I´ve read here somewhere, that it´s not really the number of turns / wind ups that is the issue..
It´s probably more the speed..

I use several windups, not for speed up, but for gain concentration. When I have made up my mind I speed up the last turn and throw away the stone.

That gives me a good feeling.

/Ulrica

One slow turn to get the stone going works best for me so far.  I know lots of the better slingers don't use any wind-up (Like the guy in the Apache sling article), but I lose power without a preliminary spin.

IMHO it seems to be a matter of what feels right for the slinger. When warming up or playing with a new sling I use the same method that Ulrica described. After that it mostly depends on my mood (and other factors).

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Now that I think about it, when I'm playing with a shortened (or shorter) sling I don't use any spins at all.  I bet there's another factor (relating to the ratio between arm length and sling lenth) to consider.

for me, the only reason for the windup is to make the sling taught before the final throw. Granted, heavier ammo will benefit more from the wind up than lighter ammo. Relying on spining the sling to generate velocity doesn't use it's full potential. What a sling does is double the length of your arm or more depending on the length of your sling. The sling pouch travels much faster around the pivot of your shoulder than your hand does when throwing because the sling has to travel a greater distance in the same amount of time (angular velocity). Simply spining the sling moves the pivot to your wrist instead of the shoulder getting rid of the advantage gained by adding the slings length to the length of your arm, at that point you might as well just throw the rock without it.

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An excellent point!   With this in mind, a better approach might be to keep your arm at full extension throughout the entire throw rather than bending at the elbow for more forward motion.

I think there's more to it than that, though.  I'm thinking about nunchucka.  They gain power not from the extension of reach, in which case a stick would be a more powerful striking tool, but from the addition of an extra pivot point.  As the wrist spins around the elbow's axis, the hand spins around the wrist's axis, and the striking half of the nunchucks spin around the axis created by the cord's attachment to the stick being held in the hand.  This allows linear movement to be translated into circular movement.  You can strike with a comparitively 'forward' arm motion and, depending on the angle of your wrist, allow the strike to come from different angles, with more speed and force than what your hand alone would carry, more than you would have if you were striking with a rigid stick.

I think there may be some sort of interaction between the 'snapping' power of firing from the wrist and leverage gained by the fact that the sling is an extension of your arm.  I wonder if it's a trade-off, more of one (straight-arm, long sling) meaning less of the other (ability to snap your wrist for more speed), or if they're cumulative?