The Home-Made Finger Sling

This handy hint was given to me by a bloke at the Quicks archery shop in London. He said that it was a cheap alternative to a proper sling, and more comfortable and adjustable than most. In fact, it had everything going for it. But I insisted on spending money on a "proper" sling instead... only to end up a fervent advocate of this.

What you will need:

A shoelace (not too long, but you can cut it to suit you once you've used it a bit)
A little manual dexterity (but not much!)
Preferably a graphical browser, because my descriptions aren't up to much (but then nor's my artwork)

What to do:

Tie the ends of the shoelace together so that it makes a loop (a reef knot is best), and put it down stretched out, so that you have a short length of double-thickness string.

[Step 2] Fold one end of the string back on itself, pulling the folded-back bits out to the side slightly to form two small loops.
Repeat for the other end.

[Step 3] Carefully turn the whole lot upside down, so that the looped ends of the string go underneath the straight bit that connects them.

[Step 4] Fold one of the loops at one end over so that it lies on top of the other loop.
Repeat for the other end.

See what you've got now? Loops for your thumb and middle finger to go through! It's just like a normal finger sling except it's

cheaper
more adjustable (just cut the shoelace to hold the bow closer)
more comfortable
only slightly more fiddly.

Obviously you don't go through that tedious laying-out and folding process every time you want to use it. Once you've got the hang of how it's meant to look you can easily put it together while holding your bow.

Say: "Thank you Neale."

Coming up now are the terrible ASCII-art versions of the above steps: people who don't need to see these are advised to look away. If you wish to continue, make damn sure you've got a fixed-width font set for pre-formatted text.

Step 1:
.----------------.
`----------------'

Step 2:
 _      _
/ \    / \
`-|----|-'
.-|----|-.
\_/    \_/

Step 3:
 _      _
/ \    / \
`--------'
.--------.
\_/    \_/

Step 4:
 _      _
/ \    / \
`-|----|-' (That's meant to show the picture
            for Step 3 folded over on itself)

This site is maintained by Tim Smith. Complaints, praise, suggestions and doughnuts are welcome.