I don't think of myself as a particularly smart man, but the fact it took me this long to think of this surely indicates I'm an idiot.

Mölkky is a Finnish game where you use a throwing stick to knock down pins. Each pin has a number and if you knock down one pin you get that number of points. If you knock down more than one pin you get a score equal to the number of pins knocked down, regardless of the numbers on the pins. It's a really great outdoor summer game, really fun and simple to introduce to new people.

Swap the stick for a sling and ball.

How has it taken me this long to think of this? I've played Mölkky for decades. This is the simplest thing ever. You can get Mölkky sets in supermarkets. It's going to be a hell of a lot harder to play with a sling but it would be that much more rewarding and I can imagine great practice. I might need to go buy a Mölkky set.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B6lkky

That looks really fun!  So you just pick up the pins and place them where they fell for the next round? That makes it doable for slinging I think, otherwise it would be really hard to pick off single pins.

So I guess we all need to buy one of these and start a 'least number of throws to 50' challenge.  :)

We might have to get rid of the "Miss three throws and your out" rule though...

Jaegoor has mentioned Kubb. seems fun to play. I haven't

Lots of games would be fun with a sling adaptation.

I always thought a game of tic tac toe would be fun because the accuracy addition would make it interesting.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4565742

How big are the standard molkky pieces ?
And what sort of weight are the pins ?
They'd be simple to print. But even simpler to make from plastic plumbing piping with sand for ballast and some ducttape.

one piece of pipe cut at a 45 degree angle would yield two molkky pins.
And another piece of pipe mculd be the stick.
or not if we're going to use slings :-)

Looks like fun.

Just can't find out how bnig the pins are.

This is goign to get made as a bbq game !

Great idea kick ! 

So I guess the strategy is to really smack the pins with the first few tghrows to seperate the higher numbered pins for individual picking off.
A bit like a snooker break.

Got a lot more strategy involved that standard skittles. 

Curious Aardvark wrote on Jul 6^th, 2021 at 12:53pm:

So I guess the strategy is to really smack the pins with the first few tghrows to seperate the higher numbered pins for individual picking off. A bit like a snooker break. Got a lot more strategy involved that standard skittles.

Exactly. It can get quite tactical. Precision is really the name of the game to pick off higher numbers but also to sometimes just go for number of pins so as not to go over 50. It's really fun. It'll be difficult with a sling but should be possible.

Here are the dimensions:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/89/72/fe/8972fedb96bebe5b47e68cd0a9eda9d0.jpg

quite big then.

Mind you they'd need to stand up on grass, so can't be too small.

I think I'm going to need 2 sets lol.
One for my parents to take with them in the motorhome and one for home use :-)

I can see this taking off among the elderly motorhome community of the uk !

Soooo, (lol) I suppose I need to see if you can buy 55mm diameter 'dowel'.

I reckon there could be money in this !
:-)

Hey, some of us don't have real jobs :whistle: 

well 55mm diameter is a totally non-standard size for wood rods/dowels.
I do have some 50mm polyurethane pipe.

I've got a couple ideas for how to do the numbers.
But might have to settle for 30mm wood with some printed feet to stop them falling over too easily.

I've got a day for wandering around shops tomorrow - I'll have to see what the diy stores have in stock.

I'd like solid wood - but if it has to be custom made - the price rockets.
Did I Really need another project ? :whistle:
Damn you kick and your enticing finnish pastimes ! 

It's comforting to know I'm not the only person that collects hobbies and projects like fleas :D The fact they're made of wood is, as far as I see it, an aesthetic and ease of production choice. In Finland, sourcing wood is easy. It's everywhere. It being made of wood fits nicely into the "summer cottage in the woods on the shores of a lake" vibe that comes with summer over here. It's known as a "mökkipeli" (cottage game) and I think if it was made of plastic it wouldn't be as popular. Saying that, that's just in Finland and PVC pipe would work just as good.

well it's a weight and durability aspect as well as aesthetic.

I can get wooden handrails for staircases. 54mm diameter and 2.4m long.
pine is £30 up to oak at £50.
Ideally I'd like to use ash as it's the toughest wood around and somewhere inbetween oak and pine in weight.
An ash molkky set would becme a family heirloom, well till you lost bits of it lol.

That's from b&q - I've got a couple of local timber merchants to call as well.
Hopefully they'll be cheaper - you would usually expect b&q to be the most expensive by a fairly large margin.

So for a complete set you need around 2 metres (no clue how long the throwing bail is yet). But figure it's probably around 20cm long as the pins are 15. And that would give you exactly two metres of wood for a complete set.

For  sling version I'd be inclined to make a wooden cube and then file or sand the corners so that it resembles a round cornered dice.

