Is a sling as powerful as a gun?
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- Опубліковано 8 лют 2025
- The 'Part 2' film looking at slings. The film covers the power of slings, how fast the projectile moves and what its momentum is; momentum being a large factor in the penetration of projectiles. It poses the question and answers in some part 'Is a sling as powerful as a gun?'.
Discuss.....
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While in Somalia, I witnessed, during a riot, a bunch of kids using slings against a rival clan. Adults standing 100 yards-ish away were laid out with one shot. I'm not sure if it was a bunch of lucky shots, but it was still extraordinary to see.
why the hell would you go to somalia? military purposes?
@@machaign Yep. 10th Mountain Division.
Oh... 10th Mountain... Battle of Mogadishu?
@@tedytarrify Nope. We left about 4 months before that.
@@shannon1664 Respect to you. The place sounds like it was a hell hole.
Tod: "... has effectively the penetrating power of a 9mm bullet..." Also Tod: "...There's another video I've done on how to make them. So go out, play, mess about in your back yard..."
Yea and Americans play with 9mms in their back yard
@@bugglemagnum6213 this is very true lololol , lol honestly i think ive been to a real range like 3 times in my life
Buggle Magnum yeah That’s why we don’t get arrested for tweets while y’all English folks do
Doriyan can’t call for violence in almost all countries. Very illegal
Nice video, thanks. Baseball players throw 98 mph; how fast can the sling throw?
Thank you- unless it’s just RPG tropes, they call ‘em sling bullets for a reason. Pretty good against giants too, or so I’ve read.
That's because bullet comes from Latin Bulla.
Bulla being sling ammo.
The funniest part about this is that Bulla translates as Bubble.
So in roman times bubbles killed people
Slings are an equivelant to Anti-Large Pistols. _Pistols._
@Torin Jones, Wiktionary says it comes from the french word boullete, meaning smal ball.
obviously early bullets were small balls and I don´t see the easy relation to bubles.
On the other hand, boulette might come again from bulla, but that isn´t for sure. It seems questionable to me to suppose that boule(french=ball) comes from bulla(latin=buble) whereas it could also come from the frankish word for ball.
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/boule#French
@@letswaveabook3183 Many French words have Latin origins
Also, when David was about to face Goliath of Gath, one tends to forget he had been practicing for years in the wilderness already and got mad good at accuracy and strength to be able to face a giant who had shield bearer with him.
You don't need to swing it around loads before releasing, that just decreases your ability to aim.
One sharp swing and release, using the rotation of the hips, it gives you a better understanding on where your projectile is going and how hard you're launching it.
(I've been slinging for about 14 years)
Doesn't seem like you can build up enough speed with just one rotation....
@@dexagalapagos I'm sure after 14 years you figure out the perfect motion. If there's one thing about the sling, it's how long it takes to master it. Makes bows look simple and easy to learn
@@山口れいしゃん
It takes less energy than spinning it around needlessly 🤔
If you take an honest look at the physics behind it, there's absolutely no justification for swinging it about before you go for the main swing, after all the last swing is where the energy is generated, and having it spinning before hand doesn't add to that last swing.
Generating all the energy in one burst and you're conserving energy and time overall.
Personally, I judge the weight of my "bullet" when I pick it up off the ground, sometimes just by looking at it on the ground, I wouldn't pick it up if it didn't meet the criteria on first sighting. Each pebble/stone has it's own characteristics and after years of practice you know how that stone will react on appearance alone.
In respect to accuracy, I've had far more convective hits by not preswinging the sling and using my methodology.
Just hold the sling behind you loosely and judge by eye where the target is, the swing horizontally whilst using then rotation of your torso and hips to add to the power of the swing, give it about 10,000 swings and you'll be hitting coke cans off fences from over 300 yards no problem.
Muscle memory is key, and changing sling (even if they are the same materials and same Measurements) can screw with your methodology; if your sling doesn't last for decades of daily use, you're making it wrong.
The best success I've had with accuracy is melting lead using sand moulding, just heat it up by furnace heating coals and melting lead in thumb moulded sand on a beach. (these are a pleasure to throw)
It really doesn't that much to heat charcoal up enough to melt lead (the sort used for roofing)
If you commit to all of the above, you'll be on the right path to slinging mastery, practice everyday for a year and you'll fully understand.
@@山口れいしゃん
I never had an issue with having the round slipping out before it was ready, I honestly don't see any real reason to preswing the sling.
It just seems entirely pointless if I'm honest.
Is the cup not large enough on your sling maybe?
@@山口れいしゃん
I never had that issue even when I was a kid and just starting out, just because the majority of people preswing, doesn't mean it's got any use or is needed, that's called an argumentum ad populum.
Only the initial swing is needed, get good at this, and you can start launching stones repeatedly and rapidly.
I was in Spain as a kid and saw a shepherd controlling his sheep by firing a sling against rocks. The sound made the sheep go the direction he wanted. He was super accurate and you could hear the power in the shots. The sling for me is a very underrated weapon
"Firing" a sling? Lmao
@@kentknightofcaelin4537 slinger slinging the sling by singing in a slang, swinging the swang, nobody hearing the lousy bang, only a slam... sheep leaving the man
Considering that Roman surgeons had special tools for removing sling bullets from flesh...
Imagine being pierced by a squad of slingers... ew
@@thessop9439 And, "ow"...
@@gatocles99 And specially "OUCH"
Those metal ammo in the past were corrosive as well most likely, them being stuff in your body will react to blood and rust away.
Slings can use shaped stone or metal bullets for ammo, so essentially the metal can corrode on blood and cause blood poisoning...
@@dra6o0n Yes, the sling bullets were made out of lead, and lead is bad for humans... But blood poisoning is sepsis... a bacterial infection... which also killed a lot of people back in the days before antibiotics.
For perspective remember that shepherds protect sheep with slings. The critters that hunt goats and sheep are not delicate.
Sometimes even a close miss would scare off an attack.
@@tods_workshop I'm guessing that back in ancient times, people didn't really care, they just wanted to kill predators, because it meant life or death for your flock, and thus your entire livelihood.
@@2bingtim Yes, seeing rocks flyings is really scary for a wild animal. they must see us as wizards or something ! :)
I've been led to believe that lions are in fact very delicate for a predator of their size. I'm not an expert at all, just thought it was interesting if true.
Harrison Staley Definitely not true. They fight each other quite often. Very tough hide and skulls.
The only way to stop a bad guy with a sling is with a good guy with a sling...
I see you.
Or a pair of scissors.
People think more sling-control will prevent more crimes, but if we take away slings from the good guys, the bad guys will ALWAYS find a way to get ahold of a sling. In fact I think every school teacher needs to have a sling in the classroom
@@thomash4950 Slings are illegal? Normal people can't even use correctly, what are they worried for
To stop bad guy with a gun you need good guy with sling
Hello Todd, not necessarily the same penetration potential, but similar impact force is what the momentum will give you. The 9mm bullet at about 115 grains (~7.5 grams) is travelling 330m/s, and with a much smaller diameter and conical tip, will definitely penetrate more than the lead sling projectile.
Like using an arrow with a bodkin tip vs those blunt spring loaded small game heads.
@@tl8211 Yeah friction, materials (both your projectile and the thing you are hitting with it), angle of impact, how does the projectile travel through the air, surface area but also the shape of it as well (again on both ends) etc. etc. There are so many variables that getting just one/few of them does not say that much. Certainly not enough to make a general statement.
A good way to look at it is if 9mm will hit you in the soft body armor the punch would be the same as from the sling.
Granted as well that this is at short range. The glandys is like to slow down a fair bit over longer ranges. Perhaps moreso than the 9mm.
Sectional density is what I believe you are talking about.
And penetration of a bullet is very complicate thing, I saw once a ballistic formula about that and it was very longggg becasue is not only about theoretical energy but more about how much energy is given back to target.
And btw 9mm is not really high penetrating bullet
Thank you, Tod. I've only been doing this for two or three months, but have mastered the art of making good slings. So far, but have not developed any accuracy, and only sling underhand, but with considerable force. 75 yrs of age and always learning new things.
God bless ❤
The sling projectile is also causing damage on a different level than the bullet of a firearm. Due to the sling projectile's larger surface it's energy is all dumped on impact = massive shock. A truly devastating weapon in skilled hands, love your videos Tod.
Yeah it's more of a blunt impact trauma than a swiss cheese making device.
I remember first hearing about the lead projectiles historically used with slings from thegnthrand, and I was amazed by the power he demonstrated it could have.
Make slings, overthrow the government. Got it!
Finally, i got mine! We gotta start passing them out. Ever hear of jai alai?
Be sure to wear those V for vendetta-masks
You forgot the years of practice to use a Sling effectively. The revolution might have to wait, a bit.
