Sling bullet weight

[Lefferts]

One of my characters has recently picked up a sling,
so I picked up some sling bullets.

Then it was pointed out to me that they weigh 5 pounds
for 10 bullets. Is this reasonable? It seems high to me,
but I honestly have no idea.

Lefferts
(trying to lower his encumbrance)

 

[Len]

That seems about right. Assuming sling bullets are made of lead (the rules only say that bullets are denser than stones), a half-pound bullet would be about 1.7 cm or .66 in in size. (Any physicist or chemist out there want to double-check my calculations?)

Yes, the encumbrance is annoying for low-strength characters. I recommend a shortbow or light crossbow.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Should be about right. After all, it's a bullet of solid stone or metal, and 0.5 pounds aren't that much.

 

[Staffan]

That seems about right. Assuming sling bullets are made of lead (the rules only say that bullets are denser than stones), a half-pound bullet would be about 1.7 cm or .66 in in size. (Any physicist or chemist out there want to double-check my calculations?)

Yes, the encumbrance is annoying for low-strength characters. I recommend a shortbow or light crossbow.

Sounds about right. 0.5 lbs = 20 cm^3 of lead, which translates to a radius of 1.7 cm (that's what you meant, of course ), or a diameter of 3.4 cm or 1.3 inches.

 

[Len]

Uh, yeah, radius. Dammit, I'm a mathematician. I solved for r and called it done.

 

[hong]

Uh, yeah, radius. Dammit, I'm a mathematician. I solved for r and called it done.

I must kill you now.


Hong "a statistician, not a mathematician" Ooi

 

[Tetsubo]

I know of real world Greek examples that weighed 16 ounces per "bullet". Some of them even had symbols or words cast into them. One example said, "Eat This" in Greek.

 

[Aaron2]

Then it was pointed out to me that they weigh 5 pounds
for 10 bullets. Is this reasonable? It seems high to me,
but I honestly have no idea.

This is from Connolly in Greece and Rome at War ...

"Lead shot vary in weight between 20 and 30g, though there are isolated examples both above and below these weights. The maximum weight in use in the Near East was 185g. If Diodorus is to be believed, the famous Balearic slingers used stones weighing on mina (350g). As Korfman pointed out in his article on the sling, such a stone would be about 6.3cm in diameter - only slightly smaller than a tennis ball."

Ten 30g stones is about 2/3 of a pound, ten at 350g are about seven pound. The lighter shot had a max range of around 350 yards, the heavier ones had half that.

Here's a picture of some sling stones next to the aformentioned tennis ball.
http://www.christiananswers.net/q-abr/sling2.jpg

Here's a web page about slings ...
http://www.slinging.org/


Aaron

 

[Squire James]

The whole "David vs. Goliath" thing is seeming less and less fantastic as we go on here... most humans would go down if a pound of lead hit their forehead at high speed!

 

[Ancalagon]

Hmm

If the sling bullets used are half a pound each, perhaps the damage should be increased. Lighter bullets would do less damage.

Ancalagon