found this site:

http://ibiza.comagenius.com/wassermanibiza/sling.html

about Ibizan children making slings in 'gym' class.

they talk about a three plait braid and making the pouch section by simply leaving that section unbraided.

anyone tried this? results?

Heya all...

Yeah, tried it with 3, tried with 4 . And i use 2mm rope, also used for climbing-stuff.

With a pretty, flat knot, the 4-naked-strands version has a nice release. 3 is somehow asymetric, not really my preferred version. (dumped her in the river, coz the sling slipped of my finger, big rock cought the pouch.. ouch)

I've tried it with 3, and I've tried a knotted rope version with 5 (the way I knot the rope, the cradle will have an odd number of strands).  I find that they work quite well as long as you 1.  make sure the missile is firmly seated in the cradle and 2.  accelerate evenly throughout wind-up and release.  Sudden accelerations or an improper seating will send your glandes careening of in unexpected directions.  Of course, I'm throwing lots of oddly shaped, rather small rocks.  Larger, more glandes-shaped rocks work better, and the football shape works better than spheres.

tried mine out today: 38" overall w/ 4" unplaited pouch section, 2mm seagrass twine.

worked great with roughly golfball sized smooth river stones. the cast felt much easier than my longer slings. perhaps because the seagrass is fairly stiff.

stone placement in the pouch took some fiddling, but i had no problems with stones coming out as long as i used a smooth backswing and single rotation.