Monday, October 14, 2013

Of slingshots, ricochets, and heads


Joerg Sprave's so-called 'Slingshot Channel' on YouTube has been the repository for videos of some weird and wonderful experiments with slingshots and catapults of all shapes and sizes. The man's a visionary (and sometimes zany) inventor.

During one of his recent experiments, he learned the hard way that ricochets aren't confined to bullets alone. The action begins at about the 57-second mark.  A warning to the squeamish: there's a lot of blood involved.





Oops . . .





Peter

7 comments:

english kanigit said...

Just found that myself this evening. It's a bit of a gag.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bc5HUS8dLN0

Ek

wordlet said...

As the previous commenter pointed out, this was all faked to promote the fundraising for his new zombie movie. If he ever did get hurt I think the whole internet would mourn, you can tell from his videos that he's the nicest, and probably most dangerous, guy in Germany.

Douglas2 said...

I saw that video some time ago, and as an occasional viewer thought to myself "there is a lesson for me in that!"

I know he does careful preparation, and to see an accident demonstrates that accidents do happen, so I could certainly be:
a: more safety conscious in my activities involving tools
b: more prepared for first aid should it be needed.

My other thought was "kudos for this guy posting the video that makes him look a bit of a crybaby"

The fact that it was apparently a staged accident and stage-makeup instead of real blood is a little reassuring, but doesn't at all lessen the message that "it could happen" for me.

Joe Allen said...

If he doesn't learn to keep his finger off the trigger, that won't be the worst injury on his show.

http://youtu.be/X9LmzAeQqNM?t=38s

Old NFO said...

Yep awful lot of 'damage' for a round ball... Just sayin...

BMG Mike said...

From ball bearings out of a slingshot to steel cores out of a .50 BMG rifle, This sort of thing does happen. For real. I've personally been hit with spall from .22 Short off of wood targets, .22LR and .38 Spl off of steel, and I've witnessed steel core ammo from 7.62x39 off of steel hit a guy 85 yards from the target. I've seen spall from a .50 BMG come back 200+ yards from a steel target. Fortunately, I shot it from 300 yards. Those videos of shooters getting hit with their own rounds just might be real.

I don't think this is faked. The bearing does not have enough energy to penetrate whatever it hit, and the laws of physics get invoked. Even if it is faked, there's a good safety lesson here, folks. Maybe more than one.

ASM826 said...

Faked for fun. He has posted a "How I did it" video as a followup.