Hello, glad to be here! I'm Caspian Tomlin hailing from Squaw Valley, California, in the eastern part of Fresno County. I've been into slings for four years now, having started in July 2019, but have always known of them from hearing the story of David and Goliath growing up. My hobbies, aside from slinging, are video games; gardening; studying life, the universe, and everything; history; bushcraft-type stuff; tea (in the truest sense, none of those flavoured teas or tisanes!); and figs.


I originally got into slings from watching a video on making a crude sling by Tod of Tod's Workshop, where he showed how to make one out of paracord and duct tape, or even fancier; paracord and a piece of leather. I, being fourteen years of age at the time and looking for trouble assembled one very quickly (with the duct tape method hehe), went out to use it, and was utterly gobsmacked at the velocity it gave even fist-sized stones.

Being amazed at the performance and having an abundance of paracord and duct tape, I made several more of varying lengths, ranging from half a meter or so to two meters. Of course the two meters didn't work quite so well, but it was a fun experiment nonetheless. Granted Tod's method for making a sling has two separate cords on both the release cord and retention cord, and so slings made with his method tangle very easily and are imbalanced in their oscillation, but his method is super easy and gave me a good bit of fun, hehe.

Eventually I lost interest and stopped slinging altogether until December 2022 when a pair of dogs attacked our sheep, killing one, and fatally wounding two others. Since we don't have any firearms for protecting our sheep and don't want any firearms, I looked no further for livestock protection than the sling. I made a new one out of a piece of an old glove and some paracord, and got back into slinging and was hooked again.

It seemed that I was replacing the release cord every other day from the rock abrasion tearing up the paracord, and so, looking for a technological advancement, followed a tutorial on this forum and braided a sling out of jute back in March of this year and was enthralled by the entire process, both making the sling and using it! Of course since it was made of jute it broke after being used a lot, and so two failed jute slings later I swapped to sisal twine, made several slings, then leapt to loose fibre obtained from twine and haven't looked back.

Perks of being a slinger and a "shepherd" of sorts is that polypropylene for the tassels is always available in the form of the twine on hay bales, and comes in nice , hehe.


I'm super stoked to finally have an account here! I've lurked for a while and have absorbed a lot of the knowledge here haha. Also if anyone remembers Benjamin Scott the Whipartist, I actually live very close to him and had the great pleasure of meeting him in-person!

Welcome!

I made my first proper sling from that same video!

IronGoober wrote on Nov 21^st, 2023 at 10:36pm:

Huh, that's neat! Would be cool to have more local slingers haha. The landscapes in some of his videos do look familiar..

Rat Man wrote on Nov 21^st, 2023 at 7:07am:

Thank you! Yeah I see he was last online here in April of 2021, I guess him working on his throwstick business would draw his attention haha. Excellent guy though, very kind!

Eino wrote on Nov 21^st, 2023 at 10:28am:

Thank you! Tod's video is an excellent introduction I guess! He seems eager to do some historical tests with slings at some point. Would be very cool to have a beloved slinger from this forum chosen for the tests if he does them!

joe_meadmaker wrote on Nov 22^nd, 2023 at 12:57am:

Thank you!