LAZY-BOY SLINGSHOT! AUTO RETURN CATCH BOX UPGRADE.

By Slingshot World Magazine: This is from issue FOUR.
THE AUTO-RETURN CATCH BOX. Just upgraded the crucial capture-curtain from fabric that the steel balls were just destroying, to leather offcuts from a sofa manufacturer. Now, the balls are all caught and are going downwards with more energy, so that even the tiny 8mm steels balls (and incidentally, later some 9.5mm glass ones, too) were happily rolling through the drainpipe system and coming back to where I was shooting from seated.
Total lazy boy slingshot practice!
And here, for pure love, is the article from the magazine raw copy - with the PART NUMBERS you need:
How To Make An Auto-Return Catch Box
IF AT FIRST YOU FAIL ABJECTLY, SIMPLY STEAL AN IDEA AND WORK ON THAT, INSTEAD.
Just imagine for a moment, a slingshot world without rusty balls.
Difficult isn’t it? If you leave steel balls in your catch box even overnight after a session, they get rusted by dew or ruined by rain.
Some folks are religious in collecting their ammo afterwards. Most of us, though, have rusty steel balls everywhere. Including places like clothes washing machines, where they shouldn’t be. Or rolling slowly to a halt, somewhere deep in your car’s monocoque after the engine stops.
What if your catch box caught the ammo and then auto-returned it? Delivered it back to the ammo pot at your side? I have seen clever wooden designs online that do. Big boxes with sloping floors and gutters in front that run down to an ammo pot. But what about easy and affordable?
Long before lockdown, I went to IKEA for doormats and a slatted box. I spent £29 on parts at B&Q and worked hard lining it. A sloping gutter and six metres of drainage pipes connected up to return the balls. I felt dead clever. Then, I tested it.
The balls trundled back down the pipes to plop into a funnel stuck in the top of my ammo pot as long as they hit the spinner low. Otherwise, all shots were savage ricochets. Total and utter fail.
Then, GZK China posted a collecting catch box on Facebook made from a water cooler bottle. Using the inverted shape to collect the balls and drop them into his ammo pot so I stole his idea.
While I was puzzling how to mount it, MeJulie suggested wire coat hangers. Like the Russians using a pencil in space rather than million-dollar space pens.
You need a water cooler bottle. I paid £6 each when getting three but shipping took them to £11 each delivered.
You need two wire coat hangers, pliers to cut and bend them and weighty fabric to hang up.
You need B&Q Miniflo 50mm straight pipes, bends, joiners and pipe brackets. And you need a magic £2.34 ingredient. The ‘Rubber Boss Adaptor Black 40mm’ ( sku 5055 1499 20813) This rubber collar joins the bottle’s neck to the first bend adaptor of the pipe system and is my sole stroke of ‘AAAAHHHHH!’ in this whole thing.
The bottle’s seams will guide you to drill perfectly diametrically opposing holes to hang it on an untwisted-then-re-twisted coat hanger passed through inside. Drill two more holes behind to fit a curtain track wire cut from another hanger. Bits of hanger wire as staples will hold multiple fabric layers together, just thread onto the curtain track.
Both the pleather and the Titanium spinners did bounce out a bit and I ruined the fabric I hung up… but that’s just innards. This works. The balls trundle and it sounds hilarious on video. LAZY!
THE Catapult Magazine…
FOR Catapult Enthusiasts…
BY Catapult Enthusiasts
Check out the Website; www.slingshotworld.co.uk/
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READ it DIGITALLY- FREE HERE: (Issues one to three so far) www.slingshotworld.co.uk/digi...

[@birkmunchhausen9421]

That’s an absulutley genius idea !!

[@auldreekievaper5394]

Only the coolest ball return system in the world ace job Adam

[@CapraObscura]

Simple and effective. Very nice, mate.

[@thomas.bill92]

Love it!

[@marcelhallare3127]

Nice one👌

[@dave1secondago]

great catch box

[@thornwarbler]

Thats a work of genius, nice one mate ..........Cheers

[@SLINGSHOTWORLDTV]

Someone else's idea, stolen and worked on!

[@48pluto]

Thats a good idea! I have could invented it if i was a bit smarter. LOL. Very nice.

[@canvandal4503]

Brilliant!!! Absolutely brilliant!!!👊

[@sosteve9113]

Exactly,this is like a small bowling alley