So I promised everyone who attends my slinging class tomorrow a braided sling for throwing tennis balls that they can take home with them.  I experimented a lot, trying to figure out a good sling design for a beginner who has never held a sling before.  Balearic and other simple split-pouch slings took too much finesse to use in my opinion for a big class of 12 people.  I figured there'd be lots of ammo slipping out of pouches.  Peruvian and Tibetan slings are way too much work to make in bulk and give away.  I thought I had finally settled on making rockman slings for everybody but then my departure for my archaeological field school got moved up by three days and started impinging on my sling-making time, so I modified the rockman with leather instead of weaving.  I'm not sure how durable it will be over the long term, but it holds a tennis ball incredibly well and folds itself back up flat on the release, so it works beautifully.  Has this design been used much?  I haven't seen any examples around here.  These are the ones I made:
 

 

 

They look good to me and look as if they took a good bit of time to make and what is with the slinging class this is the frist time i have seen anything about it and want to know more

I made one like that a long time ago with an old belt which was reinforced with duct tape and jute twine for the cords. I recall it holding ammo very well and that you could adjust the pouch for ammo sizes between an acorn and a baseball. Mine was a bit too chunky but I think you have much better width in your leather pouches. Plus much nicer braides.
 
How did your introductory class go?

Very nice, there is a lot of work in those slings.  I think I will give that design a try.  Is that a round four braid for the cord?

Hey from Delaware, guys!  Loooong drive after the class, so I'm still unwinding.  For the first time ever, the hotel mini-bar looks enticing.
 
Bill, those are simple three strand braids.  I'd have done four strand round or even eight strand square if I were making something like this for myself, but I just didn't have the time for that.  As it was I probably put 12 hours into those slings for the class.
 
CA, I totally agree.  I don't think the pouches are good for much other than tennis balls to be honest.  You could maybe use a rock in them, but that's not what they were designed to do.  We talked about this in class and I explained the very real danger of rocks, and why we were using tennis balls instead.  I showed them some rock throws with one of my ethnographic Peruvians, but with 12 novice slingers in a small area, I definitely wasn't going to teach with rocks.
 
The class went really well.  It was interesting to see who picked what up first.  I had a guy in the class who was very good with an apache style sling, and quite a few people liked that one.  I had a lady who really liked the Byzantine/Greek style.  Some people liked helicopter, and I even introduced a few to balearic.  Nobody seemed to much care for underhand, but that's probably due to it being one of my weaker styles so my demonstration was less than inspiring.  I left off figure-8 as I suck at that one even more.  
 
As far as the slings, they worked for their intended purpose.  The students, for the most part, had no slippages with the tennis balls at all, and the balls went exactly where the students put them (which was sometimes straight up in the air or whizzing past my face), but I think that's par for the course for an introductory slinging class.
 
I was really glad to have done it, as I was warned when I decided to do it by my boss that it wasn't a good idea to teach slinging to a large group because it was too dangerous to people and property when dealing with novice slingers.  I'm glad to have put that myth to bed.  Yeah, I wasn't using rocks, and the slings were specially designed with newbies in mind, but I think it's important to try to find new ways to reach the public to spread these primitive weapons arts.
 
Gold star award wining post

defintiely gold star worthy  
 
Nice job. And yep a whole bunch of beginners with tennis balls is great fun. And you learn to duck regularly too  

Great slings and initiative.  
Bevare, similar slings, at least with the straps crossed, work great for good size stones.  At least for users of split pouch slings.
timann

I'm sure this is a dumb question.
 
But your two strips of leather lie flat on top of each other.
 
I thought with split pouches you were supposed to put one end over and one end under.  
 
In other words, the piece of leather that is on top at one end would end up on the bottom on the other end.
 
Would that work, or am I just picturing this all wrong?