If Boris J. gets us out of the EU, you won't need it. But if those other traitors stuff everything up, well, .. bring it on.
Or just vote?
"Slings are awesome"
Yeah I know a channel that would agree with you 👍
tell me about it so i can check out its feauteres:D
lmfao
Ha ha ha ha ( deep German tone )
So, the fight between David and Goliath was essentially that scene in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" where Indy pulls out his pistol and shoots the swordsman running at him. I always loved that scene.
I always disliked that scene. Even as a child I thought it was silly. It’s such typical Hollywood, and so provincial.
Nobody in anything even approximating real life would do that stupid sword dance while making silly sounds like that before sticking you. They’d just stick you and be done. If they’re going to do any silly dance it would be to celebrate afterwards.
@@adamesd3699it was supposed to be a cool swordfight but harrison ford needed to take a shit so they improvised
"Harrison Ford got sick during the filming of the "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and cut a scene where Indiana Jones was supposed to have a sword fight in Cairo with the 'Swordsman'. Due to dysentery, they cut the scene down to Jones shooting the Swordsman."
He basically had diarrhea so they couldn't shoot the sword fight.
@@adamesd3699 no. plenty of people showboat before fights- thats half of the descriptions of single combat. you just sound butt hurt that the sword guy was beaten by the gun guy.
@@adamesd3699Homie basically already explained it, it was supposed to be this big, epic sword fight, but Ford had food poisoning or something, had the runs real bad, and just kinda improvised 'cause he needed to go...well...Krakatoa.
I just wanted to chime in to keep an eye on the thread. I sense popcorn worthy shenanigans.
In the autobiography of the artist Benvenuto Cellini (1500 - 1571) just about every time there's a street fight (he got into a lot of fights) out come the slings. Apparently it was a common weapon in Italy at the time.
Well given the comparison to a 9mm versus the sling, imagine a first gen matchlock pistol and the reload time...
Damn Italy was western before America was a thing and spaghetti western films
Cellini is the sculptor referenced in Audrey Hepburn’s How to Steal a Million. Haha. So great.
Would be awesome if you could at some point have one of the world slinging competitors or a Balearic slinger for the same testing to see the difference from someone w/ alot of experience in the art. Like you said some of those slingers can truly let them fly
As a high school student I had a chance to handle Roman artifacts from the battle with Hannibal at Lake Trasimene. There were examples of spear heads, scale armour, and sling bullets. I was quite surprised at how heavy they were being largish & lead.
I know im late to the party, but surely "penetration power" is a quite complex calculation with the main factors being, momentum (speed and weight), surface area (how small the projectile is) , areodynamics of the projectile within the given liquid (the effect of air resistance on the projectile, eg a bullet/sphere shape is better than a cube) , and stabilization due to how well it will maintain energy (forward momentum) on impact (spin (similar to how a bike remains upright while traveling at speed))
Also don't need to penetrate to wound or kill. Or maces and warhammers would be pretty pointless. Jk.
Not to mention a variety of properties of the thing(s) you're trying to penetrate.
Those slingers who could get them used lead bullets for that reason; far better at wounding a man in armour, in particular.
"Haha. Let me show you itz featurez! Haha"
I'm late to this comment but it is perfection. Thank you for that laugh
(Laughs in German.)
“Zer is a string, zer’s a leather pouch und zer is a rock...........Zat’s it really....” 🤷♂️
Would be really interesting to see what effect these shots would have on a shield.
Would be really interesting to see what effect these shots would have on a person.
@@gavaudan2131 stones only smash every thing inside the body at the point they hit but they would not go in. Lead goes up to 12 cm into an unprotected body. Did this with balistic gelantin with thin leather as skin over it. With cloth over that it's even more brutal because there is a lot of cloth than into the wound.
@Grim Peeper Armor of antiquity (like lorica segmentata) would not be backed by padded jacket or gambeson, so even, if the lead did not penetrate, it could still inflict fractures and internal bleeding.
Rather unwisely my brother and I (decades ago!) tested our home made sling on a wooden door using lead fishing weights. It penetrated the door by around 2cm and made us unpopular with our parents! I imagine a shield would be a reasonable defence in many situations but an accurate slinger would surely aim for unprotected areas.
Wood shield would be shredded pretty quickly. A metal shield would be dented, but that's it.
Froissart mentions the Castillian Slingers threw lead balls with their slings, and some of them (perhaps from sling-staves) could went through/broke an helmet.
Cast lead bullets were already being used by balearic slingers in Cartaghinian service. Plentiful, easy to melt, easy to cast, made of a metal available almost anywhere even in antiquity.
and yes, they had huge impact potential. A direct impact from a sling bullet to the head would cause massive trauma and helmets only offered limited protection against that kind of severe concussive effects. Romans weren't known for using soldiers that weren't truly lethal - yet after they had access to them once Cartage was destroyed, they sent Balearic slingers and used them throughout the empire for centuries.
Well Goliath underestimated the sling and paid the price for a well placed shot! Looking at other comments, the development of a Spitzer projectile shot, could improve performance!
King David was just a Biblical sniper.
The romans dug the first two joints of thier fingers into sand and poured melted lead into the hole in the sand. This made projectiles that would spin off the leather and fly like an Amercan football.
Very stable and carried much further than a round ball.
Inpact energy and penetration must have been awesome.
This is really interesting, and it makes sense of what I thought of as surprisingly low numbers on your earlier crossbow videos.
It would be interesting to see a reevaluation of those numbers with this new system.
Oh yeah that would be worth doinh.
A good friend of mine had bought a crate of Ford Motor Company lug nuts specifically for using in his sling, and I can tell you one thing, it was absolutely GD lethal at pretty astonishing distances. We were knocking oak boards out of an old barn like they were paper.
My grandfather's brothers were literally hung from a tree because of one of these slings. The story goes, early 1900s, the eldest brother at 15 was a sheep shepherd for a major rancher that lived next to the Navajo reservation. A sling was the only tool he had to protect the flock from wolves and such. The lead ram,which were expensive at the time,had a bell around its neck that the flock would follow. He got so good with the sling that he could hit the bell from a far distance and hear it ring. One day while showing off to some ranch hands, he missed the bell and killed the ram,splitting its head in two with a sling shot stone. He then hid expecting repercussions. The rancher and a group of sheriffs showed up on the rez to find him. When his mother said she didn't know his whereabouts they started to hang the other brothers, age 9 and 5, from a tree in the yard. When he arrived to protect his family they hung him too. My great grandmother then hid my grandfather,still an infant, under the floorboards of the shack they lived in. They then arrested her and she was never seen again. When the neighbors came to bury the boys they heard the crys of my grandfather under the shack. They raised him until he was 12 when he and all other Indigenous children were taken to a Christian boarding school to learn to be "civilized". There he was named Lopez to which I am 3rd generation. Anyways, the boys in my family learn to use a sling at an early age as a way to remember. Sometimes something so small can have great meaning.
Damn, I have 3 boys too. Hope the rancher and his minions rot in hell or equivalent.
Holy shit. That is so dark it makes my head spin. The wickedness and cruelty of men is beyond the reach of my mind sometimes. I would burn the world down to protect my family. That rancher and those lawmen can rot in their miserable graves. May their souls be damned.
Amazing story!
Thanks for sharing.
Dear god. Why would you hang two innocent kids for something they didn't do. Truly evil. And they would've killed your infant grandfather had they found him too. All over a stupid ram.
@@lucasolson9132play red dead redemption 2, you get to kill lawmen for fun lmao
This is a very brave man, slinging that rock into the plywood board standing 3 feet away from it. Either crazy or brave, or both.
I was waiting for him to put his eye out
He was running the risk, but the shot was made from lead, which tends to absorbe the impact instead of bounce around
yeah i tought so too, but then again it would make a lot of sense waiting for your target to get real close before swigning.
with that power you realy only need to hit once. imagine getting hit in the face.
Helmets are good.
SIGH. Momentum. I remember this type of argument from one of the gun magazines about 30 years ago. It seems that a 9 pound bowling ball rolling along at a VERY modest rate of speed, has many times the momentum of a .45 ACP round (.45 Automatic Colt Pistol, made famous by the Colt 1911 or vice versa) which in turn, out classes the 9 mm NATO. So a slow moving bowling ball is more "powerful" than any handgun cartridge.
Some have brought up penetration. Sectional density plays a huge part in penetration and it was not addressed here. It is MUCH harder to penetrate anything with a large, round, bowling ball, than with a thin pointy object. Therefore, nails are thin and pointy rather than thick and spherical.
