AncientCraftwork wrote on Mar 19^th, 2021 at 10:58am:


You naughty, naughty man.... 

IronGoober wrote on Mar 19^th, 2021 at 5:35pm:


You and I are saying essentially the same thing IG. The  shape of the long projectile has more of an effect when it comes to the pouch and cord interaction upon release. That is a different discussion from the one about twisting cords at windup, but two effects are being combined and it generates more confusion than knowledge.  Again I insist that if you ignore air drag during windup, the shape doesn’t matter... just the moment of inertia.  I could produce a sphere with the same moment of inertia that would twist the same way in a sling. Obviously it would release differently, but that’s not what is in question here.

I love you J
So great seeing all your evolution over the past year.
I remember discussing pouch positioning with you when you were very set on capture release Y slings. Now your almost a traditionalist with natural fibre braided slings.

What is important to remember is how all this data is almost a thought experiment more than a practical guide.

Hard data analysis of slingers/slinging mechanics and form is pretty much all backyard science. There are so many variables we are not able to isolate that it’s almost impossible to tell what is doing what. Our own experience becomes what we believe in and next thing you know your set in your ways.

I’m guilty, how many times have I said ”Dyneema”.
Jaegoor is another, aim with your belly
CA, split pouches suck.
We all find what works for us.

Just keep it fun. Don’t over complicate it.

The best thing about slinging is you can’t buy your way to accuracy or power , you can’t cheat it with science.

Practice will trump everything. Keep it fun!!

There’s another thing that bothers me about this whole discussion...
let’s just assume J’s premise is correct: stiff slings give greater control of the roll angle.  Assuming that, and assuming that you know what roll angle you want... how much does that even affect accuracy?  By what mechanism does it affect accuracy?  Is it more than the Magnus effect?  What exactly is the theory that explains why small differences in cord twist are so important? Or is this just about avoiding tangled  cords which have quite an obvious effect?

You could obsess over the stiffness of your cords, only to discover that the pouch release has a much greater effect, for example. You could perfect both of these things and still discover that the problem was actually the slinger’s form (or inconsistent ammo, etc)  all along.

What exactly are we trying to improve or avoid by controlling cord stiffness? I genuinely want to know. If someone can explain it, I’ll be one of the first to obsess right alongside J, because I get excited about genuine advances in slinging knowledge.

Just saying “eh... it’s complicated” and then insisting that cord stiffness is important is the opposite of advancing knowledge. It’s establishment of a dogma.  We don’t need any more dogma in the slinging world. There’s too much already.

Testing would be great. You mentioned a slinging machine for a long time, I think this in the only way to get truly accurate data, as you can't get rid of human bias by testing slingers throws, unless you collect data on thousands and thousands of throws, with targeted differences in the data sets, which would be quite the difficult task.

Quick clarification, it is torsion resistance rather than cord stiffness that affects the cord tangling problem the most from my experience.  But cord stiffness probably has some effect on the speed that the release cord gets out of the way of the projectile.

My interpretation of what J is saying (again taken from my own experience) is about is the "forgiveness" of the type of sling rather than its absolute benefit. Something with stiffer cords is more "forgiving." In archery, it is often said that longbows are more "forgiving" than something like a short recurve.  Meaning you can make mistakes with a longbow but it will amplify your miss less than a similar mistake with a short recurve.  As far as I know, that is a subjective determination (though arrow speed does have something to do with it, as well as the weight/inertia of the bow itself), maybe Morphy can chime in here about that subject.   The forgiveness of a torsion resistant sling is also a subjective determination at this point, but I know that I have fewer problems with a sling that is torsion resistant.

I too would like to get the slinging community to start to collect data on these questions. I think it could drastically improve our understanding and probably help us get better at the skill of slinging. That was the purpose of my overhead camera analysis a few months ago, to try and gain some further understanding and encourage others to do the same. One problem is we all have different ideas about what we want to test because we each think we know how the sling works. So really, we need a standard way to test that we can all agree on, the follow that method and share the results. Kind of a pre-agreement on experimental methods to make the peer-review of the results easier.

Consistent pouch angle control with the wrist, achieved through cords balanced for said projectiles,  is more important for true precision, than a very thin release cord that provides low resistance.

Very light sling cords will sling. A very light sling cord will sling a heavy stone even.
But there is more to precision slinging than just the efficiency. The sling is a friction device. Or one is better off using an Y-sling, if one does not care about internal ballistics.

Even extremely heavy stones can be deflected or even wrap into a very light release cord, causing erratic release. Heavy stones do not solve the problem. They are simple even more out of balance in a light sling.

10:02.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03tvRSuyOXk

Without consistent pouch angle control, you can never have consistent yaw angles and angle of attack, for accurate long range shots. Good ammo does not only solve the problem, the sling must be right as well, and so must be the slinger. This is why I say the sling is an instrument. It's not an esoteric theory. An instrument must be in tune to be played right. The slinger, the sling, and the projectile must fit each other, they must be in harmony for true consistent precision. All three together I call the song of the sling. And if any of these variables are wrong the song is false.
It has nothing to do with listening to a song while slinging and getting some sort of rhytm going.

If you look at a Balaeric sling videos, you see everyone has developed their own way and quirks.
This is something you see alot with slinging. But I think Jaegoor has a good model to follow regarding proper stance