually release the ball/pouch. In short, although my shot accuracy did improve a bit, I could not find a good, consistent way to release the ball. I tried holding between thumb and forefinger, in several different "holds"; then I tried holding between forefinger and middle finger. One of the holds between my thumb and more toward the end of my forfinger caused the end of my forefinger to go numb, and it took several days for that numbness to go away comletely. (Again, this was not good for my piano playing.)

I decided to return the slingshot through Amazon and went through the return process right up to bringing the box to Canada Post the day following packaging. But during the night before returning, I decided to give it another try using some more suggested techniques, such as holding between forefinger and middle finger, which I did, and then I decided to cancel the return and give it another go. 

That latter hold/release went pretty well, with some modifications of how high I held my right elbow, right up until I purchased some 3/8" steel at Canadian Tire. In short, after shooting a number of steel balls, one of them struck near the base of my left forefinger, which put a pretty good blood blister on it. Back to Elvis Presely "return to sender" mode.

It was at this point that I stumbled onto a Utube video made by "Reed Lukens", who apparently is a member of the Slingshot Forum:






I liken my experience while watching that video to the scene in "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind" in which Roy Neary first sees the image of Devil's Tower on his TV -- which just happens to be right in front of the huge DIY model of the same that he has spent the last 24 hours creating from scratch, for a reason, a compulsion, which he has not understood until that very moment. When "Reed" pulled out that trigger-release, I knew I had to buy one so that I might be "released" from all of my "release" anxiety and future injuries. Which I did, and indeed it did release me from all of my release anxiety. (Apparently, this is the same releif that archers experience when they use mechanical bow-releases for the first time after trying for literally years to release the bowstring exactly perfectly manually.)

Here's a photo of the present situation:











Included in the photo are my big hand, tiny 304SS slingshot, amazing thumb release and. pointed out by the yellow arrow, the remnant of the blood blister that used to be about three times bigger and a whole lot more painful. 

Anyway, since I've been using the mechanical release I have not hit either the frame or my hand, and my accuracy has improved to the point where I can now hit a 3" diameter soup can 4 out of 5 times from a distance of about 50 feet. My left hand/arm has IMO too much unsteadyness, even though it's ridgidly locked, so I'm trying to figure out some kind of solution to either hold steadier or use some kind of rythm-of-movement timing to judge when to release. Maybe the longer the length of pull, the easier it is to steady the left arm?

I can tell that the 5 bandsets that were included with the slingshot are too short for my length of pull and too weak for 3/8" steel. The max width allowed in the to-me-too-little slingshot is 3/4".

I'm waiting for delivery of a 2-meter roll of 0.7mm latex, a roll of tying latex, and some larger pouches from China. I want to try longer lengths of pull right up to butterfly, the latter of which for me is 73". 

But the release mechansim is not going to allow really long lengths of pull, so I'm back to wanting to develop a manual release technique, which leads me to my questions for the forum. 

First, what do those of you who have actually tried the GZK "bra pouch" (not the self-centering pouches) think of them? One of the problems I had with manual pouch releasing was that the bottom or top of the pouch would sort of slip first, before release, and then the ball would fly wherever. Does the bra pouch help in keeping the release even?

Second, do the fingers that do the holding and releasing have to develop callouses or become calloused before one can release really properly? If this is indeed the case, I'll just forget about semi and full butterfly lengths of pull and stick with the mechanical release and shorter lengths of pull.

Third, I'm now very interestested in buying a TTF slingshot. Other than SS, what do you feel is the very best material that will resist the impact of errant steel balls? I'm semi-interested in the nicely wrapped GZK Crazy TTF titanium models, but I'm really not sure if it will still be too small for my liking, or if titanium is the most impact-resistant. (But I'm a bit concerned about the half of the gripping mechanism bending/flexing time and time again, to the point where eventually it's going to crack, IMO.) I'm also interested in the pocket predator Taurus because it looks pretty darn comfortable, even for a large hand. 

Fourth, is it possible to double up bands on my little slingshot for more power (not to lengthen, of course) and, if so, how should I put everything together?

Thanks for any advice about anything.


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## Stankard757 (Apr 20, 2020)

First Welcome to the forum 

And you can certainly wear gloves for hand protection. The video below is from when I first started and I'm I'm wearing a worker glove.