For a real test of comparative penetration, use a black powder flintlock pistol firing a lead ball vs. the exact same weight, size, and shape, projectile from a sling. Both might kill a man sized animal, but only one will penetrate 3/4" (18 or 19 mm, if I got that right) of plywood. One could also do the same test with a modern pistol but it is a bit of a problem to find spherical bullets for modern handguns. It wouldn't be a fair test if the projectile from the firearm hit "pointy" end first and the sling projectile hit sideways.
I have concluded, over decades of shooting, that slings are not as "powerful" as firearms. HOWEVER, that doesn't mean they are not deadly because obviously, they are. I am pretty sure that bullets kill by penetration and slings kill by blunt force trauma.
I've gotten similar energies to a .45 Auto out of a hand thrown brick. Of course, a brickbat has been proven deadly, but it's not Reliable, and the follow-up shots are a bit tricky.
@@Psiberzerker Aahhh yesss, (in my best W.C. Fields voice) the legendary "Alley Apple", much ballyhoo'd in days of yore. Ubiquitous in some locales, but hard to carry 7 reloads, and the neighbor's hanging laundry (if anyone remembers hanging out your laundry to dry) becomes "cover" rather than merely "concealment" hence the need for the .45 ACP.
For those who don't know, cover stops bullets, concealment stops only light. Behind concealment the enemy can't see you, but behind cover, the enemy can't shoot you.
@@Grynslvr2 Yeah, I'll stick with my High-Power, and mini-14 but to each their own.
I think you are underestimating a bowling ball. Imagine you are legs spread in front of a bowling alley with a nail positioned towards your testicles. How fast is too fast for that ball?
@@mandowarrior123 Though I get your point, it has a problem: Since you claim a pointy object to be in the way of the bowling ball. The energy of the ball is transfered onto the nail, so roughly spoken, a lot of force on a small area. Ouch! But the same counts for your honey: if she stands barefoot on one of your feet, you might not even notice it, but if she's all high heels that day, she might easily break your foot.
Great experiment, definitely will inspire more discussion. Would be great to have Ballistic expert here for this topic. Repeating theme in comments is, how complex penetration force is.
The major contributor is also spinning off the bullet around own axis, sling projectile doesn't have it. The barrel is drilled with smooth whirling railing and ith helps travel and penetrate better.
Would be interesting to see you investigate if slings could outrange bows, since there are stories in history of it happening.
Its always such a polite, fun conversation when you bring up projectiles and KE/momentum in a crowded room. lol. When it comes to a blunt object perhaps momentum is a good figure to compare two like designed projectiles and predict what one will penetrate more. And KE perhaps is a better figure to use to see what target is more likely to get up after getting beaned in the head between the two.
I have found with modern arrows velocity, head, weight, construction, spine, ect are all important factors. Just a slick exterior makes a world of difference.
The 9mm has a smaller surface area though, and that matters a lot for penetration. Also most sling bullets are round balls, whereas 9mm bullets are more... well... bullet-shaped, and they get rotation from the rifling in the barrel. All of that translates to better and straighter flight. And the bullet, being lighter, has to move faster to get that momentum, and thus flies further than the sling bullet in whatever time it takes to fall a set distance. It has a comparable momentum, and with that anecdotal 60m/s even more, but it does not translate directly to penetrative power.
well if you compare a 9 mm to a tungsten carbide punch weight you might see the sling ammo having smaller penetration, aswell as straighter flight path
Is a sling as powerful as a gun? Well I've never thought to test a gun against my shed, so probably not
Momentum is not a good indicator of penetration.
A bowling ball moving at 1 m/s would have 10x the momentum of 9mm, so it would penetrate 10x as much?
Kinetic energy translates into penetration. That squares with velocity and is only linearly proportional to mass.
So a tiny bullet going extremely fast will have tons of penetration power, even if it's momentum is only equal to a billard ball dropped from head height.
Well, if you had a 9mm ball the same weight as a bowling ball (let's say 6 kg), it would penetrate soft materials fairly well. Not as well as a 9mm bullet, but projectile size, shape, density, hardness and target material all have significance to penetration. Kinetic energy is a very rough indicator of penetration, but better than momentum for sure. In practice you will have to test, and always remember that target material is also very important. Arrows for example, even with marginally sharp heads, tend to penetrate soft materials like flesh quite well, but are very poor at penetrating steel plate armor compared to high velocity bullets.
Better example would be dropping a steel rebar, just to remove cross sectional area variance from the equation. Drop a 1m long steel rebar "about 1kg weight" about 30cm and it'll have as much momentum but its not going to punch through much plywood, even if it had a pointed tip. Even though it has as much inertia.
Clearly there's more going on here and i think it is neither energy nor momentum but "impact" which is also a product of mass and velocity but a third factor as well: deceleration distance.
Lets go back to first principles, what does it mean to punch a hole in plywood? If you were to brace a pneumatic piston on a piece of plywood, do you think energy or momentum is what you need to keep track of? No, you note down what FORCE the piston applies, the bonds inside the plywood need to be overwhelmed by the force of the piston to break it, the same goes for objects impacting the plywood.
To estimate damage of a projectile on a hard object you need to find a way to calculate how quickly the object decelerates, it cannot decelerate instantly or within zero distance as then the force approaches infinity. This is a very hard number to calculate, slight changes in what's the deceleration distance massively changes the peak forces.
This us why those thin gel cases on phones can be so effective, as they change the deceleration distance on a dropped phone from 0.01mm to 1mm is a 100x difference in impact force. And why you need thicker and thicker cases to get the same proportional benefit.
Penetration would be an indicator of momentum if u new the resistance of the medium + the ballistic coefficient
Verifiable untrue. A .357 Magnum and a .38 Special are bullets with the same diameter, with can be used interchangeably on some firearms. While it can vary, when controlled for bullet mass and barrel length, a .357 tends to have about 1.5 times the velocity of a similar .38 Special.
If kinetic energy were the primary factor for penetration, one would expect the penetration of a .357 to be 1.5^2 or 2.25 times that of a .38 Special. However in tests, again roughly accounting for all variables aside from velocity a .357 tends to have about 1.5 times the penetration (or less) vs a similar .38 Special, which is more consistent with momentum being the main factor when only mass and velocity are considered.
As for the bowling ball example, pedantically, a 12 lb ball going 1 m/s would have a momentum of roughly twice that of a 9mm. (5.4 N vs 2.8 N) However, a bowling ball has about a 216mm diameter, so very roughly the cross-sectional area is about 575 times larger than a 9mm. That means, very roughly, the bowling ball would exert a pressure of 37 Pa while a 9mm would exert a pressure of about 11,000 Pa.
Additionally the shape of the object comes into play, in ballistics this is called the ballistic coefficient, which is it's own field. A bullet's shape in the direction of travel allows it to more easily pass through material than a round ball. Simply put, the bullet's shape allows it to penetrate further, whether that be air, flesh, or dirt.
So yes, a tiny bullet would penetrate far, mainly because it would cause a lot of pressure (momentum over area) at the impact point.
More pedantically, a billiard ball (0.16 kg) dropped from head height would have about 3.14 J of energy and would be going about 6.25 m/s, giving it a momentum of about 1 N. That would equate to the momentum of about a .22 LR, just as an FYI. =)
@@DarkRaven2003 Projectiles hitting something like ballistics gelatin at the speed of a bullet isn't very relevant as at such velocities the gel acts more like a fluid where the bullet hits it.
With fluids, resistance goes up with the square of velocity. So more or less the equation balances out, you've got 1.5^2 more energy but you've got 1.5^2 more resistance. But more resistance means more disruption. So a .357 might split a small ballistics gel block in half where the same sized block shot with .38 special would just wobble a bit.
A wooden board does not act like a fluid when a sling projectile hits it. It's a fundamentally different mechanic. It's about whether the forces at the instant of impact exceed the bonds holding the wooden board together, once those bonds are broken the sling bullet has so much momentum relative to the part of the board being broken.
A wooden board is relatively much thinner and harder, the lead bullet much more massive. Momentum transfer is massively different yet velocities are so far below the speed of sound in said materials.
Firearms ballistics is just a completely different realm as you have complicating factors like the bullet changing shape as it impacts.
"That means, very roughly, the bowling ball would exert a pressure of 37 Pa"
How did you get that number?
And even 11,000 Pa is really low for the pressure applied by a 9mm bullet considering air pressure at sea level is over 100'000 pascals. I doubt a 9mm bullet applies the same force as the pressure being only 10% lower than surrounding air pressure.
"giving it a momentum of about 1 N"
Newton is a measure of force, not a measure of momentum or inertia. Momentum is measured in kilogram metres per second. As F=ma you can only get netwons (force) out of it by trying to change the velocity of the moving object, and that totally depends on what it hits and how it is hit.
I started slinging thanks to your previous video. Thanks a lot !!
