Hi it's Tod from Tod's Workshop and Tod Cutler here and we have the mighty Jorg
Sprave with us today and his most powerful slingshot which is some crazy thing with a
what two meter draw length on it? Pretty much by the look of it, Yeah it's a little over
two meters in full extension which is enough especially when you shoot 20 mm steel balls.
Jorgs going to show me how to shoot this thing and then I'll pick it up and we'll have a go and
shoot some plywood or something because you tell me it goes through. It will
Shooting it is fairly easy, you shoot it sideways, gangster style,
so that you can actually close your left eye and then aim with the right eye over the bands
and over the tip of the upper fork and then you only have to compensate for the height,
otherwise it's going to go straight where this thing's at and then in the beginning you would
probably be good to just only draw it to the corner of your mouth. You then won't have full
power but you will feel a little bit more safe that way. No, no, no, sorry. You know,
if you really want full power you stretch it out really far, really far, really fast.
Lift the thing up and then draw it really, really, really, far
so
It really does pack punches, that's a lot of power, now it's your turn. Fantastic are you
right? I'm here with your ammo. Just one? Well I can give you more if you need; one at a time.
So then show me your shot.
Right
You have to draw out a little more, right try again,
but at least it came back to you, you only need one ball. It's actually a great advantage of these
things that you can reuse the ammo as long as you can find it. So and right all the way back,
then as far as possible, one more, one more, more yep no it wins. Now that works.
Nice. This is how you shoot a slingshot, a powerful sling shot of course, you can also shoot
arrows. I've done lots of shooting you know what? I have never shot an arrow off a catapult, no
never; probably should change that.
Nice. Another one, another one, they went through. We were chatting earlier and you
said about "would they have used this in medieval times had they had rubber?" And I mean the answer
is yes without a doubt and they could have made it, yeah, they could have made it actually.
Isn't it satisfying?
What is it about shooting things that makes you smile? I don't know,
I don't know and the aesthetics of destruction it shouldn't make you feel good, but somehow......
So that works. Should we talk a little bit about history of rubber and the properties of rubber and
so on? Well Jorg, rubber is obviously your thing here okay? so you start off. Okay, well okay, so
first of all what is very interesting about rubber, is that rubber stores energy some on
a thermal way, so it doesn't do this mechanically like a bow wood or spring wood but rubber behaves
like a natural gas, the rubber, when you keep it stretched specifically on a cold day,
it will not hold the energy for long, it dissipates into the environment. This means
that you hold it out and then the draw resistance goes down immediately until it reaches a minimum,
and if you are in freezing conditions, then minimum will be zero the rubber would not contract
at all it would just stay that long until it it heats up again so therefore rubber is completely
unsuitable for crossbows. Because you have to draw it out and let go of it fast like you do with a
longbow as an example. Exactly, the longer you keep it drawn out, the weaker the shot will be and
the problem is that then of course also your aim. Yeah it changes everything. Yeah so for crossbows
I think rubber would not be suitable at all, you need to cock it and then fire it. But I mean if
we come right back to the beginning, because most people are going to look at that material and go
"well it's rubber, of course they didn't have that medieval times" well they could have done,
Because we had the trees, although they're New World trees, but we had the trees and you
vulcanize it with with sulphur don't you and heat. The rubber tree is a New World tree originally,
you would only find it in South America, that we later found out that you can actually make latex
from dandelion milk right, so, and I think those were around in medieval times.
I'm sure they were, probably just nobody had an idea, nobody thought about doing something with
the milk from dandelions, but they could have made it by just simply cooking it up
at about 180 centigrade for a limited amount of time and that would actually put it into uh
into stretchy rubber like this. So the process is easy, they had the materials they just didn't
know how to do it. If it would have been invented, what I think, it would have changed. Yeah I know,
I agree with you actually. I know rubber is your thing and you know the medieval world is mine, and
so that is firmly in the non-traditional for me, but I wholly agree with you, I think that would
have changed it completely because it's so, well flexible, is the obvious thing with it. So you
can do so many things with it and it's so useful, stores power so easily, in such a simple condensed
object, but this you can make this in 30 minutes. Yeah you could have made this in 30 minutes in
medieval times too. Yeah you know there's nothing special that I really used here, so I believe that
it would have changed warfare specifically because it was so cheap and obviously ammo can be reused.
