Iv been looking around on here, and I remember some people talking about it, but I can't find anything about how to throw a good stone/glande with a rifled spin. Does anyone know how or know of any articles that they could direct me to?

i think it was to use an overhand throw, like apache or figure eight.

I can't promise you that this will work for you, but I get a perfect spiral almost every time I sling a rock now.  First, it's easiest with an oval shaped projectile.  Lay it across the pouch, perpendicular to it.  As you follow through bring your arm around like Snidley Whiplash sweeping his cape in front of his face. Nya aa aa!  That's it.  Give it a try; you might be surprised.  Of course this method works only with overhand throws.  I use it with Byzantine and Helicopter styles.  BTW, your sling came yesterday and I tried it this morning.  It worked great.  I'll get a picture up later today.  Thanks.

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AH, Snidely, my mentor and hero

 I'm not sure about the movie they released though,  not terrible but wierd... :-?  I'm more of a bullwinkle man myself...right rocky??

Six foot metal munching moon mice!

You need to have a wide grip (retention cord on middle finger at least) so the cords are well separated. This will get the pouch to follow the orientation of the hand.

The throw needs to have the cords pretty much in line with the forearm. The helicopter throw does not do this; the cords are horizontal while the forearm is vertical.

Vertical Greek and Figure-8 are my favorite rifle spin throws:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJjXXnDSB4s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2atj_FM0AjA

This shows why the helicopter doesnt launch with a consistent pouch angle

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wY-EHvtjhAY

If you dont get the pouch angle right, this is what can happen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDTO1VYoMXw

Although you can get lucky too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvidIcGUXkQ

I havent directly observed this, but I'm pretty sure any of the sidearm throws will rifle reliably as well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdOIn5j2jR4

 As David has stated, a wide grip is neccessary for reliable rifle spin.  The orientation of the hand on release on an overhand throw decides whether you get backspin of rifle spin.  If you palm faces forward on release, you will get a rifle spin.  If the hand is facing toward your head then you will get backspin.

thanks  :D

Now you've got me wondering.  I've been using mostly Byzantine style and only occasionally Helicopter.  I could be mistaken.  I'll check it out tomorrow.

I get a good rifled spin from sidearm and overhand releases.  I read and watched David's videos very carefully to see what he was talking about with the chords kept in line with the forearm and enough distance between them to keep them straight.  That was a surprise on the Deadliest Warrior Aztec sling.  He was using stones perfectly shaped to rifle them out and beat the atlatl on distance, but he either didnt know how to or didnt think he needed it at the shorter ranges.  He did hit a test skull dead center, but with the fat part of the glande across the bridge of the nose.  

A good way to test if you are rifling well is to throw a tennis ball. Look for a slight fade to the left on the downward part of the trajectory and a sharp jump to the right on the first bounce.

sidearm.

very easy way to adjust width of your grip:

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Rat Man wrote on May 17^th, 2010 at 12:03am:

Now you've got me wondering.  I've been using mostly Byzantine style and only occasionally Helicopter.  I could be mistaken.  I'll check it out tomorrow.

   OK, as best I could, while walking my rambunctious beasts through semi-populated areas, I checked it out.  Many times DM  has corrected something I've written here off of the top of my head which may have been essentially correct but lacking in some detail or exactness.  In that he's always had the good info in the past, this is much appreciated.  He's kept me honest and the site accurate.  It would be much easier for me if this were such a situation; I could just let it go with a "Thanks again, David."  
   This morning, however, I was able to sling as many perfect spirals in a row that I wanted to using Helicopter Style.  I was very careful to not let my Helicopter accidentally morph into some sort of Helicopter/Sidearmed hybrid.  I kept the plane of my rotation horizontal.  Both Brian Grubbs and DM are almost always generally correct with their posts.  I don't know whether it's a quirk in my style, such as turning my hand over more on the release for example, something to do with sling type, or something else entirely,  but I'll stand my my initial statement.  When I release as I suggested above, per Snidley,  I get a perfect rifled spin on my projectile from even the Helicopter Style.  
   I will, weather permitting, try later today or as soon as possible to eliminate variables and come up with a viable answer as to why this is so.  More experimentation is needed for sure.  If someone wants to help out with this please try it... it's just a matter of finishing your follow through with your palm pointed down and your elbow in front of your face.  Thanks.

bear in mind that ANY throw with a sling will impart spin to a missile.
it's the nature of the beast.

