Jaegoor wrote on Jan 4^th, 2012 at 4:22pm:



Pretty sling, this design was the first I tried and it works also well, but the problem was that the  point nail the pouch, as you´ll have noticed. The solution is to use a rounded point or to place a little piece of leather between the point and the pouch. Nice that we are at least two cestrosphendoners

I don´t understand clearly how you place the dart in the sling, perhaps a drawing or a photo will clarify it to me. Do you mean  the point is placed on an end of the pouch?

Hondero, your mentioning the throw being different than for a stone got me wondering.
1. What is, or what seems to be the reason for this? Weight? Length? Release trajectory?
2. Could you imagine a staff sling setup as being a reasonable way to launch a dart? For example, your sling design attached to a staff. This would require a relatively overhead/overhand release, of course. If not, what problems do you imagine?

Thanks,
Matt

Matt Borel wrote on Jan 6^th, 2012 at 6:18pm:



The reason why the cestrosphendon need a special throwing stye has to do, in my opinion, with the conservation of angular momentum. In a conventional sling the main thing is the speed you give to the stone at the release time. So any style is good if the projectile at that speed is released towards the target, flying tangent to the throwing tarjectory. In fact, the throw is a suddent pull forward after spinning a little to give some tension to the cords. The  pouch, by the efect of inertia, remains backwards, and only when the arm stops reaching its maximum extent pointed towards the target, is when the pouch describe a nearly 90-degree arc until the projectile is in the tangent to the target, which is the instant to release it.

In the cestrosphendone, the throwing trajectory is wider and the aceleración is progresive and smooth so that the pouch does not remain far behind to avoid the 90 degree turn and the corresponding high angular velocity at the release point, that makes the dart to spin itself around its balance center and fly erratic.

About staff-sling, I haven´t tried it but may be is the same problem at the final part of the launching: a high angular aceleration. Nevertheless it would be interesting to try it  and see what happens.

I still dont understand why they didnt just tie a length of string to the dart and let them fly together.

David Morningstar wrote on Jan 7^th, 2012 at 4:03pm:


Because the trailing string would cause an enormous amount of drag significantly reducing the range.

yep,and it's a waste of cord,which has to be spun and carried,then thrown. But the main problem would be the huge drag,like Aussie says,greatly affecting range.And as far as our modern experiences with the cestro,it has significantly less range than traditional sling ammo so adding more drag would be just a pure degradation.

compared to stones ,a cestro has similar range,compared to lead,~half the range