Ammo is super easy to make they will probably use lead which is more suitable than steel anyway.
I suppose I mean if you think of the example of a slinger, so somebody who's doing that,
you could say well that throws a stone and a sling throws a stone and they'll
throw a stone the same kind of distance probably within 10, 20, 40 meters whatever,
but a slinger needs a great deal of space all around him with which to work, so the density
of shooting is going to be quite spread out, whereas those ones obviously you could be....
so the density of shooting you probably get four or six guys in the same space that
you'll get one slinger. You also have a few more advantages if you compare it to a normal slinger,
first advantage that comes to mind is much easier to learn. Like the slinging, I've tried it a few
times, and I suck at it, it's really awful, I mean sometimes I get get it flying, but to aim
with it and hit something is, I think it takes you years to really learn it. And the second,
a slinger needs very really heavy projectiles to be effective um otherwise it wouldn't really
work well, uh this is not the case here. Also if you want to increase the distance you use smaller
ammo and then you can shoot it really yeah i think more far than you could you can sling an object.
Well we were talking as well about arrows on that, because I think again we both agree,
that will never um shoot an arrow as far as a longbow would shoot, sort of you know 300 meters,
260- 300 meters. Well it can shoot it quite far but it's not an easy construction
because um the the problem with an arrow is the arrow limits your draw length so as you see we
had a draw length of over two meters and uh if you would make an arrow that is over two meters long
that obviously would be very heavy and it would not fly very far so um so when you do this with
a with this long bow you either have to make it a long draw length extension which is possible or
you would have to make it really, really hard to pull. So you put a lot of a ton of rubber on it,
you can do that, it will never be as powerful as a long bow but it will be a very useful common bow.
Yeah, I think that's the case and the other thing that always intrigues me about this,
is sort of multiple load. Is like having a system that would allow you to shoot like they did with
the trebuchet, this basket of rocks, not just, not just one rock you know. You can throw a basket of
grapefruit sized rocks and that's fantastic against personnel as well as
single rocks against fortifications, but I think you could do something similar with rubber,
really quite easily, that you could throw a bundle of six arrows or eight arrows
that the whole system will shoot 200 meters but you're shooting six at a go you know. I see that
is completely possible, rubber also has one huge advantage you can always double it up, so you
can actually really tune this thing to the task that you have, you know you need something really
powerful, you just put a lot of rubber on it. Yeah you just need something small for practice and so
on. Same weapon just less rubber, so it actually is so scalable, it's also a huge advantage
whereas if you build a longbow that is the bow and you can't really weaken it or make it stronger,
it is what it is. So actually you know what's also occurred to me is the way you build is wood,
it's usually plywood, but it's wood; everything that you've done on your channel pretty much or
90% of what you've done on your channel, would have been possible had they had rubber in 1400.
You know, I think that says it all because we've seen you make bowling ball shooters and all sorts
you know, we've seen it all on your channel and it would all have been possible. Yeah, but
what really fascinates me so much about rubber is because it's, a it's a perfectly natural material,
it's actually tree sap that's what it is, I'm a fairly strong guy, but I'm not fast, yeah,
I can't run fast, I can't throw. No, I can't either actually. But the thing is that this
simple material takes my strengths and converts it into kinetic energy so easily and so effectively
with nearly no losses. Yeah and and this one always fascinates me about this really simple
material. I mean that's that's the thing, because i do crossbows, that's all medieval crossbows,
that's my thing and they're just so inefficient you know? It's the complete opposite of of that,
it's a different world for me that. I think we can agree it would have changed history.
I think without a doubt it would have done and I think it would have done it in 50 ways
that we could predict and 100 ways that we couldn't.
Okay well we're going to wrap it up now. Thanks very much Jorg, it's been great.
World of slingshots, rubber and the medieval. What would have been, could it be, let's go.....