COMING in Slingshot World #6! Danny Sherwood does HOW TO SCALE A FRAME! The best HOW TO ever, by the skill and hands of an expert, with a total numpty to Keep It Simple, Stoopid! ME!
I figured if I could understand what was going on, as a thumb-fingered dolt, then I could hope to explain it in the magazine.
I have been to Sherwood’s forest (well, the area is quite well wooded) and took all the materials bar the pins for the job, with me.
I wanted it to be as straightforward as possible so you too might be able to try making one, but without dumping Danny’s five years of experience like a spilled barrow. This will be an introduction rather than a masterclass but I am beyond chuffed to have had his help. It’s like getting a Formula One race mechanic to look at your old Jaguar E-Type!
I have to say he was awesomely media friendly, stopping to let me snap stuff willy-nilly must be annoying… but he has the patience of a saint.
In some ways, many slingshot enthusiasts are just like the woman executives in the Harry & Paul ‘Chocolatier’ sketches. The ones where a powerful executive type gets approached by a seedy man in a cloak.
The woman is always a well-written part. Positive, authoritative and in command. She gets accosted and tells the little man (Paul Whitehouse) to be gone. At which he opens his cloak on one side, saying, “AH yes but I am a chocolatier….” and displaying his chocolates hung within like the cliché old black market watch seller. At this point our power executive melts, says “AWMAHGAAWWWD” and goes all soppy and malleable.
The series got better and better as the female characters become more important. Still melting in the face of choccies though… Until he meets this one woman who is unimpressed by his chocolates!
So he whips open the other side of his coat revealing big jewellery and says, “Ah! Then SPARKLY THINGS?” and yes, she too melts with oohs and aahs… Thus is it with shiny slingshots. I and many others are just suckers for a shiny slingshot.
And Danny Sherwood makes some of the best shiny slingshots you have ever seen.
Just exactly like a brand new sports car, once the covers are off and it is used, it is going to lose that perfection. This is why new cars are transported with with plastic wrap on the leading edges of the paintwork when on car transporters unregistered, going to a dealership. And why you so often see makers holding their perfect finished article for the camera, whilst wearing blue nitrile gloves!
You could argue about the whys and wherefores of shiny catapults but for me it can definitely be a part of the sheer joy of possession.
Readers of Slingshot World will know that I love to weave everything together with references to previous stuff by way of reminder, and Danny is a piece of that. In issue two we saw Custom Composites’ beautiful scaling resins and after all this time, the scale materials that I kept back are at last being applied to a lovely thick aluminium core supplied by Matt Redding.
What is less well known is that the entire stock and materials and tools of Custom Composites was bought up by Danny who then hit the deck running making his own materials to a high standard. So he has epic ability to create whatever your heart desires, from embedded pictures to custom, yes composites!
I am getting a Hedgerow Hunter like no other.
By the way, I have to snitch one delightful thing… John Jeffries wanted an ‘Aurora Borealis’ colour-blended resin for a frame he made. It was an exquisite catapult once fashioned (I saw it online) but it took three goes for Danny to get the composite slab made that matched what John had in mind. That was a perfectionist working for a perfectionist…
