# The $40 Home made Big shot project.



## chad556 (Sep 15, 2011)

Well I got this idea to try to save some money and make my own bigshot instead of shelling out the big bucks for sherrill trees's model

Materials:

After looking endlessly for surgical tubing and spear gun tubing that would be both adequate and economical i stumbled upon these 3 man water balloon launchers amazon was selling: Amazon.com: 120 Yard Water Balloon Launcher: Sports & Outdoors

$12 plus shipping and an easy to replace part if it ever breaks.

Next was the pole to mount this on. I was looking all over at pipes and fiberglass pole pruners and pvc until I found this beauty unexpectedly in the painting section at the home depot 12 ft. 2-Section Adjustable Pole-6512 at The Home Depot The best part is its adjustable, Just a couple of twists and you can make it anywhere from 6' (easily fits in your vehicle) all the way to 12' for those extra long shots.

For the launcher head I kind of cheated. I recycled an old mountain bike handle bar. I took the whole assembly off the bike and bent the handlebars up into a U shape. I then added metal pegs to hold the tubing on and trimmed off the excess. Thats it. No welding, just a little bit of cutting and bending and drilling. Took me about an hour.

Here is what I came up with. Its not a bigshot but I still think it looks pretty sharp for a homemade tool.






















I haven't really tested it yet but it launched a woodchip and a couple dirt clods pretty well in my back yard. Before the launcher was mounted we launched a couple crab apples 100' straight up so it should be plenty powerful. If it can launch a water balloon 360 feet (120 yards) then I would be happy if it could launch my 14 oz throw weight even half that. I will see if I can get a video demonstration of it sometime soon.


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## oscar4883 (Sep 15, 2011)

Cool. Nice thing about the BS is that it works with the poles most guys already have. I really like your effort too. :msp_thumbup:


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## CT_TreeGuy (Sep 21, 2011)

Very nice. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention. (OK, cloning). And in a way, yours is better because it's adjustable. Very clever using the bike handlebars, and I love the perfect fit onto the pole; it's nice when something works out like that.

I do like the action of the Big Shot elastic bands, and they now have a better design that grips the throwbag as you pull back so it won't fall out that I'm going to buy when mine wears out. If yours work well, great; if not, you could always tig a couple of short lengths of tubing onto your handlebars so you could use the Big Shot elastic on your rig. Might need a couple of hose clamps to hold them on.

Looks like you should be able to achieve escape velocity just the way it is though. Nice job!


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## chad556 (Sep 21, 2011)

Well I just tested it out today. Worked great every single shot, its just me that needs to work on my aim and touch . I have ~80'-90' white ash trees in my back yard and after roughly measuring out some shots i took to some of the highest crotches on the trees I was hitting heights of around 70 feet with a 14oz wight. Hey, with a 150' climbing line that's all you really need. The adjustable pole works fantastic, I had it extended to about 10' or so and i was making shots standing straight up. Shots under 40' I can cradle toss all day long but stuff 50 to 70+ feet its maybe 1 in 10 with at least one really bad hang up. This will be a great tool to have in the arsenal.

I have videos. I will post them as soon as I can find my cable and get them uploaded.


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## JRepairsK70e (Sep 21, 2011)

nice job on the homemade bigshot ,my only concern would be to make sure your extension will not release/collapse at full draw[that paint stick looks like it uses a compression collet ,rather that a pin style lock ] resulting in a facefull of throwball be carefull ,good luck jk


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## chad556 (Nov 17, 2011)

[video=youtube;7EeYo3izqcM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EeYo3izqcM[/video]

Well I am a little late with this but I finally got around to it. Here it is in action taking a couple practice shots at the ash trees in my backyard.


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## kdslocum (Nov 18, 2011)

thats pretty sex


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## imagineero (Dec 5, 2011)

Good to see you wearing (hopefully Safety) glasses at least. I love my big shot but I'm always just slightly afraid of it, and check the rubbers/cup before each use. You can buy the head seperately I think, for less than half the price of the kit. You can also buy the rubber/cup for not much at all. I've hit 120' shots with an 8oz throw bag, takes a few goes and you need to get far back from the tree. To get those sort of heights I've usually got an 8' and 4' pole together to make 12, and load it up, start pulling... and gradually stand the pole up as I pull. Then I keep pulling until I'm really cringing in fear. Then I pull an extra couple feet. By that point I'm down on my knees. Then I launch it and realise I needed to pull further.....

There's a mental image I keep locked away in a dark closet of my mind of what I imagine my face would look like if I launched a 10' long highly loaded piece of rubber at my eye. Or a bag full of lead shot.

Shaun


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## treemandan (Dec 6, 2011)

i think a BS cost about 40 bucks.