Best thing to demonstrate this with are golfballs.
They can be made to curve in almost any direction. different throws impart different spin, but they all impart spin.

Rat Man, are you throwing with your knuckles in vertical line, as if you are hitting with a hammer? This would put the cords one above the other at the moment of release which will align the pouch correctly for a rifled release.

I believe so, David.  I know I finish up that way.  I'll have to check to be sure that's how my hand is positioned at the moment of release but I suppose it would have to be.  My projectiles will usually start out pointing straight up and down, then tip forward into the spiral.  It's something that serendipidously happened to my shot.  If I'd set out to do it I'd probably still be trying.

This is, of course, anecdotal...but the other day I cast an oblong, almost-cylindrical river stone--and took note that it definitely appeared to be spinning along its main axis as it sailed over the Delaware River.  I tell this because I've read here previously of "rifled spin" of sling projectiles; but thought this was a sort of wishful thinking.  I guess those Romans were right in shaping their lead like an American football!

mrdeadpt wrote on May 18^th, 2010 at 6:53am:

This is, of course, anecdotal...but the other day I cast an oblong, almost-cylindrical river stone--and took note that it definitely appeared to be spinning along its main axis as it sailed over the Delaware River.  I tell this because I've read here previously of "rifled spin" of sling projectiles; but thought this was a sort of wishful thinking.  I guess those Romans were right in shaping their lead like an American football!

If you look back to the early days of this forum, you'll see a lot of questioning about whether consistent rifle spin was ever possible. I think it's one of the things we have all learnt now - that it is. And the technique almost certainly goes back into the stone age, the Romans didn't invent it, nor even (for once!) the Greeks ;).

If I want a rifle spin I use a straight underhand or a figure 8. These two style are practically mirror images of eachother on release. When using the fig8 and throwing oblong stones I can get enough rifle spin that when the stone hits the water at 70yds out it will sometimes make quick jump to the right. When I skipp stones on purpose using a very low and fast sidearm the rocks spin in the same way as a top. This is easy to see because as the stone skips it usually curves with each skip. I only use a one finger spacing narrow grip.

I want to word this correctly;  I don't consider myself the best slinger here.   There are many here who make better looking slings, are more accurate, and/or can shoot farther.  I consider myself very average.  One thing I can do though is get a perfect rifled spin on my overhand style shots as many times as I want, as long as the projectile is somewhat oval shaped.  If I take one hundred shots, one hundred of them will be spirals.  In that the rifled spin is desired and not being achieved by some forum members it's a little disappointing to see that no one has tried what I suggested.  I generally use three styles of overhand shot:  Helicopter, Byzantine, and an overhand sidearmed style.  (I'll try it with Apache soon) With all three of these styles if I modify my release as described earlier in this thread I have no problem getting a nice, even spiral.. every time.  It's simply a matter of 1) loading your projectile perpendicular to the pouch and cords and  2) following   through with your palm facing down and 3) your throwing arm placed like Snidley throwing his cape across his face.  If you're a right hander then you want to finish with your right elbow bent inward, near your nose.  
   Granted, we all have our little throwing quirks and idiosyncrasies.  Possibly there's some unique hitch in my style that allows the above method to work for me and not someone else.  We won't know for sure until someone tries it and shuts me up.  Thanks.

R-M old mate, it works for me too. With overhead Fig.8 I always get rifle spin same as you. Even with sidearm variation it's still mainly rifle but with a bit of sidespin so the ball curves gently to the right.

Underarm styles are more unpredictable in terms of spin, especially if doing more than two preliminary rotations. Often there is distance destroying topspin which causes the ball to dive sharply at the end of its trajectory.

 I actually tried your method with the helicopter style with good success.  Took me a minute to get right, but sure enough away they spun.  Sorry I forgot to tell you about that!

Thanks, guys.  My underhanded shots do exactly that, Aussie.  I get a lot of top spin which gives them a low to the ground trajectory with a nose dive at the end.  For close shots I find underhanded very accurate but for anything over eighty or ninety yards it's useless for me.  Does anyone know if a rifled spin gives you more distance than back spin?  My guess would be yes, but I haven't measured one against the other yet.  

