Saturday, December 10, 2011

Bihander Release

That is right, I made a slingshot release in the tradition of a medieval bihander sword.

This is a release that you can use to shoot cannon balls (max. caliber 80mm = 8cm = 2.15").

You simply need a length of Thera Band, and either two poles or two fearless assistants that hold the ends of the rubber bands. Then you clamp your ammo into the release and walk backwards as far as you can.

Then you press with both thumbs on the release and the shot falls.

This can be as powerful as the cannon I made a while ago. You have to use a lower draw weight, but you can compensate by using a longer draw length. Use bands that are three feet long, and you can stretch them to 15 feet easily.

A dangerous little thingy, in fact. Suppressive governments (and Zombies) beware. A new breed of slingshots is approaching.

(Slingshot has been included into the pic just to show the dimensions)



25 comments:

  1. Perfect for "pumpkin chunking" or 'apple chunking' or whatever. The trigger and hand grip is reminiscent of the 'butterfly' trigger of the old .50 cal. heavy machine-gun. Very well designed and built. I am still constantly amazed at your inventive mind. Well done.

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  2. LOL! You never fail to create something even more outrageous. :D

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  3. A little bit over the top, isn´t it?

    At some point you should step back, take a look at your finished Projects and...think about the Danger.

    Your painfull accident is a good example, cos on some point you will put yourself in real danger.

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  4. Well, as long as things happen in front of me, I shall be safe.

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  5. You could stop a charging rhino with that thing. It's an awesome contraption that'll require XXL balls to shoot, and I'm not talking about the ammo. An injury to a careful shooter is probably unlikely, but you'd be so close to massive amounts of stored energy that you'd have to feel a bit vulnerable. But seeing the way you butterfly massive bands, you obviously aren't lacking in the balls department.

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  6. i´m not concerned about the poles or trees where the other ends of the bands are attached to, but how the hell will you pull that thing?
    the handles look like you want to pull it by just moving backwards (aka holding the drawweight with your body). after we saw how difficult it is t shoot heavy stuff even with your legs, i doubt that you can acieve powers like your car sized slingshotcannon...so what is it good for?

    btw: what´s going on with your leonardo projekt? no sponsors found? :D

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  7. My son and I have just discovered your slingshot channel, and we have a great time watching your videos. We haven't yet tried to build any slingshots ourselves yet since we don't have a lot of space to shoot them.

    I noticed that you have a general trend to use larger and larger ammo over time, but we have a question for you. Our question has a practical inspiration - our backyard has begun to be infested with bunnies. At first they were cute, but now there are too many of them, and we want to get rid of them. Our question is: have you ever created a slingshot that can shoot multiple shots at once - similar to a shotgun. This will make it far easier to reliably get the bunnies. I was thinking that perhaps you can put 10-20 ball bearings into a little tissue bag that would disintegrate when shot (maybe the trigger could rip the bag?), releasing a cloud of ammo at once to get a small, fast moving animal. What do you think? My son and I are looking forward to see if you respond to this.

    Thank you!!

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  8. Thom, there are two factors that define the power of a slingshot: Draw length and draw weight.

    The leg operated slingshot used very heavy bands, but had a short draw.

    This new one can use very long bands. Much longer than the cannon, which had a draw length of 2 meters and 60 centimeters (only).

    Daruma, yes, I made a shotgun pouch a while ago.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz2oGkggCCs

    But the energy of a single pellet won't kill a rabbit, just inflict pain. So I advise you to NOT use such a slingshot for hunting.

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  9. that looks epic id love to see it in action

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  10. oh, i see.
    so like a bigger version of your rooftop slingshot (and with both hands in safety now on the handles) you use a softer bandset, but very long, fr a lot of acceleration...you can step back a few yards and release...

    you should build a sailingship with 5 of those mounted on each side for an epic seafight :D

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  11. As I know you are already keenly aware of the danger of this particular kind of slingshot, I presume you will warn them of the following: (1) this design carries a risk of a return-to-sender-shot if the posts are too far apart and the pouch rotates on release and (2) that this kind of slingshot was involved in the only fatality in recent years.

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  12. I have just seen the video and your contraption is quite interesting. have you tried centring yourself more, that might help for a strait-er trajectory of the apple

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  13. Actually, I could have shot a lot harder as walking back is really easy - but then the apple would have been mashed to pulp in the pouch.

    Dan, the "return to sender" does not happen because the trees are too far apart. It happens when the pouch design is bad and the release is unclean.

    My medieval style crossbow has a really wide fork and never ever shot back at me.

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  14. This is interesting, but what if you just grab the pouch with your hands instead of the release? The ammo is large enough to alow a good grip.

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  15. You can pull much harder with the release, plus the danger of a misfiring is much reduced. The release is very clean, that's why.

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  16. @ZDP-189, i think this will work well! because the slingshotcannon work good.
    and this are the same ammo and the same leather.
    maybe Jörg make a jump to the side immediately after the shot but i think this is not required, i wish Jörg good luck :-)

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  17. Jorg, can you please comment more on why your pouch designs are safer (i.e, why they will not shoot it back at you like the watermelon incident, which would be fatal with a steel ball). I just want to understand more about why this phenomena happens, and I want to know more about what is a safe pouch design. Thank you.

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  18. Jake, the pouch of the "slingshot" in the watermelon video was very large, rigid and bowl shaped.

    When such a pouch is released in a way that the shooter gives it a twist (unvoluntarily), the ball may not leave the pouch at the end of the accel phase. Then the rubber snaps back and throws the ball in the direction of the shooter. Ouch.

    The best way to avoid this is to keep the pouch small. The risk of twisting and entanglement is very low then.

    Some people say that a wide fork causes such problems. I can not confirm this and believe it is a myth. Some of my contraptions have very wide forks and nothing ever happened.

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  19. cool, you should make a how to for this and i would love to see it in action

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  20. Thanks for explaining more about why that happens...I just want to be safe!

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