There is a video out there by a UA-cam scaled Volound expounds. He calculated that he slung lead glandes weighing 54 grams at up to 100 m/s. That would be absolutely insane. I think you should make a couple more videos on slings, using other lengths and experimenting with other projectiles.
I've just made two more after a day at the beach with one and I'm starting to realise you could science the SHIT out of this!!!
Size and shape of the pouch, how you hold it, which way round you hold it, length, size/weight/shape of the projectile, throwing technique (although that has been explored,) elasticity/weight of the chord, biomechanical efficiency vs maximum performance ........
You can trow a ball at 100 km/h seams like resonable to sling it way faster.
Yes but 100km/h is only about 28m/s
In Europe these often used metal projectiles. They defiantly penetrated enough to be lethal as there are accounts of them being lethal, and instructions on how to treat those struck and survived by these. In the Americas, they often used a dense clay projectile. These were more blunt for trauma then penetration. They were strong enough to break bone rather easily.
Lead was superior to stronger, less dense metals due to the fact that it deforms and transfers energy far more effectively. A penetrating shot might actually cause less overall damage (or deflect off of amour), compared to a softer material (that could more likely deform or damage armour than a stronger material). Sling damage is less about penetration, and more about blunt damage (especially vs unarmored targets, like game).
@@littlekong7685 Roman surgeons had special tools for removing sling bullets from flesh. Penetration was common enough that those tools were standard for military surgeons.
@@gatocles99 This is true. the question is if a steel bullet would be preferable to a lead bullet, it seems historically at least they preferred lead overall in Europe. It isn't that they can't penetrate, it is that when they don't, they transfer energy rather than deflect.
@@littlekong7685 Romans back in the day, and us today, still prefer lead bullets... or heavier metals, because of the high weight to volume ratio. The more weight you can put in a smaller package the better. They fly straighter and truer, farther and faster.
But even lead bullets will not transfer much energy if they are deflected by armor, not unless they are very big bullets. And at that point one should just use a rock. Which slingers did when they wanted a larger mass for breaking bones and smashing shields and armor. Greek slingers used to sling volleys of stones weighing one pound... Even if one is wearing armor, it would suck getting hit... and you could get a broken arm and a broken shield trying to block it.
It would be interesting to see what one of those would do in ballistic gel. I think it's kind of hard to compare slings/sling shots to bullets for several reasons that I'm not going to pretend to understand. I've seen JoergSprave on the slingshot channel do similar stuff. But what I do know, is if you were shooting a 9mm at that plywood in front of your chrono, you would easily go through that and several walls in your house.
That being said it's still crazy what that thing will do. Definitely not something I'd want to be on the wrong end of.
2.5 oz 65g lead nuts pointed ends with the divot on the side so they fly true will penetrate somewhere between 2-6 inches in gel.
Clays will blast out about an inch and a half round a well as deep gash from gel, they'll also throw a bunch of junk around and blind if it's anywhere near the eyes
There are a lot of variants of the sling. The Aztecs, for example, had war slings that they used to throw softball sized stones with enough force to slam an armored man out of a saddle, or crush a horse's skull. Staff slings can also throw powerfully. It would be fun if you could find people practiced in utilizing larger and more powerful slings.
I got really into slings for a while after reading Clan Of The Cavebear and they are amazing fun!
I am so surprised by the power of the sling i knew of them in the past but to have modern testings is just amazing.
Hahahah I KNEW he was gonna break the chronograph the moment the video started
I carry a short Greek style sling and throw a tensioned sling between two arms behind the back style. The top hand controls the sling and the bottom hand controls the pouch you put the whole sling under tension and release the pouch hand in one movement. It is one step forward and one movement with your throwing arm no wind up. I don’t throw quite as fast but I throw heavier projectiles. I’m very accurate at 50ft or less. I carry this in my back pocket thru many airports around the world, ammo is free and everywhere. I can put a smaller stone in the pouch and use it as whip. 1/2 inch ball bearings are deadly.
Yoy are slinging at 'point blank'. What would be left of the energy fro 20 or 50 meters away?
I used them a lot as a teen. I found that I could throw much harder with no wind up. The wind-up seems to be better for aiming. I came across i reference that said sling stones were about the size if a medium orange. I tried to keep my stones in the 1/4 to 1/2 pound range. You can throw things over a pound but you need a sling that is attached to the wrist and the other side needs to have something like large knots in order to keep your grip. They were a lot more powerful than marble shooters people think of them as
Similar impact force, maybe, but penetrative power - not even close. A handgun or rifle bullet at anywhere over .45 velocity on the lower end of the scale, say 850fps, is going to blow through much more barriers, including tissue/liquid/bone/etc, than a large lead shot with a much, much larger cross section which hits the target. The only time I would compare a sling shot to a bullet is if the target is wearing some kind of armor that prevents penetration, then the impact force is the only thing causing damage, not the penetration and destruction of tissue/organs/bones/etc.
@@tods_workshop Agreed Tod, I should have used a better term than "causing damage", probably just "transfering force", as obviously a sling shot round wouldn't cause any damage vs even very soft 2a/etc armor. I doubt you would even notice you had been hit with stronger armor, in particular hard steel/ceramic. Great videos, please keep these up, very, very interesting. Try and find a used older paintball radar chrono if you can - they work fantastic for this sort of thing, and are almost all metal except the LCD, and are VERY tough compared to a shooting chrony. Plus they transmit in the common police radar band, which makes them fun on the highway, haha.
Take a hit like that in the chest and even if you were using a cuirass you'd certainly notice it. Obviously there's no possible comparison between a lead bullet thrown from a sling and a modern firearm bullet - doesn't mean you want to be hit by the sling bullet or that it couldn't ruin your day...or whole existence.
My great grandmother who grew up in the 1910’s used to tell me stories of how she used the sling to keep our family fed during the Great Depression. She never went hungry
I just started getting into slings and Man! it is hard to aim, but it is very rewarding when you hit the mark xD
Look up and make a staff sling. Much easier to hit with and more power
My family and I own an archery shop… the momentum vs velocity/kinetic energy debate is always a fun one around the campfire for guys.
I can appreciate super-fast bows accurately shooting super-light arrows long distances without much drop, but if I have my drothers, I’ll take a decently-fast bow shooting heavy, deeply-penetrating arrows inside 30 meters/33 yards all day every day.
As well as matching the momentum of a bullet, they're also silent, extremely cheap to build and load, mechanically reliable, etc. Perhaps a very underrated weapon from history.
they aren't silent. a good slinger breaks the sound barrier with their sling before releasing the projectile, just as loud as many suppressed firearms.
@@Fausto_4841I stand corrected.
Nice, genuine testing without typical YT CGI and dramma-selling. Good job. I just hope you consider using some kind of plastic painting mask or smth, in case one of those rounds goes sideways.
Thanks and good luck
Me, at the start of the video: Slings are a bit crap, just a pouch on a string, might as well throw the rocks.
Me, at the end of the video: Damn, I gotta buy a sling.
Me, a bit later, having spotted Tod's "How to make a sling video": Damn, I gotta make a sling.
Wait till you take a look at the Slingshot channel by Joerg!
Yeah, people scoff at the shepherds sling as a weapon but, centrifugal force is gnarly. A mythbuster like group took on the David and Goliath story. They ultimately said that the most impressive thing about the story was how old David was at the time, not what he did. (the Bible calls David a 'youth' in the story and a 'man' shortly after. In Hebrew tradition a person is a 'youth' between ages 11 and 12 and a young adult at 13. the group took this to mean he was 12 going on 13)
Man I love UA-cam, ive learned SO much from this site over the past decade, I think more than any other single source in my life.
@@sergeantbigmac Have to agree there.
I'd love to see a collab with Archaic Arms. They are a beast with a balaeric sling!
I believe the question is answered by the fact that you can protect your chrono. with plywood. Try that with even just a .22 lr. That being said, thank you for this excellent video.
@@tods_workshop but didnt you break your chrono in this very video?
HA VERY VERY good point.
Remember that momentum is not the same as kinetic energy, or an absolute indication of an object's destructive potential.
Momentum equals an object's mass multiplied by its velocity. Consider this: would you rather be struck by a 1 kilogram ball traveling at 1,000 kilometers per hour, or a 1,000 kilogram lorry traveling at 1 kilometer per hour?
Mathematically, they have the same momentum, but one is still much more destructive. Velocity, it seems, has much more to do with it.
If you are in an immovable position both exert equally deadly forces.
Penetration comes from kinetic energy. The momentum gives you the 'umph' the object has at a specific speed.
But I mean, if you get hit in the head with a rock (or even a ping pong ball ffs) at 200km an hour doesn't really matter, we're still meat, and meat is not made to resist anything at that speed.
Exactly - be it a rock or a club or a bullet, it's the kinetic energy that does the killing.
