First, let me say that I really appreciate the amount of detailed descriptions and answers found on this forum. As somebody who sees beauty in simplicity, I find myself captivated by the concept of the humble sling. I’ve made a couple so far, but unfortunately, because I live in a metropolitan area, I haven’t found an appropriate place to test them out yet.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about a possible alternative shape for the thongs of a sling that might improve it’s performance. As you might have already guessed from the thread topic, this essentially would revolve around the idea of a tapered thong that would gradually get thinner towards the ends connected to the pouch.

What I have gathered from reading previous posts in this forum so far, and that are relative to this topic, is that for a given sling length:

Thicker thongs provide
More accuracy/stability
Less issues regarding cords getting tangled
Thinner thongs
     Provide less drag (i.e. more distance)

I believe that one of the members of this forum has already brought to our attention that as velocity increases, drag increases exponentially. This implies that the portion of the thong that is closer to the pouch (and traveling at the outermost radius) would experience more drag, since the velocity of the cord is higher the further out it is during the rotation of the sling. It also explains why some of the members of this forum who experimented with longer slings found that the end of the thongs (the parts attached to the pouch during motion) lagged behind, thus acted as the limiting factor. These ends of the thongs experienced relatively higher drag then the ends of the thongs closer to the center of rotation (the slingers throwing hand).  If this is correct, then wouldn’t it make sense to try and minimize the amount of drag experienced by gradually decreasing the diameter of the thongs?

I would imagine that you can improve the slinging distance, of an Apache sling for example, if you tapered down the thongs. Conversely, if you gradually increased the thickness of the cords the closer you get to the retention and release knots, on a nylon sling for example, it would improve its stability (and therefore accuracy). I’m also guessing that the extra thickness at the base of the thongs would allow for less entanglements.

My knowledge of braiding is pretty much nil, but I’d guess that the only way to taper down a braided thong would be simply to cut off one of the threads at every few intervals of braiding. I don’t know how practical that would be, and therefore a more appropriate material for such a task would seem to be leather. Something similar to what is found on a whip fall for example.

I think that a sling with this kind of thong shape would provide an better balance of accuracy and distance, with fewer drawbacks that are associated with either thicker or thinner thonged slings. All else being equal, such a tapered sling might provide less accuracy then a thicker apache sling but increase distance; and on the other hand provide less distance then a thin nylon cord sling but improve accuracy.

As I mentioned earlier, I still haven’t had the opportunity to use a sling, so these assumption are just based on what I’ve read on this forum. I’m not really sure how applicable all this would be during practical use, so it would be great to get some input from some of the members here who have had extensive use with slings.

Thanks,

Shabundi

if you look at the FBTF balaeric sites you will see that the slings have tapered thongs. it doesn't say how to do this, but because they are made of natural "hairy" string i suspect that they use sand-paper or similar to remove fibres as the braiding progresses on the release cord (or starts on the retention cord)

sv

FBTF = Federació Balear de Tir de Fona



Ummm, their site is having problems just now.  I could not get anywhere but the home page, either in the English version or the original Catalan.

Oh, you want to know about tapered slings?  One way to do it is just remove strands periodically as you braid.  See

Three-Strand Braided Sling, Step by Step

, by Victor Escobar.  His example just used three lengths of fairly thick nylon cord, but if you braid with thinner cord, and use more strands, you can taper more smoothly.  Take a look at Dan Bollinger's article

Making a Braided Sling: An illustrated guide

to see what I mean about "more strands".

Hmmm, I never thought of trying that.  The idea is the cords are thinner (for less drag) near the pouch where they are moving fastest?  Sounds reasonable.
However, I would not thicken the release cord again, I would just leave it thin.  The reason is, the release cord has to accelerate as the stone leaves the pouch, and a thick, heavy cord will rob the stone of energy.  Plus it can whip around and hit you in the head.  That's bad enough when I hit myself with the sling that has a turks-head release knot...