AncientCraftwork wrote on Jul 19
th, 2021 at 11:55am:
I can not vouch figure 8 being bad for heavy rocks. I slung + 50, 200-300 gram rocks with my sling yesterday with a lot of power and didn't feel any soreness and the distance was greater than slung with sidearm. In fact with my light sling it felt like the only right style suited for this rock and sling. aside from Greek. Figure 8 gives a perfect spiral spin on the rocks every time. Even when slinging square brick rubble. I did feel some soreness after rocks that were too light. Because there was not enough resistance to pull against, that's why I don't like short to medium slings and sub 100 g rocks. Those type of rocks need a long sling to shine imo.
I see it like this -- thin slings, that rely mostly on tension for pouch orientation - use figure 8 or Greek/Byzantine thicks slings -- more suitable for rotation styles like Balearic and Helicopter and a narrow grip. Because styles that rotate the sling a few times prior to the powerstroke require more than just tension alone to control the pouch orientation. They need some stiffness imo. At least for a consistent orientation control.
But for figure 8 tension (and a wide grip) is plenty sufficient, but there is a smaller limit to the length of the sling that is possible with figure 8 because it's a vertical style.
While I would never sling stones in the 1lb or above range with the figure-8 other than that my experience has been the same as yours J. I think if you are using the figure 8 with a thick stiff sling you are never going to see why some like it. With a supple thin sling though it practically throws with no effort. Especially with a sling in the 27" or above range.
My experience with the side arm is that paracord and wide grip actually work just fine for side arm. By wide grip I mean ring finger. I was always really happy with the power and accuracy I got with that combo. But i also see why people like very thick/stiff slings. They definitely feel really consistent.
And thats the difficulty. Those balearics feel great but I have yet to see any evidence that a balearic sling acts different under tension vs a paracord one. Obviously when not under high tension they feel drastically different. But during maximum prerelease cord tension im not sure either sling can resist the forces acting on them enough to make a huge difference.
Balearics often feel better but the end results of ADI seems to be the same. At least this is my preliminary theory.
There is a fairly straightforward way to figure this out. Use both with optimum stone weight for each and run a thousand shots through each. Keep detailed scores.
I may be wrong about all of this. Actually really hope I am because it means we are making progress but yea thats how I would approach this.
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Figure eight vs helicopter based styles (Read 8647 times)