@@keithwortelhock6078 Nope. Momentum is what is conserved in collisions. The shape and cross sectional area of the transfer of momentum determines how much it penetrates and that determines how much damage it does and how good at killing it does. Kevlar distributes that transfer of momentum over a larger area. Being shot by a 9mm into a kevlar vest would feel the same as being hit by the sling.
You can have two objects that hit you with the same momentum, but the smaller and faster one will deliver more kinetic energy. This is why, when you fire a rifle, although momentum is conserved, the more massive rifle doesn't kill you, but the bullet will kill your target. The momentum is the same for both, but the bullet has far greater kinetic energy than the rifle.
@@keithwortelhock6078 yes because even though mass is divided by 2, velocity is always squared. That product[(m/2(v^2)] most of the time is going to yield a higher value than just the product of momentum (m×v).
@@flomsonreginald - Yes
The formula for momentum is mass time velocity (mv) while the formula for kinetic energy is one half mass time the square of the velocity (1/2mv^2).
As an example you can have different projectiles with the same momentum but different kinetic energies like:
1) a 30 gram projectile traveling at 400 meters per second
2) a 15 gram projectile traveling at 800 meters per second
3) a 60 gram projectile traveling at 200 meters per second
All have he same momentum or 12 kilogram meters per second (kgm/s)
But the 1) 30 gram projectile would have a kinetic energy of 2400 joules
the 2) 15 gram projectile would have a kinetic energy of 4800 joules
and the 3) 60 gram projectile would have a kinetic energy of 1200 joules
For penetration kinetic energy is more important than momentum - the lighter and faster projectile would penetrate more than either of the two heavier but slower projectiles.
Fascinating. Brilliant, informative. Thanks Man
Oh no no no, momentum works as a rough estimate for stopping power, but for penetration, it's a third-rate indicator at best. Speed is FAR more important and hardness and geometry is what it's really about.
Kryštof Pazdera the momentum argument is from the realm of tank armor penetration. When you're trying to get through inches of steel armor, at some point, more speed/kinetic energy will just vaporize your projectile, which is why they weight mass higher by using momentum. I agree it's not accurate for bullet on flesh penetration.
@@ctrlaltdebug Not just on flesh, also on light cover and infantry ballistic armor... but thanks, it didn't occur to me that it works like this when armored vehicles are concerned.
You also forget the intended roll of the sling.it wasn't meant to penitrate.it was meant to transfer kenetic energy through armor to the fleash.and in this case,mass is more critical than speed.this was a volly weopon,designed to loose large amounts of these projectiles into armored infanry,bot to get the chaos and to put a hurting on the targets.wears em down mostly before the actual ingagement.that armor is heavy,and often soldiers where allready tired just marching to the front line.batter them with fist sized rocks,that wears em down even more.plus it forces enimies into actions they wouldn't take otherwise.these slings didn't have to be leathal to do their job.nobody will want to stand there and just take a shower of stones to the helmet.they will likely move to more cover,thus disrupting the front line.this can be just as effective as killing.and these stones could be up to fist size,and they are clipping pretty good speeds.a good knock to the head is gonna hurt like hell,sound alone would ring your Bell pretty damn good,and in the case of sling staffs,these delivered a substantial rate of fire.not leathal,but very demoralizing.and disorienting.
And this not even touching the potential of them.not sure there was any evidence of this ever being done,but imagine lobbing a thousand fire pots at an armored infanry unit advancing on your position.that armor just got defeated with absolute authority.its not a stretch either.there just isn't much recorded evidence on the subject.dont mean it didn't happen.fire was experimented with as a weapon more than once.look at Greek fire,or Archimedes Ray of death.they knew fire did to things to a soldier with brutal efficiency.it terrified them,and fear was a common component in war tactics,and it did not give two shits how much armor the target was wearing.it cooked fleash one way or the other every single time,and all victoms where rendered harmless if not killed.meaning they no longer was in the fight.all myths started from some truth,and there are tons of myths of dragons and dragons fire.this very well could have been nothing more than a dramatization that embodied the fear of fire based weopons in war.
@@richardpeterson3753 Reportedly, staff slings at least, were used to throw a type of 'grenade' as shown on the page I link to below. Supposedly there are other images showing others using regular slings somewhere, but I wasn't able to find one quickly for this post.
paulsbods.blogspot.com/2011/05/medieval-staff-slingers.html
Additionally, I have heard of reports from as recent as WWII where slings were used to throw grenades further, or over walls that were difficult to throw over by hand.
The Balearic Slingers were some of the most feared warriors during and after the Punic Wars. They were highly sought after mercenaries and become regiments of renown because they were so deadly with their slings. Hannibal used them when he invaded Italy and destroyed the entire Roman army.
The proper metric for the effectiveness of projectiles is something I thought about a lot 30 years ago when I was a young lieutenant and firearms enthusiast--with a modest degree in Mathematics (having minored in Physics).
It's my assertion is that this is something like wondering how much money it takes to kill a lion, bear, elk, elephant.
Of course you wouldn't be so silly as to ask that question because you know that while it does take money to buy a nice rifle,
and while it's also true that more powerful rifles often cost more, still...it's a super imperfect metric.
1) It just depends on how the energy/money/momentum is spent!*
Slap my face and you spend no money, but you do spend some energy and momentum, jarring my whole head** and stinging my skin...
the same energy or momentum put into Arya Stark's Needle might kill [so, LOL, in this heads up battle maybe cost is the best metric].
2) Not all targets are equal, Weapons need to spend their energy in a way that suits the target:
A frangible varmint round that dumps all its energy in the first 4 inches is great for prairie dogs, perfect!
For bear you want a bullet that holds together in order to save some of its energy for the second foot of travel!
Anyway, I hope you get my points.
*BTW
"Energy" is the ability to do "work" [these are defined terms in Physics, worth studying ] and thus Energy is the best of all
the super imperfect measures of a projectile's effectiveness--none of which should be used (except for nuclear weapons and asteroids).
It may be that some very poor metrics nevertheless work within a certain domain (momentum, within double barreled elephant guns, for instance), but that really doesn't mean much.
**Whereas if you could concentrate on a single blood vessel, that might kill.
Do you ever watch a silly movies (like LUCY with Scarlett Johansson) where one character has the ability to throw people around with their minds? Shouldn't they spend their telekinesis more efficiently and just tear a couple blood vessels, or maybe the spinal cord?
It would be great if you’d make another kind of a test series. We had a chat about your videos with my sons and had an idea. What about a test series where you’d test spears run-and-ram against different armours. Another idea was daggers. Is an archer helpless if attacked by a big bugger with an armour. There could be different combinations in both variations and we think it would be great fun to see men ramming spears against dummies. No-one seems to be doing that yet.
Keep up the good work, your audience is watching.
Simple physics... Momentum is conserved... The momentum of the 9mm bullet equals the momentum of the gun that is imparted into the shooter... You don't see the gun being propelled through the flesh of the shooter, thus equal momentum objects do not have the same penetration ability.
I suspect that you would find that penetration ability is a function of the speed of the projectile, its mass, and the surface area that strikes the object.
You see the bullet go through tho:)
The gun's recoil momentum will be greater than the momentum of the bullet because the gun also expels propellant gases.
@@cnocspeireag -- Correct, but for most handgun rounds, the mass of the propellant gases is small enough to ignore. A 125 gr bullet with perhaps a 4-5 gr powder charge. Now, if you get to a .25-06 with an 85 gr bullet and a powder charge of 57 gr of RL19, then the momentum of the gases start making up a noticeable part of the recoil. And, of course, with a properly designed muzzle brake, those exhaust gases can even be used to *reduce* the felt recoil.
by the way, some fishing lead weigths look close to what some slingers used as bullets
In the good old days, Ibiza was the home of the Balearican slingers.
Now it's the home of balearican DINGERS
And Creta was home of the Creeeeeshian Archers.
Ahh I remember that Asterix book with the slinger.
Baleriac slingers
I grew up slinging using a shepherd's style sling. My brother and I used to make ammunition with melted lead balls and dried clay.
A half-pound ball will absolutely obliterate a pheasant. A pointed projectile can pierce the plate steel of a car door with relative ease.
The effect of these weapons is a combination of speed and mass. Although the speed of a 9mm projectile is faster, it is also lighter. The mass of the slung shot carries it through soft targets and allows much greater kinetic energy transfer.
I personally saw a charging bull stopped dead with a collapsed leg at about 20 yards with a 3/4 lb stone and a solid hit to the front shoulder.
The sling is not a weapon to be taken lightly and can be used in close quarters as well with the stone tied in the pouch as a lethal sap.
