A Moorhammer for beginners

I do get a lot of video and photo guys visiting me these days. At some point, they always want to try shooting by themselves...

However, my preferred slingshots aren't very good for newbies. They are afraid of hitting their hand, and also they cant the frame, hitting the fork.

Tomorrow, I will have some press people again, and they definetely want to shoot. So I made a "starters" Moorhammer, simply with higher and wider fork. Multiplex, noble wood is not for beginners... one fork hit and a vintage slingshot is ruined. Multiplex can always be repaired.

Finish is oiled and polished, no problem with sweaty palms. The frame can be trimmed back to a full blown Moorhammer as soon as the owner feels comfortable with that.

This may be the best "intro" frame I came up with so far!

Steak-Chain-Saw

Someone suggested I try to find ways to weaponize household items. So I looked around, and found the knifes in the kitchen drawers.

While it is too obvious to attach a steak knife to a broom handle, I thought that maybe I can use a few of them to make a fearsome cross between a lawn trimmer and a chainsaw...

Bought a cheapo (30 bucks) battery powered drill on amazon, plus the steak knifes (one Euro a pop). Attached them to a round wood disk, then found the best transmission (1:2).

I will now experiment with the angles of the knifes, slant them back a bit so they slice rather than poke. And maybe I can find a faster drill. But this looks (and feels) amazing!

The Purple Hammer

I gave my Moorhammer to Peter Hogan, and my Palmhammer to Tobias... so I just had to make another one from cool looking wood.

I selected Purple Heart (Amaranth). I love that wood, hard, dense and strikingly colored.

Here it is!

120 lb "war" slingbow

Made another slingbow. This time, I decided to keep it kind of similar to conventional recurves.

The bow is short, just 80 cm (31") and entirely made from plywood (minus the scales). The bow "limbs" are rigid, as the string is made from pretensed rubber (what else). The weapon is solid enough to handle spear gun rubber, which clocks at 120 lb draw force - well in the English warbow class.

I even made my own arrows, from 10mm (.40") dowels. My longest arrows are 35", very heavy with medieval style broadheads.

I am not an experienced archer, but it performs well.

"Lignum Vitae" Natural Fork

Thierry from New Caledonia traded three beautiful "Tree Of Life" forks and a block of sandalwood against a Panther. He calls the wood "Gaiac", which makes perfect sense.

I think I got the far better deal here. This wood is very hard (three times harder than oak), dense and heavy, with buttery yellow sapwood and a very dark core. I selected the one I wanted to start working on.

Cut the rough outline on the band saw.

Rasp work done.

File work done.You can see the yellow sap wood emerging.

Sanded, wetted, resanded, lightly oiled with clear oil, and buffed up with car chrome polish

Here you can see it in comparison with European dogwood

A small slingshot (just the way I like it) that fits my hand very well.

Panther with Palmwood

Had a bit of the black palmwood left and decided to make a hammergrip Panther from it. I made a few in the past, with different wood for the handles, and given them away, one by one, to friends.

Now I have one again! The wood piece wasn't big, but I left it fairly edgy so it still fills my fist. A great little shooter!

The HammerKung

I love the Hammerhead design. It is simply the best. And I have made Hammerheads from multiplex, noble wood, with a metal core, and got it made by Hogancastings in Aluminum and Bronze. 

But there is one version that was left: A bent wire Hammerhead! So I started with an 8mm steel rod. Bent it into shape, welded the middle for stability, and welded onb some hex nuts as heads. Then, the absolutely necessary wrapping job, with thick 10mm paracord for the handle and regular cord for the fork. 

Secured the cord ends with a bit of epoxy. 

This has an excellent feeling to it now!

 

The birthing of new lead balls

Needed a refill on my lead ball ammo. 

Rainy day today, so I decided to give it a go.

Made five batches using three different moulds

14mm (Hogancastings mould)
16mm (Bells of Hythe mould)
22mm (cheapo lead sinker mould from ebay uk)

 Both professional moulds performed really well, with the Hogancastings teflon plated version creating zero (none at all) cripples, and the Bells of Hythe one creating just three bad balls.

The cheap one needs more attention, it gets very hot soon and you have to use clamps. The stems are thick and I flattened the stumps with the hammer. But I got 30 very nice 22mm lead balls in the end.

First pics from the MK2 Sawblade shooter

As I mentioned before, the Discovery Channel wants to film my saw blade shooter and asked for improvements.

Well, here it is - it shoots well! It is basically a clay pigeon shooter attached to a rifle stock.

The blade is held in place by a magnet. I found that the blade will drop to the left after each shot, but I solved that problem by attaching the throwing lever angled to the right. Now it shoots beautifully straight, with a nice spin!

The power house behind this is a very strong spring. 

This locks in place like a break barrel air rifle. It has a veeery simple, but functional trigger. Kicks like a mule!

Microscopes are fun!

I achieved great results by using a strong flashlight, shining in at different angles.

Here, the proboscis of a tick (that is the hollow sucking spear that the insect rams into your skin to suck the blood out of you):

Here is the leg of the tick:

And here is the eye of an ant:

I think it is amazing what this little 130 Euro microscope can achieve. The flashlight lighting brings out the colors and detauls - amazing!

Microscoping Thera Band Gold

OK, after the successful but a bit silly "office supplies weapons", back to science.


I always wanted to microscope rubber, and found a cheap but powerful microscope on amazon.

See the product on amazon.com


It has an LCD screen and can save pics and vids to an SD card, it even has a USB port.


When it arrived, I first tested it with some of the preparates that came with the product.

Leg of housefly at 400x:

Onion, at 200x and 400x:

Pine wood, at 10x, 100x and 400x:

My own blood, at 400x up to 1600x:

Not so bad!

So I went along and made two preparations, one from stretched rubber and one from relaxed rubber. I had to put the stretched rubber between two pieces of scotch tape so it would stay stretched, of course.

The result is stunning! See the coiled up fibres (those can't be the polymers, you need an atomic microscope to see those):

Now see the stretched TB Gold, again in various zoom factors (the last one is 1600x):