Sent from my LE2117 using Tapatalk


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## KawKan (May 11, 2013)

Welcome to the forum!
Sounds like you are covering a lot of ground, pretty quickly. 
Glad the mechanical release is working for you, but I advise working on your manual release. 
Your current fork width is going to be perfectly adequate for shooting 3/8-inch steel with .7mm latex. You definitely won't need to double the bands. 
Less power may be a key to improving your manual release technique. You do have to pinch pretty hard to hold a pouch against the pull of very strong bands. Lighter bands allow a lighter touch and better tactile feedback. 
I'm a fan of longer drawlength also.
You may need up to 2 times the ammo diameter in band width (wide part of taper) for a short draw, but only 1 times the ammo diameter for a draw twice as long. And the narrower band will have half the draw weight while providing all the performance. 
I hold forth at some length regarding adjusting your pouch grip for butterfly shooting in this thread: Tips for new butterfly shooters
Keep shooting, and have fun!


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## Darwins Child (Sep 30, 2021)

KawKan said:


> Welcome to the forum!
> Sounds like you are covering a lot of ground, pretty quickly.
> Glad the mechanical release is working for you, but I advise working on your manual release.
> Your current fork width is going to be perfectly adequate for shooting 3/8-inch steel with .7mm latex. You definitely won't need to double the bands.
> ...


Today I used the 1mm flat-band that came with my new do-it-all Chinese clone. I attached the band to the frame TTF, using the method (needle-nose pliers and all) described by Bill Hayes in his long tuturial video. The attachment tested secure, so I went to shoot.

I have to admit that the effort required to stretch the band from 9" to 33-34" did not allow me much time for aiming. But, even so, I was able to grip the pouch/ball using a forefinger-on-top-over-thumb technique (with the bottom portion of the forefinger planted underneath my right front cheek-bone so that I can see right down the rest of the forefinger and, on this TTF occasion, right down the center of the top of the top band) and hit a 2" aluminum disk at about 15 feet ......... and, the good part, NOT hit either the frame or myself even once. I consider this a major breakthrough in hold/release technique. Using the same hold, but using 7mm bands on the miniature OTT frame, I can pull back to just inderneath my right ear and, with the bands almost touching my face, look right down on top of both bands, aim carefully and release to usually hit the target.

In short, KawKan, I am now a firm believer in 7mm, or even thinner, bands and pulling back farther and farther to get more velocity, rather than use thicker bands to get the velocity. I look forward to finally receiving a 2-metre roll of 7mm Precise, cutting my own bands, and trying out longer lengths of pull right up to full butterfly.

As always, as you say, the important thing is that I'm having fun learning a new way to throw things. Thanks for the sage advice. I really appreciate it.


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## Roll Fast (Sep 19, 2021)

Similar archery of course is how critical the release is.
As I'm sure you have figured out!
The first ss I made was for chucking rocks and our youngest now has it. The new one I made for rock chucking back at the river is very similar to the first in that it extends a good 2" out away from my hand. Saves my hand from the somewhat inconsistent stones that not only can do strange things, they are hard to release evenly.
Plus, just this past week, I started pinching the pouch ahead of the (plastic) ball or stone so it is much easier to hold than gripping the pouch right at the ball- which requires a very strong grip.
No finger or thumb pain at all anymore and it seems to be even more accurate.
My experience for what it is worth.
Should be a discussion on here called Pinch the Pouch. It has a couple of photos.
tx, Ed


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## nicnoyd (Jan 6, 2022)

For the last weeks, I've been shooting the GZK Bra & GZK Pit Chain Pouches exclusively and i haven't looked back. Mostly the bras though, used the Chain ones only because i dont have enough of the bras and i'm still on the way of finding my favourite latex and taper, so i have a lot of different bands assembled.

The Bras are very easy to load and shoot to the point where i rarely think about the grip or release anymore. The two humps that hug the ammo make pinching the ammo very comfortable. So far they stretch pretty good and the slots they have make tying the pouch to the band pretty easy without much adjusting or fiddling. Accuracy is also good with the 8 and 10mm Steel i shoot.

The Pit chain pouches also work pretty well id say, just haven't shot them enough compared to others. Tying them on is rather painful though, especially TTF as they only have tiny slits.


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