 With golf balls I seem to get better range with backspin... but with egg shaped projectiles (which is what I use most of the time) the rifled is the way to go.

My usual ammunition is golf balls, so of course I have seen that spin imparted by a throw can and does affect the flight of the projectile. Golf balls often fly straight when I sling them -- but they also often curve.

What I want to ask is, with rocks as ammo, is there a need for rifled spin? Does random spin affect rock flight as much as it can affect golf ball flight? Does rifled spin aid rock flight, or is it unnecessary?

I ask because I recently discovered that the local railroad bed is a supply of abundant golf-ball-sized chunks of granite (or something) and they have much better weight than my golf balls, so I "harvested" some the other night and slung two of them tonight across my fully empty work parking lot and I liked how they felt so I'll be using them more.

I sometimes use those black railroad type rocks.. there are a lot of them at a park where I walk the dogs and sling.  In my opinion they are much more accurate when shot with a rifled spin and I believe, though I haven't measured yet, that they travel farther too.  I try to select railroad rocks that are as close to oval shaped as possible.  Often the imperfections on one side cancel out the those on the other and it flies very true, like a perfect oval shaped stone would.  Other times the imperfections cause the rock to do interesting things in the air, like fly in an "S" curve pattern, where it cuts left then right then left etc...  Overall I'd say that, even with their varried shapes, railroad rocks fly truer and farther with rifled spin than without.  
  I agree with Brian.. golf balls fly the farthest with backspin.  Golf balls are my favorite ammo.  They fly noticably father... like around 30% or so..than any stone.  Often I don't see them land.  

Rat Man wrote on Jun 2^nd, 2010 at 8:38pm:

Does anyone know if a rifled spin gives you more distance than back spin?  My guess would be yes, but I haven't measured one against the other yet.

As Brian says, with a spherical projectile, especially a golf ball, backspin will give better range. Golf balls are specifically designed that way with the dimples and backspin deflecting the air flow around the ball and giving lift. (look it up on Wiki for a detailed explanation of how it all works.)

As P-J says, golf balls will also curve in flight. If you impart side spin the same principles as apply with backspin will now deflect the ball sideways, making accuracy difficult. However this sidespin does not increase range, only backspin does.

But with an elongated projectile it is important to keep it orientated point forward as this greatly reduces air drag by presenting the smallest possible frontal area, effectively increasing sectional density. Rifle spin gives a sling projectile gyroscopic stability, just as rifling does a rifle bullet, and keeps it flying efficiently, ie. with as little air drag as possible. If an elongated projectile flies with backspin it just presents a larger area to the opposing air and loses velocity more quickly.



Quote:

What I want to ask is, with rocks as ammo, is there a need for rifled spin? Does random spin affect rock flight as much as it can affect golf ball flight? Does rifled spin aid rock flight, or is it unnecessary?

Generally rifled or any spin does not affect a stone as much as a golf ball because stones are much denser (SG typically around 3 or higher) than golf balls which are only just denser than water (SG approx. 1.1) This means the side forces generated by spin are not as noticeable because of the greater mass, especially true of nice smooth rounded stones. However railway ballast stones are often very jagged and angular; these stones can have very unpredictable flight. Any stone which makes a loud whirring sound as it flies will give poor performance. An additional downside to irregular jagged stones is that they tend to hang up in the pouch, giving unpredictable release. No acident that in the DvG story David selects smooth river stones before battling Goliath.

does anyone know why a sling projectile sometimes twists and spirals? i find this on byzantine style. i'm posting it here because i think it has to do wit what type of spin it's generating.

Every sling projectile spins in flight; it's an inevitable by product of the way it comes out of the pouch on release. However the direction of spin varies a lot depending on style, hand posiion, width of the grip and so on. So if you have an irregular shaped projectile which catches the air a lot it can sometimes spiral in flight or at least veer off in some unwanted direction. Good evenly rounded stones usually fly much straighter.

Aussie wrote on Jun 4^th, 2010 at 3:52am:

Every sling projectile spins in flight; it's an inevitable by product of the way it comes out of the pouch on release.

 Unless you use your knuckle ball pouch!

