let's start with a little story:
so, this morning i woke up and was like "oh no, i have only five minutes until i need to be out the door" and so i rushed around getting ready, packed a very nutritios breakfast and lunch(powerbar for breakfast, pre-packaged brownie for lunch, with a caprisun that i drank with breakfast) and quickly looked for my favorite sling, not finding it, i just stuck my second fav into my pocket and ran out the door.  i come home this afternoon, some hours go by, and i walk in to the kitchen, where my mom is sitting in front of the laptop.  i am like "ummm...mom, you see my sling anywhere?"  then shee's like "yeah, it's sitting ontop of the clean laundry pile"  i have a flashback; take off pants, toss into laundry hamper, little did i know at the time my fav sling was in the pocket.  back to the present: i walk to the pile, pick up my sling in suspense, and am very happy with what i find.  my leather pouch is soft and pliable as always.  yay!  this tells me that the leather that ron sent me in trade for a sling was probably deer hide, not cow hide, meanign it will dry soft.

anyways....
that is why i am so happy. anyone else have any near sling death experiances?

Well ... I boiled a sling nearly to death, a couple of days ago.

I picked up some leather scraps from a shop that makes leather goods.  Free!  I made a sling with a LoboHunter pouch pattern.  That design requires stiff leather, and this stuff was quite supple.  So I remembered about "cuirbouillie" and decided to try it.  Put a pot of water on the stove, a rock in the pouch, and dipped the sling in the water and held it there about five minutes.  Then I pulled it out, and hung it to dry.

It worked, sort of.  The leather is stiff, and the pouch holds the desired shape.  But it SHRANK!  And it shrank UNEVENLY!  The pouch is not straight anymore, it curls!

Yeah, next time I'll boil the leather BEFORE I cut a pouch from it...

Or maybe, since I can't hurt it anymore, I'll boil it again and stretch it while it's drying.  Ought to work.

I once was on a trip in PEI, Canada.  At a beach I suddenly wanted to try a new style of slinging, the underhand behind the back.  With my favourite sling I went full power.  It was a pretty throw but the probem was that my sling flew out with the rock!  I don't know how but it slipped out of my fingers.  The sling floated about 50 feet away from me on its' way across the atlantic ocean.  What did I do?

I dove, fully clothes with shoes on, into the ice cold water and got it back!   My friends thought I was crazy, but I know real slingers would understand. 8)

I didn't have to dive into freezing water, but I managed to underhand my sling up into a tree one time. Animals my size aren't natural tree climbers, but my friend who was with me said it was pretty impressive to watch me jump into the tree and break off the branch that snagged my sling. There was no way it was going to support my weight at the end of the branch, and it was higher than I could jump and grab. He also laughed at me for not using one of the numerous sticks on the ground to get it out of the tree. Typical me, I suppose...

like getting stuck in an elevator for eleven minutes and resorting to cannibalism.

or swimming 4/5 of the way to civilization only to get tired, so have to turn around.

My sling was washed, and it dried stiff, so I took olive oil and put it in with that (on the not-flesh side), and then letting it stay like that over the night. Next morning I streched aound the edge of the kitchen table. It really helps.

Gard

On the topic of washing
I've noticed that braided slings a very easy to wash, particularly if there made of nylon. This is important, because lately there have been muddy conditions where I'm at.

I think these stories should be compiled, and archived somehow. Label it 'sling humor', 'stories of sling & stone', or 'Slingers stretch'. Some of these stories we can all relate too.

Slingbadger,
My GF fosters kittens, trust me a single fluffy little kitten can be a monster to any thing that has string. Fear not that shredding machine is only fluffy. 

-Unsapien