Sander,

Excellent work!

I have always liked the Assyrian Slinger bas-reliefs and once trekked out to the site of Lachish in southern Israel to reenact the assault.

For slings with leather thongs I use the full hand grip depicted.

Question:  Why is the release cord so long?  Multiple Assyrian sources show this.  Do you suppose they have wrapped the retention cord around the hand to "choke up" and thus have both short and long configurations for the same sling?

AjlouniBoy

>>and once trekked out to the site of Lachish in southern Israel to reenact the assault.<<

That sounds great, reenact as in refight the battle?
or like going through the tracks of war again?

>>Do you suppose they have wrapped the retention cord around the hand to "choke up" and thus have both short and long configurations for the same sling?<<

I thought about this before but came to no other conclusion than yours. But although the details are rather high, I never saw cord wrapped aroud wrists(so around hands could be a reason for this). I read somewhere that assyrians were supposed to have used wristloops. And thats one of the reasons I started at first using that too. The other reason was to use tha 2 lenghts possebillety(shorter; loop around wrist, longer; loop around fingers). Only I did not like the long release cord all that much. I got the feeling it was more of a holdback on speed and a direction blur.
This was with a leather sling. About 5 times the stones cut peaces(about 5-10cm) off when released.
Maybe it was due to the sort of leather, maybe the lenght of the release-cord.
...or I did something wrong...

Yes, Fritz_the_cat there's a lot of others. I couldn't find the great picture of a lion being attacked by a pack of hunting dogs online. They're all over the lion.
You might find this site of interest:
http://www.tibimaxe.business.t-online.de/ustibimaxe/aktuelus/texte/berghund.html

That's a pretty simple design, Douglas_The_Black.
You could do it quite easily your self...
copy the design in lines (with carbon-paper if you like )
onto a soapstone (I advise brazillian, for this doesn't break in potsherds so much when cutting deep). Deside wich parts should be high and start scratching off the rest.
Or do you want more detail, should you want this dog or another one? wich form needs the stone to be, the black form or should the complete design be a relief on a stone? How big should the stone be?...

Sander

yes im willing to try one my self, but i cant seem to find soap stone...

I don't think you looked very hard. 

http://www.sculpt.com/catalog_98/stones/SoapStones.htm
http://www.blackpearlsoapstone.com/

A lot of links to various stone carving suppliers
http://aboutstone.org/stonehoo/Suppliers/

Another thing you might be interested in is the Chinese soapstone name stamps.  They usually have kits.

Some inuit man came into the Art Gallery I work at yesterday with a whole bin of soapstone! I had to drill them today because some kids were going to make soapstone necklaces!

Seb, that is some beautiful art! I would like to try carving soapstone. I made some stone blades out of it a while ago; purely for aesthetics.

Fritz_the_Cat
Soapstone comes in a lot of different colours.
From pink/red to gray/black and from earth tones/brownish to green or even white. Also the structure and hardness(is that english?) varies.

Chris was so nice to put the slinger pictures on the site so i have changed their adress from photobucket to somewhere here. The pictures are a bit smaller now.

Are you still interested in me making a stone for you?
If so, let me know.

Sander