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Question: What Is Your Ideal Ammo Weight?

20-40 grams    
  0 (0.0%)
30-60 grams    
  3 (5.9%)
40-70 grams    
  3 (5.9%)
50-80 grams    
  6 (11.8%)
60-90 grams    
  10 (19.6%)
80-120 grams    
  7 (13.7%)
100-140 grams    
  9 (17.6%)
120-160 grams    
  7 (13.7%)
160-200 grams    
  3 (5.9%)
200+ grams    
  3 (5.9%)




Total votes: 51
« Last Modified by: Whipartist on: Oct 11th, 2011 at 3:46am »

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Your Ideal Ammo Weight, The Ancients, And Accuracy (Read 15170 times)
The Cord Age
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Re: Your Ideal Ammo Weight, The Ancients, And Accu
Reply #45 - Oct 18th, 2011 at 9:47am
 
Quote:
I gave them to various people and asked them to estimate the weight. 

Nobody has yet guessed a weight LESS THAN DOUBLE the actual weight. 
Some going up to 3 or 4 times.

They weigh 54 grams, just under 2 ounces. And if you were hit with one - you'd be going down. 

The reason ancients used this weight lead ammo is very simple. It's the right weight for both distance slinging and vicious impact at the terminal end. 

And I would put good money on the fact that all of you who are quoting high sling ammo weights are way way out and massively overestimating the actual weight of your missiles.


I think this is true to a certain extent.

I tend not to weigh my ammo because I'm fortunate enough to live near pebble beaches so I use anything that looks like it'll "fit in a range". I'm still learning to get accurate, but have decided to try and get reasonably competent with a normally-distributed range of ammo weights before I start to narrow it down. My reasoning for this is that, when you learn to throw things (without a sling) you learn the balance between weight, density, drag, angle, power and distance intuitively, over time. The great thing about slinging is that all of that information -- already in your brain -- is still relevant, you just have to learn how it maps to having a longer, faster, more powerful, arm.

The downside of it is that you'll probably never get beyond a certain level of accuracy, because that really comes with specialization and regular, consistent ammo. But I don't really feel as if I'm at that stage yet.

I own several swiss army pocket knives. A Camper model weighs 2.7 ounces (75g) and a Huntsman weighs 3.5 ounces (95g). While not in any way 'heavy', they're both heavier than you'd 'imagine' their respective weights to feel. 2-3 ounces in a relatively small form factor (higher density) seems to weigh an awful lot more to the senses than the same weight in a larger package (lower density).
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Aussie
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Re: Your Ideal Ammo Weight, The Ancients, And Accu
Reply #46 - Oct 18th, 2011 at 5:16pm
 
Density affects your perception of an object's weight. For example if you pick up a 2oz lead sinker and a tennis ball, the lead sinker will feel heavier despite having almost identical weight. The concentrated mass in the palm of your hand gives a higher pressure on the sensory nerves in the skin.

Another difficulty is that weight (mass) varies as the cube of the dimensions. Increasing a stone's size by 10% will increase its mass by 33%.  So estimating visually is also quite unreliable.

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Re: Your Ideal Ammo Weight, The Ancients, And Accu
Reply #47 - Oct 18th, 2011 at 11:58pm
 
My kitchen scales usually don't lie. 174 and 188 grams for the two representative more or less egg-sized quartz pebbles that I weighed before I ticked my range.
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Noch weiz ich an im mere daz mir ist bekant
einen lintrachen  slouch des heledes hant
do badet er in dem blvote  des ist der helt gemeit
von also vester hvte  daz in nie wafen sit versneit.
 
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timann
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Re: Your Ideal Ammo Weight, The Ancients, And Accu
Reply #48 - Oct 20th, 2011 at 11:16am
 
Aaah, kitchen scales, that`s the word I was searching for.  Before I bought my kitchen scales I had no idea what weight my ammo was.  The stones was either light or heavy.  
Perception of weight, now that`s not one of my great abilities Angry
I was glad when I learned that light is around 100 grams/3,5 ounces and heavy is around 200 grams/7 ounces, so I`m at least using ammo similar to what a lot of other slingers use Cheesy
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Re: Your Ideal Ammo Weight, The Ancients, And Accuracy
Reply #49 - Jul 26th, 2022 at 5:47pm
 
I used to think that lightweight was rather useless. But recently, I realize that what lightweight ammo gets you is...

VELOCITY! 

Sub 40g stones go SO fast out of a long sling.  Man it's fun! I can now understand how small lead glands (like the ones found in the 25-50g range) could go 400m. I have yet to confirm this distance with my own throws, but it seems totally feasible knowing the speed at which small stones come out of a sling. Couple that with a better ballistic coefficient (higher density, lower surface area, i.e. less affected by drag) and I can easily see 400m being realistic on a regular basis from a skilled slinger.
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John R.
 
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Re: Your Ideal Ammo Weight, The Ancients, And Accuracy
Reply #50 - Jul 27th, 2022 at 3:50am
 
IronGoober wrote on Jul 26th, 2022 at 5:47pm:
I used to think that lightweight was rather useless. But recently, I realize that what lightweight ammo gets you is...

VELOCITY! 

Sub 40g stones go SO fast out of a long sling.  Man it's fun! I can now understand how small lead glands (like the ones found in the 25-50g range) could go 400m. I have yet to confirm this distance with my own throws, but it seems totally feasible knowing the speed at which small stones come out of a sling. Couple that with a better ballistic coefficient (higher density, lower surface area, i.e. less affected by drag) and I can easily see 400m being realistic on a regular basis from a skilled slinger.


They come out like a bullet. Terrible accuracy though.
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