You want something that won't roll too well, but also will fit a sling fairly well too.
An edge smoothed cube would seem to fit the bill. make it 55mm on a side and it's just a little smaller than a tennis ball - so would fit most sling pouches.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/WDK-Partner-WP-021C-Skittles-Multicolored/dp/B08KXTJMZX/ref=sr_1_11?crid=2WJC9CY3TA7LY&dchild=1&keywords=molkky+garden+game&qid=1626273226&sprefix=molkky%2Caps%2C200&sr=8-11#HLCXComparisonWidget_feature_div

well given that i can buy this set for about half the cost of buying wood to make one.

I've just ordered it, lol
:-)

There are small printable desktop versions. But that's no fun.

I will make the 'slingcube' though :-)

Approx 2 hours later...

So I found a lump of what I'm pretty sure is american white oak. Cut a chunk approx 52mm cubish from it, did a little sanding and now have a sling missile for Sling Molkky :-)

And yes that is a woodturning lathe with a diy conversion to a 12 inch sanding disc.
Crude but functional.

I did a quick finish and fine sand to smooth it up a bit for the last pic.

It's weird, it feels really dense and heavy - I weighed it and it's only 110 gms.

Going to need some short corded slings too.

The cube fits nice and secure in the new CA-Slings.
I reckon it would also work quite well in a short spilt braided sling.

I figure you're probably looking at a 14-18 inch sling. You don't want to miss by too large a margin :whistle:

Might make a smaller cube - have to see when the game arrives.

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Molkky set arrived.
Looks like it's a French knock off :-)

Also found an app so you don't even need to bother with pen and paper lol

We'll have a post BBq game tonight. Should be fun.

The box it came in smells fantastic, like fresh sawn pine log's.

Cheers Kick.

Looking around, looks like it's a fairly newish game.
Somehow I thought this was an old traditional Finnish game. But apparently not.
Definitely going to be fun :-)

Awesome! Let me know how it goes. Yeah it's adapted from an older game but Mölkky itself is fairly recent.i keep forgetting to buy a set  ::) I still haven't found all that great of a sling spot though and that's the main problem. I've been so busy the last few weeks I haven't properly explored. That changes next week. Should also be cooler. We've been melting over here.

https://youtu.be/8pzWMt-udss
A world championship match with teams of 5.

There are a lot of how-to videos, but actual gameplay is not so common.

On the sling molkky side.
I made a 20inch sling to go with the oak cube.
So my rules for sling molkky.

1) you choose either the sling or stick and have to use what you choose for all three throws of your turn. Otherwise people might be in lined to use the sling for the initial break and then go back to the stick to pick off the big points.
I'm anticipating that the sling will be harder :-)

That's it just the one rule :-)

Had a play last night, turns out you can't easily stand the pins up on grass. Well not on our grass anyway :whistle:
So back to the workshop to see if I had anything big and flat.

After moving the laser and wiggling something out from behind a set of shelves.
I ended up with a 2 metre square folding surface.
Older members might recognise the top of the tripod Balearic target.
As used in Wales for the UK's biggest competition to date.

One thing I have noticed from watching actual molkki games, is that none of the game rules you read online, match how people actually play the game.

Most of the rules say each player has three throws per go and the pins are reset after those three throws for the next player.

In reality, the pins are only ever reset for a new game after someone has hit the 50 points. And players have one throw per go and just take it in turns.
If playing in teams. A member from one team had a throw then one from the next team and so on until a team scores 50 points.

Which makes a lot more sense.

And it's a lot harder than it looks. Lol
The throwing stick us really light, so it's really easy to overthrow.

Also given that both my practice sling throws resulted in a wooden cube in the flower bed.
Full on sling molkki will have to wait till I have a backstop :whistle:

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It's definitely a tougher game to play than it looks :D Yeah grass can be difficult to play on.

The board should help, if one goes on the grass, we'll just stand it up as best we can :-)

There seems to be two main throwing styles.
1) The bouncing up and down with the bail held horizontal while looking serious.
2) flipping the bail lengthwise while staring into the distance and looking thoughtful.

So the important thing is to decide if you are a Bouncer or a Flipper :-)

My family playing Mölkky on holiday down south. If I only was there with a sling...

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wow impressed they've got them to stand up, that makes my lawn look flat !

so who's who in the picture ?

And of course - who won :-)

Curious Aardvark wrote on Aug 8^th, 2021 at 2:49pm:

wow impressed they've got them to stand up, that makes my lawn look flat ! so who's who in the picture ? And of course - who won :-)

Don't know who won actually, but in the photo is my mum, two of my sisters, and then each sister's partner.