Kill mechanism is always energy from a bullet, not momentum. I don't know who handed out advice to the contrary but it wasn't even wrong. A pitched baseball or passed basketball has far more momentum than a 9 mm bullet. An 80 gram shot has ten times the mass of a common 9 mm - and 115 ft/sec is a tenth of a reasonable 1150 ft/sec 9 mm. Regardless of the measurement units, ×10 in mass and 1/10th in velocity is going to cancel out, momentum will be the same - but the 9 mm is going to have ten times the kinetic energy.
Ok, you are busy being right, except about the kill mechanism. the sling has been killing effectively for years. The argument is similar to bare knuckle boxing vs 16oz gloves. All aspects of physics can be leveraged for the kill mechanism. Yes, bullet best? Easier to use really, but sling cheap, no license needed, no propellant issues, ammo is easier too. I'd love to see marbles, ball bearings, and similar to compare effects. I've read of cases where slings have removed or shattered the jaw, to say nothing of giants, lol.
@@ArielGarcia7 Place your arm over your heart and take a direct hit from the sling and then repeat with a 9 mm round with the same momentum. Your odds of the sling transferring either sufficient momentum or energy to stop your heart are going to be extremely low. Your odds of surviving that 9 mm round are going to be extremely low - even though the momentum is the same, it has enough to energy to punch through and kill.
The kill mechanism is energy. That's all there is to it.
I never said that a sling was non-lethal and I won't even get into how I probably have more experience with one than you do. Despite your need to act superior, you can't beat the laws of physics - both momentum and energy have to be conserved going from projectile to target. There's no special magic here - only physics. You're entitled to your own opinion - you're not entitled to your own facts.
And your example of the boxing gloves without accounting for the padding absorbing energy actually proves my point. The gloves add mass and don't apply braking - they have no relevant dispositive effect on momentum and will likely add to it.
Going for trilogy - energy is the kill mechanism.
@@Ni999 Momentum is conserved, a kevlar vest works by distributing the transfer of momentum over a larger area of the body. Yes a bullet will kill more easily because it has a smaller area to transfer the same amount of momentum. Passing a basket ball to someone with a long thin pointy spike on it would go into the body of the person just as far as a bullet.
@@Ni999 briefly and respectfully, the kill mechanism of a bullet need not be the same for sling. The concussive effect on the brain by the boxing glove is experientially greater than bare knuckle and more likely to produce ko from head shot, I never mentioned magic or anything not grounded in reality/physics. Personal request, use your own words to call me delusional or a liar, that facts sound byte is in wrong context and played out. What, it wasn't enough for you to be right you have to crush all other observations, really? Well your loss.
@@ArielGarcia7 Read my very first sentence. Do not take away or add any words to it.
No matter how many times you repeat that a sling can be lethal, or why, it's not going to be as lethal as a round from a 9 mm, and it's irrational, irrelevant, and immaterial to claim that it is because the momentum terms line up.
You came to me full throttle lecturing me to help me understand what I already knew - slings are lethal - and proceeded to explain why using what amounts to magic - I have no other description for the ideas that can't separate momentum from energy.
Your complaints about how heavy handed I am are noted. It's absolutely true that I don't suffer some people gladly. I'm willing to agree that we'll both have to live with disappointment.
First of all: Great videos, haven't seen a bad one yet! Very informative and a very objective treatment of all the topics discussed. Also very enjoyable to watch. The following isn't meant as criticism whatsoever.
One of the problems in comparing modern firearm projectiles and classic projectile weapons is that the method of injury is completely different. A high energy firearm projectile penetrates it's target and then massively deforms the surrounding tissue because it looses almost it's entire energy to the surrounding tissue (it doesn't loose all of it if it goes through the target, that's the reason why the 7.62mm round is not as effective against people as the 5.56mm round, it just doesn't loose enough energy in the target). A crossbow bolt penetrates and creates mostly just injury in it's path, same with an arrow. Depending on the size and weight of a sling projectile it will penetrate and function more like a bolt, or 'just' impact without penetration but still produce injury in the form of concussions or broken bones. All of these tests, while obviously a great start because very little data exists, recorded with modern methods, really need more work done with ballistic gel targets containing bones. This would then bring all of the data together to form factual information. The videos on the 'armour piercing' arrow heads are a great example, although even there i'd say you'd have to have a data set with at least 100 impacts before you could actually give the thing a true scientific treatment.
The problem is finding someone as proficient with a sling as the archer in those videos is. Archery is rarely practiced nowadays (out of competitive sport clubs) so finding a dude who really knows how to fire a massive war bow like one of those used back in the day is...rare. Let's put it that way.
Slinging is VERY rarely done (and there is no sporting version of it) and finding someone good enough for such a video would be a challenge. To say the least. And even someone who's been doing it for a long time would hardly qualify as "he's doing it like the ancient slingers did". Because we simply don't know how they actually did, beyond a handful of references here and there.
Serem there always is a huge argument about archery in medieval times, what was used, how, and how effective it really was, because simply stated, we don't know enough about it. Sources are limited and quite some times they don't agree with each other. Yet they have to be used (alongside the actual testing of the bows) in a video like that, as Todd did with his excellent archery test video, to both know exactly the materials involved in the test, as the practices of the time, to put them in perspective and include them in the conclussions about the test.
Now if it's slings and their warfare use what we're talking about, however, there's almost nothing out of some accounts from antiquity which are not exactly deep in details. In comparison medieval archery sources, limited as they are, look documented to perfection... Lack of that documentation means that whatever test is done is already suspect because...well we don't really know whether it's how it was done in antique times to begin with, and if it isn't then there's little real worth in the test, is it?.
TL:DR: doing a video like that (one that's worth anything at least from the scientific standpoint) is much harder than what you seem to think.
At any rate, there's little doubt about the penetrative abilities of sling bullets of antiquity. Roman field surgeons for instance were purposefully trained to deal with sling injuries involving penetration (there are several historical written accounts of roman medicine explaining precisely that kind of stuff). And romans were for the most part based on heavy, well armored infantry, which one would thing was the least likely kind of soldier to get a sling-shot lead bullet lodged into their intestines... yet it still happened. And dealing with that kind of injury was TRULY nasty stuff....
ua-cam.com/video/Aaq0KzvX_E4/v-deo.html
Thank you Tod for sharing these results with us. How about a lead shot vs armour video? Would love to see that. Some one would have to be willing damage their kit but it would be worth it in my opinion. I know that "this vs that" vids get a lot of views. Or maybe a collab vid with one of the other historical channels. Thanks again for taking the time to make these videos, definitely one of my favorite channels.
The 40mm steel balls I sling got as much momentum as a 12 gauge now that I did the math. They wreck like a slug,so not too much surprise. Love'em.
I have hunted grouse with a sling and got good results. But I was into slings and all manner of projectiles, when I was a kidlet. We lived in a semi rural area.Stream pebbles are free, so practice cost nothing.
I can imagine that men who have been constantly using the sling since childhood, could be very deadly with the lead "bullets" the Greek and Roman pelters used.
I did my grouse hunting as an adult. My occupation was such that I had a lot of time and lots of space for practice. It was also a way of occupying the brain, in isolation. Think how deadly those shepherd boys were with their slings.
Don't hunt Grouse, or any being. They are living beings that think and feel as all do. Even if they didn't they are living organisms that should be respected and cared for. No reason to harm or kill them or any being or creature.
@TheTaterTotP80 there are valid reasons to hunt. Food, population control, limiting disease spread. And most game animals have a comparatively low intelligence so,_no it is not like killing a person.
I've seen a few sling videos in which there is a loud whip crack sound, and doesn't than indicate that the tip is exceeding the speed of sound? I'm sure that doesn't corelate to the projectile moving at the same speed, but it does suggest that there is some energy being created. Some of them use longer than average slings, and use a discus/shot put style to wind up the spin speed, and the operators were leaning well back to balance the centrifugal force.
I'd like to see a side by side test of a sling and a 9mm. I'd do one myself, but I don't know how to sling proficiently and would probably end up hurting myself.
I suspect that the 9mm would perform significantly better in every measurable way - better penetration in all media, better wound channels in gel or meat, etc.
@David Hernandez Reusable? I'm not sure, I imagine it gets deformed on impact. Completely free? No. It's cast lead. It's cheap, but not free.
Obviously a sling isn't anywhere near as good as a gun. There's a reason that slinging has been relegated to an obscure hobby/sport while firearms have taken over in military, hunting, self-defense, and any other context where weapons are useful.
The one real advantage is noise. Even a suppressed firearm is pretty loud. A sling is gonna be more or less silent. As for not jamming? Eh, I have a couple guns that I'd put up shot for shot against a proficient slinger, and be willing to bet that he has more "misfires" than I do. But then again, it really depends on both the gun and the slinger. You put up a Jimenez against some guy who's been slinging his whole life and won some competitions and whatnot, yeah, the sling will do better. You put a Glock up against that same guy, I'll bet he misfires before the Glock does.