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## chad556 (Dec 7, 2011)

imagineero said:


> Good to see you wearing (hopefully Safety) glasses at least. I love my big shot but I'm always just slightly afraid of it, and check the rubbers/cup before each use. You can buy the head seperately I think, for less than half the price of the kit. You can also buy the rubber/cup for not much at all. I've hit 120' shots with an 8oz throw bag, takes a few goes and you need to get far back from the tree. To get those sort of heights I've usually got an 8' and 4' pole together to make 12, and load it up, start pulling... and gradually stand the pole up as I pull. Then I keep pulling until I'm really cringing in fear. Then I pull an extra couple feet. By that point I'm down on my knees. Then I launch it and realise I needed to pull further.....
> 
> There's a mental image I keep locked away in a dark closet of my mind of what I imagine my face would look like if I launched a 10' long highly loaded piece of rubber at my eye. Or a bag full of lead shot.
> 
> Shaun



Nice, 120' is a pretty respectable height. I have used this thing to shoot golf balls a good 200' at least out into a farm field. The launcher part itself is advertised to sling water balloons 120 yards. Havent tried hitting a field goal from across a football field yet but that would be a fun test. I have thought about making a special throw weight out of an eyebolt and a golf ball and launching it with some fishing line attached for some ultra high throws if I ever find a tree that tall around here.

Good point on the safety gear. Those are actually ANSI rated glasses, Husqvarna ones i got at a trade show a while back. A helmet with a face shield wouldn't have been a bad idea either. I too have that secret fear of the tubing breaking and smacking me right in the face, man that would sting, and can you imagine the welt it would leave?

Oh and treemandan, the only thing you can get under $40 for the bigshot is the rubber and the pouch. I was actually going to go that route but then I found the balloon launcher for $12 and I figured I would try it out first, it seemed like it would be easier to attach to a home made head.


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## imagineero (Dec 7, 2011)

I only very rarely do trees that size, maybe once or twice a year at most. I had a job earlier this year that had some 150 footers, and one of them had the first fork at 120'. It was 7' or 8' at the base, I wasnt going to spike it all the way up with no rope setup. I was amazed we could get that high but it took a lot of shots, maybe 20 or 30 goes. That's a lot of time, because after each shot you'd have to wind back in, then flake out 180' of line. The surprising thing was how far away from the tree we had to get to make the shot, I'd guess about 50', maybe more. When we did finally nail it we tied a second throw line to the end of the first, got the weight to the floor and then started hauling rope. 

I got a big workout on those trees. We were on 7/8" lowering ropes, and by the time you've got 100+feet of it hanging under you there is some real weight there. I dont think I would have climbed them if I couldnt set a top rope.

Shaun


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## Eric106 (May 6, 2013)

*My $12 Homemade Big Shot(R) project.*



chad556 said:


> Well I got this idea to try to save some money and make my own bigshot instead of shelling out the big bucks for sherrill trees's model
> 
> Materials:
> 
> ...



Chad, thanks for posting this. I had read this some time ago and ordered one of the balloon launchers thinking I might get to this some day. Well, this past weekend I had a crotch I just couldn't hit by hand so decided to put one of these together. I used the same $12 water balloon launcher but went a completely different way with the head and pole using only junk/scrap I had laying around. So, with an investment of $12 and two hours of my time (from deciding to build to testing) I had this. 






















The pole is some type of planting stake I think. I came across it a long time ago and decided to hang on to it because it looked like it might be useful for something some day. It's eight foot long actually some type of plastic coated steel tubing. It's a little bit on the thin side -- it gets a bit of a bow in it when the launcher is pulled to full tension -- but springs right back and hasn't been bent yet and is supper light. Then head is made from some 1/8 inch pipe out of the center of some old lamp. I don't even remember what lamp it came out of, it was in my steel scrap/material pile for so long. The center section was a piece of bent steel tubing from a bed frame leg if I recall correctly. It just happened to fit perfectly over the pole and the bend made it even better.

For my first shot I lined it up at the center of the tree about 40 feet up not knowing what the range or accuracy was going to be like. I pulled it back about five feet (balloon launcher says max six feet) and let it go. It smacked the trunk dead center exactly where it was pointed. Needless to say, I was impressed. It took about a dozen shots to hit the exact crotch at 70 feet I wanted because is was such a small target.


Thanks again for posting this and giving me the idea and inspiration to build one of these.

-Eric


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## eert (Jun 21, 2013)

That looks really sexy!! Well done, can barly tell the difference!


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## lowandslow (Jun 27, 2013)

*$8.00 big slingshot*



chad556 said:


> Well I got this idea to try to save some money and make my own bigshot instead of shelling out the big bucks for sherrill trees's model
> 
> Materials:
> 
> ...



hey, check out my $8.00 big slingshot in rec climbers it works great! You inspired my project
:msp_razz:


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