HuntsmanSling wrote on May 6
th, 2015 at 10:27am:
I couldn't find this in the forum. How heavy are balearic competition glandes? does anyone have a photo? are they made of clay? I'm thinking of making a mold!
Balearic competitors currently only use rocks.
Every slinger uses different weight rocks - these can vary from as little as 100 grams on up to 750grams.
And as these rocks get smashed if you hit the diana and it's illegal to take rocks from the beaches (which everyone does) it is becoming something of an issue.
here we see a beach in mallorca just covered in sling missiles:
Rusty balls will deform as they leave the sling if thrown hard - something luis pon livermore has remarked upon on more than one occasion.
I'm also not a fan. Jaegoor rarely throws hard and doesn't - that I've seen - use rusty balls for anything otjer than low power close up throws.
Given that that's how most people throw for competition it's not much of an issue. But the few who throw hard at targets - luis first among them - rusty balls just don't work.
For me it would make sense to switch to moulded clay missiles. These could be of any weight the slinger wished and would be 100% uniform. Also there are lots of little pottery manufacturers in the islands who would welcome the out of season work.
The slingers name could be embedde din the missile, saving a lot of time with marker pens
But seperating spanish slingers from their machismo and love of big rocks - that's going to be a very long and difficult process.
And trying to get them to use tennis balls for distance competitions - that's probably going to take me some years to get the messages across.