I found an American Football-like (honestly it was more like an oblong potatoe) stone, lately, slightly heavy, and used it to do a little test on the soccer field.  I used  figure8 for this. I found that rather small arm and hand position differences could produce all those spins we hear of, from the desired point first-spin, via all kinds of loop-sided spins, and up to those insane spins with the stone in a vertical position.  
I`ll need to perform more experiments before I know what this does for me ;)
timann

Today I brought a 41"er and some golf balls to the soccer field.  On the way I found this longish shaped stone and could continue the testing of the rifled spinn.  
The first shots with this sling and golf balls was horrible, but the stone made an incredible vrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-sound  :D.
Then things began to work itself out and the stone mostly stabilized itself for a nice point-first trajectory.  The main exeption was stone shot#3 where at some distance I spotted a fellow dog owner arriving (from a safe direction) and sendt the stone off without focus/consentration/zen and it flew off upright spinning around an vertical axis.  Cool but not what I wanted to see......

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The wing orientation on this baseball sling is designed for a rifled spin.

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This position is for backspin.

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It's simple,it's spinning clockwise:

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 Here's something I've noticed.  Until a few months ago I always believed that you had to load your oval shaped ammo perpendicular to (across) the pouch to achieve a rifled spin.  This doesn't appear to be true.  It seems that no matter what position I load my ammo in as long as my cords are in the proper position during release the ammo rights itself and I get the desired rifled spin.  Has anyone else noticed this?

Rat Man wrote on Aug 22^nd, 2011 at 2:51pm:

Here's something I've noticed.  Until a few months ago I always believed that you had to load your oval shaped ammo perpendicular to (across) the pouch to achieve a rifled spin.  This doesn't appear to be true.  It seems that no matter what position I load my ammo in as long as my cords are in the proper position during release the ammo rights itself and I get the desired rifled spin.  Has anyone else noticed this?

Do you mean however it lies in the pouch, the ovoid ammo comes out toward the release cord but its major axis may actually be oriented away from the direction of flight? Is it possible the ovoid ammo rights itself in the pouch perpendicular to the cords from the force of the cast and then self aligns after release?             

No, it can't right itself perpendicular to the cords in the pouch because my pouches are usually long, tapered, and deeply cupped.  Once I set an ovoid projectile in the pouch in line with the cords instead of perpendicular it sort of sits in a trough and can't move until release.  Try it with a long pj type pouch.  You'll see what I mean, Thomas.  I found it a little surprising.  I've always instructed people to place the ammo perpendicular and now I find that it doesn't matter.

Rifling consistently was one of the few things I never could figure out until hearing RM, Aussie and a few others explain it. Sure does make a difference though.  

Why is this sidearm throw of a biconical is rifled point upwards?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qHMFSVZRMY

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Oh nvm, it seems it starts upwards but then corrects itself point first.

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These are bloody good videos David  :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pDh4gzY4KE

Jauke,

I noticed this too, recently!


AncientCraftwork wrote on Jun 21^st, 2020 at 1:06pm:

Why is this sidearm throw of a biconical is rifled point upwards?

It didn't used to be a problem for me, but I changed my form a bit. A lot of releases are actually not rifled with the axis of rotation oriented in the direction of travel, the axis is tilted up. It has to do with the wrist orientation.  Go through frame by frame in any of slinger's videos (pause and then use "<" or ">") and you can see that the way the wrist rolls through up until the throw makes the pouch need to yaw until it is oriented correctly. I seem to have changed the way I roll my wrist through ( I don't pronate the wrist as much as I used to), as well as the sling cords being less stiff, which doesn't allow the pouch enough time to yaw through to being straight on release, allowing for the correct orientation for rifling. Sorry if this is old news to everyone about the pouch rotation. It is something I always knew, but never thought about too much. I just always thought that I was getting the pouch to yaw the correct amount to achieve good rifling nearly every shot, I guess not.

I'm going to try a similar sling to what you did with the Y-sling, but backwards, 2 retention cords on the middle finger, to try and force the pouch to yaw sooner into the correct orientation.

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I have one of these football shaped dog toys. The seam started to crack so now its reinforced with ducttape. It's a great tool for analysing sling spin on a biconical using different styles and grips, because tis so big its easily visible when thrown and how it flies.

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Jauke - i would slice that American football lengthwise and make a mould for clay glandes out of it.