@@MrEvanfriend free means that you can use a random rock on the ground although lead and clay is much preferable
Excellent explanation of a complex impact to penetrative ability .
Fascinating, thank you !
16mm steel balls are optimum from a variety of rubber powered slingshots (shorter range low parabola) to maximise momentum from available stored energy (again can be comparable to small calibre firearms ) this seems to be applicable to davids slings too, its a matter of balance finding the optimum projectile for the available energy source>>>>>>>
You want them to be rough though
Mentioned this before I think, but I would love to see a shepherd sling vs armour test like you've done with the long bow. Yes, I imagine all the ammo would ping off, but if there's a way to measure "concussive force" (forgive my crudeness on the technicalities of such an experiment) and see if it would be lethal in anyway, or even measure it against an arrow...I think that would make a very interesting video. Neolithic vs Medieval lol.
Great video as always 😁
Either way that’s gonna hurt 🤠👍
And kill in ancient times they had better accuracy and range than bows
Something to consider is the length of your sling, length with exponentially affect the velocity which your projectiles reach. A longer sling will move your projectiles over a much greater distance per rotation of your wrist
That's a lotta damage!
Two factors, piercing and stopping power.
If it doesn't pierce an object to cause wounding, it is causing blunt trauma which emits energy through the body to commit internal wounding.
Both are essentially dangerous with sufficient force behind them.
I just knew the chronograph was having it as soon as I see the wood cut out 🤣🤣🤣
I made a hybrid sling, has a stiff handle like a whip with and extra 1 to 2 feet of thich flexible material. The business end has 3 (one inch) strings & the pocket, the 2 leading strings are threaded through the shaft to a release on the grip. And it has a purchase point/shape similar to a casting rod for fishing so you get to really get to use your wrist and thumb to maximize your throwing torque.
Advantages... fires heavier objects, stones, bullets with better consistency and accuracy at much higher speeds. As the stiff handle leading into the more flexible shaft material allows one to generate hip torque + arm torque + stored energy within the flexible shaft + plus wrist and thumb torque.
Never had a chronograph but after gettin used to it I destroyed 2 cinderblocks (stacked one in front of the other) at nearly 100 yards using a 60 gram bulletstone. My friend's 9mm pistol (Maxxteckh 9mm bullet weight 14 grams) only broke the first block at about 60 yards.
Of course he could fire 8 or so shots to my every 1 or 2... and with better accuracy.
Another advantage of my design is after firing a shot off there are no strings or pocket to recover, as the releasing string travels to a catch point only an inch to one and a half inches up from the grip (it's knotted so it gets caught in the groove where the rest of the string runs up through the hollow center). So the pocket (upon release) opens just enough to release the payload. Which makes reloading way more efficient (aka quicker) than reloading a normal sling, so I'd get about 3 shots off for every one I could muster while using a regular sling.
Another advantage is self defense... the butt of the handle is good for knocking people out... with a sizable stone in the pocket it acts like a light but rather effective flail... and with no payload it's like getting whipped with a rather brutal riding crop.
Had I the money I'd make them better. The original fell apart as it was made of throwaway (basically crap) materials... but I really loved that thing... unfortunately I'm broke and the materials I'd prefer to make one of (as well as the tools I'd need) are rather expensive.
HuGGz
Oh yeah, these babies on no joke at doing damage....Theres a constant debate in the gun community about what's better. Small and really fast bullets, or large and heavy and slower rounds. There's no real definitive answer but it depends what you want to do. Rifle rounds are amazing at destroying tissue. Mostly because the high velocity introduces other forces besides just weight (hydraulic pressure shockwaves and fragmentation upon impact). Yet sometimes a pistol round will penetrate deeper than the high speed lightweight rifle rounds. Other results can show you that velocity is king when penetrating harden steel armor or plates. Sometimes lightweight 55 grain bullets penetrate armor better than 65 grain steel core bullets because that few hundred of extra FPS makes the difference...There is also another point about one of your previous videos about the projectile shape. If you take a .300 Blackout rifle round moving at sub sonic velocity you come across an interesting body armor test. Level 3 SOFT body armor can stop just about every pistol round. Take that same weight and velocity 300 Blackout round and shoot it at the vest and it punches through. The difference being that the Spitzer shaped round of the 300 (that bullet shape we are all familiar with) allowed it to penetrate the armor where the more rounded shape of a pistol round does not. That's all weight and velocity being equal but the bullet shape being the main factor that changed the results of penetration. I think it's an interesting test that could be said for the American football shape of the lead shot
In my hunting range of Utah and Idaho I take fowl, beaver, porcupine and rabbit with either my sling or my wrist rocket.
I've been hunting like this since I saw Swan get food in Jeremiah Johnson movie!
You are actually the first person on YT that I've seen talk about slings. 😁👍
Tod: "Slings are Awesome!"
Me: "I highly Agree!"
I've got a couple slings I made a few summers ago with just some leather and extra shoe laces. (Essentially Nylon Cordage.)
So much fun to Learn and VERY powerful !!
Awesome Video Tod !
I made one from some leftover basketball hoop (not the entire hoop). I did not use Tod's method, mine is hoop without tape.
I have had a blast with your videos and slinging. Thank you!
I hate how underrated slings are in fantasy.
Fear my 1d4 damage! RAWR!
GURPS does an excellent job with slings, IMO. Not weak at all & quite deadly.
The ultimate race of mankind has been for our ultimate goal... To find ever more efficient and elabore ways to throw a rock.
There's a lot more to ballistics than just velocity. Shape, density, distance, length of the barrel, weight, twist of the barrel, composition of the round, type of round (frangible, full metal jacket, hollow point etc). Still, I love watching this kind of thing and have enormous respect for ancient/medieval weapons. In regards to slings themselves, a weapon I would love to learn but I am so busy with gunsmithing and shooting I don't know where to find the time!
Todd, in the ballistic sport I do we have to shoot a minimum power factor of 125 this is generated by the grain weight of the projectile x the feet per second divided by 1000. my 9mm rounds make a power factor of 130 I have calculated your sling shot rounds being 80 grams in weight roughly calculated to grains makes about 1234 grains times this by the 115 ft per second then divide that by 1000 gives you your power factor of 141.
I was deployed to Iraq in 06 - 07, and those little kids could really scare us with those sling shots and a sharp stone.
I was told that one brit got hit in the head with a stone from a slingshot, and broke his skull, the rest of the squad thought it was a sniper.
The power and precision a well trained individual can operate a slingshot with, is pretty terrifying.
And it makes absolutely no sound.
No Sound can be done if the slinger wants but if you sling at full Speed you have a whiplash because the end of sling Breaks sound Barrier! That incident about the injured soldier is sad. People should not kill each other. Even If they can. A sling is a defensive weapon against wild animals used by sheperds. Thats why its called sheperd sling.
@@erikaushamburg8279 I heard no sound from the stone beside the loud bang when it hit the our transport, and I never heard any sound from the hundreds of stone slinged at me/us.
Perhaps that was deliberately, not revealing their position, i cant say.
I agree, people should not kill each other.
Im not a soldier anymore, got PTSD due to that tour, so my serving is done.
I will only hurt anyone again, unless they hurt my family or the ones that i love, no other reason is good enough .
@@erikaushamburg8279 u are rigth but slings where also ised for war, for example the romans used them.
It's a good idea to compare momentum instead of just velocity but another interesting value is the kinetic energy of the projectile. Using the formula Ec=0.5*m*v^2, it's easy to see that velocity has a greater impact on the energy than mass. So while the momentum were similar, a 9mm bullet with 330 m/s and 7.5g will correspond to 408 J compared to 49 J for the lead ball of 80g at 35 m/s.
Pretty sure you are confused somewhere. 9mm projectile travels about 1200fps and your rock was only going 128fps. Yes the rock can be deadly, but not going to have penetrating power of a 9mm
The gun projectile goes around 10 times the speed of the slingshot, which in this case has about ten times the mass, so the momentum (mass times velocity) works out as roughly the same, as Tod said.
As others have pointed out, momentum is not the same as penetration. The gun bullet is smaller than the slingshot, and so concentrates that same momentum into a smaller surface area.
I think in the context of the times that the sling was used, going slower was a bit better. If a sling bullet hits you without armor on, it will likely take you out of the fight because it does pierce skin and it has the momentum to break bones, so its almost as good as a .9mm there. However, against armor the .9mm has a better chance of penetrating the armor but probably won't do any damage to the body underneath, whereas a sling will likely impart all of its energy into the armor, so flexible armors like mail would transfer all of that blunt force into the target, but plate armor would dent and bend, and I think that's the most underrated aspect of the sling in medieval warfare. Yes, they might not actually kill the person wearing the armor, but if you hit a joint you could bend the plates so the limb can't be moved or if you hit the visor you might fold the plates over the eyeslits and blind them, and those would also effectively take someone out of the fight until they could get their armor off.
