When I was a kid, a great many years ago, we played with two homemade weapons - slingshots and flipstocks.
when I look at photos of commercial "slingshots" online - they do not look like the slingshots of my youth, but look more like what we called flipstocks.
A flipstock was a Y-shaped weapon to which you attached something that turned it into what I would call a miniature catapult. We usually used a flipstock that we whittled ourselves, and the elastic part was usually cut out of an old innertube. You put a rock (or something) into the rubber part, pulled it back as far as you could, and released it, launching the missile (we hoped) somewhere close to the target.
A slingshot was entirely different. It had a pouch-like thingie at the end of a rope-like weapon. You put your missile (usually a pebble or smooth river rock) into the pouch and slung the whole thing around your head several times to get up speed and it was centrifugal force that provided the impetus. Accuracy with a slingshot was difficult because you had to release the end of the rope at precisely the right moment or your rock might go in exactly the opposite direction you wanted it to go.
Does any of this make any sense today? Does anybody use a slingshot the way we used to as kids? We used these homemade weapons (Rabbits and squirrels were favorite targets) because we couldn't afford expensive weapons like BB guns.
