Homemade Sling-Bow

by Kayak Kid

Picture of Homemade Sling-Bow
In this DIY I will be showing you how to make your very own sling-bow.  A sling-bow is basically a slingshot that’s altered to shoot arrows.  They are pretty powerful depending on what materials you use to construct them with, and can be made on a very slim budget. So without further ado lets begin!

Step 1: What You’ll Need

Picture of What You'll Need
You’ll need:

  1. A sling shot
  2. A golf tee
  3. An O-ring
  4. Two medium zip ties
  5. An old beat up arrow
  6. A few strips of duck tape

Optional:

  1. Whisker biscut

Step 2: The sling shot

Picture of The sling shot
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The first thing you need to do is to prep the sling shot.  The first step in doing this is to take off the existing elastic bands, and discard them.  Next take your heavy duty replacement bands and trim them until there’s 1 inch of band for every 5 inches of arrow.  For example I trimmed my bands to 5 1/2 inches, and they work perfectly with my 25” arrows.  Next put your bands on and leaving a quarter inch to a half inch of extra band extending at the end.  To test pull it back to it’s max draw and have someone measure the distance from the pocket to the extra bit of band on the sling shot.  You want this number to be less than the length of the arrow by one or two inches.

Step 3: The Arrow Rest

Picture of The Arrow Rest
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The arrow rest is what is going to hold the arrow before and during the release.  You want the O-ring, to be perfectly vertical, so to do that you first need to put one of the zip ties through the O-ring and then around the end tag of the elastic band like in the picture above. Don’t tighten it all the way yet, we’ll get to that later. Then next to get the ring to stand vertical you need to counter twist the other zip tie. If you are confused at this point just reference the pictures above.  Now tighten the zip ties until the ring is right in the center, and vertical.

Step 4: Optional: Whisker Biscuit

Picture of Optional: Whisker Biscuit
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Attaching a whisker biscuit is optional, but will help your accuracy and help preserve your arrow fletchings.  To do this put a rubber band around your O-ring using a small zip tie, like in the picture. Then slide your whisker biscuit into place.

Step 5: Arrows

Picture of Arrows
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The arrows I use are just some carbon fiber arrows I out grew or some that just have bad fletchings.  First you need to remove the fletchings and knock.  The knock should pull out with a pliers, and the fletchings are easy to remove using a pocket of your hunting knife.  You should by now have an arrow striped of everything except it’s Insert.

Step 6: Fletching The Arrows

Picture of Fletching The Arrows
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To fletch the arrows I use duck tape.  This is the best, cheapest, way I found to do it. First rip a section of duck tape about 2-3 inches long. Next crease the duck tape in the middle leaving a little bit not stuck together at the top. Then stick that part to the arrow shaft about 1 to 1-1/2 inches from the end were the knock use to be. You will get better flight and accuracy if you angle your vane’s to make the arrow spin, but it isn’t required for good performance.

Step 7: Reapeat

Picture of Reapeat
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Once you have repeated this to all three to five sides you are ready to cut out the actual shape your vane/feather will be. I like to use a downsized version of the original vane’s shape, and make normally three of these.

Step 8: The Nock

Picture of The Nock
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For this I found that hot gluing a golf tee into the shaft is the best way to go.  Shooting arrows with the standard nock is OK but it seem to put more stress on your fingers, and can sometimes slip out. The last thing to do after this is to screw in your point.
Now you’re all set to shoot!  I hoped you enjoyed this instructable and wish to see more in the future.