Momentum = mass x velocity = force x time is a way to indicate how hard it is to stop an object, but not how much it would go through a material. A possible measure for penetration is simply pressure = force/area. A lot of other guys mentioned the bullet diameter and shape. Same thing with nails. You could sit on a bed of nails without being punctured cuz the force is distributed.
In ancient times the military had squads of dedicated slingers and of course David killed Goliath with one.
This is why early black powder firearms used big lumps of lead. Slow but massive deals a killing amount of kinetic energy. As muzzle velocities increased, the bullets could get smaller and still be effective. Iron round shot bounced along the ground like cricket balls, but their mass, and hence energy, caused more than one raw recruit to lose a leg trying to stop one.
"There are guys out there I've heard who can do around 60 meters a second"
Now imagine that being standard because people back in the era these things were popular would naturally be smaller, sturdier, and stronger because life back then was hard...and imagine the strongest and hardiest of them being able to exceed even 60 meters a second, with better designed slings, reachingpeven higher. Consider these being used from relatively close range as skirmishing lines often engaged as the enemies advancing front line were within about 10-20 meters.
Imagine them being used by 100 men in a line and hammering the enemies advancing line.
Imagine then that, as this is an ancient era and helmets were expensive and likely not commonplace, and in some cases men went to war with no armor, some not even with a shirt, this hissing wall of flying stones is closing that 10-20 meter gap in under a second and impacting exposed skulls, arms, legs, shinbone, hips, ribs, groins, collarbones, throats, eyes...anyone and anything not fortunate enough to own a shield.
And remember these slingers are trained for war so they are very fast and proficient, so before you've finished shaking off the ouch of the first volley, if you escaped it intact, here comes the next one. And the next one. And the next one.
Remember that even minor wounds back then were difficult to treat and infection was the great killer of men at war. A sling stone that smashed your collar and broke skin would not only leave you broken and crippled the rest of your life but likely the wound itself, covered In dirt and potentially other things, would very likely shorten your now miserable life considerably.
Even if slingstones were not necessarily lethal, thier ability to take combatants out of the fight and break an enemy line definitely cements thier reputations as deadly.
Yeah, safe to say that every warrior engaging in close combat used a shield. If they didn't have a shield, they would have been relegated to a skirmishing role, and expected to bring something like a sling. However, there were skirmishers that carried shields too - presumably they got closer to the enemy to throw javelins. My guess is this is because javelins were better at penetrating armor than slings ever could (even big slings and heavy stones). Slings would nonetheless be great at harassing an enemy in armor, regardless of their amount of armor. Armored enemies could hunker down though in an overlapping shield wall so as to weather the sling stones and arrows, and my guess is that is why javelins became a thing. Javelin ammo was very limited though, so the peltasts may have been expected to join in the melee with their sidearms afterward.
Also, shielded infantry could use slings too in addition to their primary weapon (probably a spear) - there likely wasn't much stopping them from carrying a couple stones and a sling, given slings were so easy to carry. Good for confronting an enemy formation before the charge or during the stare down, or getting a little revenge on some of the enemy skirmishers. Source: Lindybeige on slings
@@Usammityduzntafraidofanythin Javelins and Pilums were designed to ruin shields more than armor, a direct upgrade from the sling because regular troops began carrying shields, or at least sturdier shields(i.e not hide or leather)To counter the slingers in the skirmishing line. Javelins, and pilums specifically, would catch in the shield and render it useless by adding drag weight. Considering during the period of time they were used armor really wasnt thick or strong enough to need weapons that could pierce armor. Not until embedded leather(hardened, boiled, studded, banded) and mail become commonplace.
Most peltasts and skirmishers didnt wear much armor at all. Roman Velites notably wore wolf hides and cloaks with light armor, if any, because their job is mobility. They're only job is to break up the enemies foot charge and harass the advancing formation with volleys of javelins or pilums, then retreat behind the main line.
The lighter or nonexistent armor allows them to fire volleys and retreat safely from an advancing melee line without tiring themselves out.
In the Roman'a case, legionnaires began carrying pilums of their own, which they would throw as the enemy advanced, not so much eliminating the need for skirmishers as relegating their role to harrassment and flanking maneuvers.
@@Cryogenius333 If you've seen a thegntharnd video, then you'd know that javelins and throwing spears have a lot of penetration, so they'd be useful against various types of armor too. Particularly armors made of cloth, or what have you (cloth was likely more common than metal in a lot of cases).
History isn't just 'one thing applied then another'. There's context. Armor was used, but it wasn't full plate armor found in the late middle ages. Armor piercing was a concern in ancient times when it was found necessary (context, always context), but not to the degree that you'd find in the late middle ages.
Perhaps less people wore armor, and perhaps armor wasn't as good as it would be later on (in a lot of cases) and so there was less concern for defeating armor - but that doesn't mean there was no concern.
Some ancient armor was just as good as the armor from much later periods. Bronze armor from 700 bc could be as hard and tough (therefore, as good) as some steels from 1300 ad (2000 years of separation). A minority of hoplites of archaic greece (c. 700 bc) would sometimes wear full bronze suits of armor, if they were very wealthy citizens.
In many cases, ancient history is like a 'stock market', with ups and downs in technology and military capability; and that's not my analogy, it's Dan Carlin's.
@@Usammityduzntafraidofanythin Naturally, metal armor was expensive and hard to make. Being able to penetrate clothe armor isn't really a feat. Given its design it would be useful for punching though most forms of mail as well.
Though I cant speak for the earlier Javelin, all of the Pilums design is focused purely around debilitating shields. The blade was designed to punch through the shield(I suppose that could count as armor penetration, since punching through a quarter inch of wood IS a feet for such a flimsy weapon, and it wouldnt have much trouble punchng through light armor) after the blade punched through, the weight of the shaft would bend the blade permanently so A: It couldn't be pulled out and B: if you DID get it out you couldn't throw it back. Now you've got this long heavy stick awkwardly dangling out of one side your shield and bouncing around, and the warped blade sticking out of your side of the shield, makig it extremely difficult to maneuver without poking or stabbing yourself. If you were at a running charge it's entirely possible youd trip over the damn thing and stab yourself on it. If a second pilum didnt end you outright
Youd have to abandon the shield.
The romans did this for multiple reasons.
A: Its demoralizing. Shields are as much a comfort item as a defensive tool. Losing it can be a serious blow to your psyche as suddenly you no longer feel as well defended.
B: The front line is now "softened" for the legionnaires own first line to hack to pieces
C: The initial enemy advance can be slowed or even reversed after volley. Inevitably any pilum that doesnt bust a shield will hit something warm and squishy, with enough force to knock them backwards into their advancing comrades, further demoralizing and slowing the advance.
D: Pilums being launched over the front lines will further "soften " the ensuing lines of the enemy, making them vulnerable to archer fire.
@@Usammityduzntafraidofanythin I've made mention of this sort of technological rollercoaster. Technology as it pertains to warfare tends to be more like "action/reaction". I invent a new weapon, you invent something to counter it, I invent something to counter or circumvent that, you then counter or circumvent that. Its advantage over advantage. Like I said. Muskets took the field and people tried to make armor thicker and thicker and thicker, and when it didnt work, they made it lighter and lighter and lighter. I helped a student prepare a report on use of body armor throughout history, as it's gone from no armor-> light armor->heavy armor->light armor->heavy armor->very heavy armor-> light armor->lighter armor-> no armor->light armor.
I have no doubt a Hoplite behind a heavy bronze shield and heavy bronze armor or even lamellar would have an edge up on a curaissar, potentially even armored medieval knights in heavy steel.
When I was a teenager back in the early 60s, I messed around with slings after I saw them in some movie. I thought they were cool, so I made one and got pretty good with it. I used a different technique than you used. Instead of an overhead horizontal wind-up, I used a vertical backward wind-up. It's very similar to the wind-up a softball pitcher uses. Do a UA-cam search on softball pitchers and you'll see what I mean. You can keep spinning the loaded sling without dropping the projectile while you move around. The torque and velocity you can achieve is remarkable. Get a good spin going and when you're ready to launch, you whip your whole arm down and up releasing one cord. It takes practice, but the distance you can cover is impressive.
So David Basically took the equivalent of a 9mm pistol to a Sword Fight with Goliath Parry this you filthy casual
Im on day two of slinging. Bōjutsu for yea 14 years and it’s honestly very solid verification that Staff proficiency translates to most other weapons bSed in utilizing basic flow principles.