SSW001.Simpleshot.indd 49 20/07/2018 16:33 S S 1 6 : 3 3 SS 16:33 SIMPLE-SHOT 049 stay at for life. Many lives, one of them is fourth generation. Both are precision engineers. One is about casting metal to virtuoso accuracy, the other is about making the mould tools that the world uses. And catapults. You will have injection moulded things near you, even if wild camping in sticks, unless you change your buttons for antler toggles. But Nathan Masters is unique. Nobody else is running a purely catapult business like it, producing modern product. The bent metal rod slingshot companies that produce the models all those reading this will be familiar with, like Barnett or Trumark, are either selling crossbows as core business or struggling to keep up, technology-wise in my opinion. I once went to a Bass Pro shop. The North Americans are massively into hunting with human power and the shop had two hundred hunting bows on display. And three Daisy slingshots. For in the USA, slingshooters at the level that they might want to read a whole magazine about them, are spread way thinner in the population than other nations. Kind of the opposite of the gun ownership statistics in each territory. But just as musicians grow up and end up at jazz, just as anglers get middle aged and hanker for bamboo and centre pin reels, there are those shooting sports fans that end up at slingshots. Nathan’s path was always human-powered and like so many others (Brits, Alex Rosier, Nina Wick) he has a past in archery. And not just shooting but actually making his own bows. Longbows, the hardest to draw, hardest to shoot well and most absurdly old fashioned and hench of all. The bow that demanded that British churchyards grew yew trees for making bows with, by law. He made and competed with his own. When interviewing him, we discussed Kyūdō, look it up. And then, years later, he found his metier as FlippinOut Slingshots, making catapults of such beauty, that he won USA Slingshot Of The Year with a ‘starship’ design so beautiful it is pure sculpture. The sheer loveliness of Nathan’s slingshot builds is just breath taking but they do need to cost the time they took and Nathan is driven by a wide imperative to offer this sport to everyone because of one key thing. For Nathan Masters, life without fun is not worth living. No mere existing, fun is crucial to his very core. I can dig the Large Mouth Bass fishing and I can understand (if never do) mountain biking, but I didn’t even know an ATB unicycle was actually a An interview with Nathan Masters, Slingshot Svengali: Awesome shot, amazingly talented designer and awesome communicator. Adam Rayner nagged him rotten. A Skype call videoed from a screen, albeit in 4K, check the link here to YouTube. https://youtu.be/ ekyELSNoIGE Or just go to Mounted & Stuffed TV on YouTube and search “NATHAN MASTERS -SLINGSHOT SVENGALI!” Knife-inside slingshot, use carefully! Engrossed in his art.... SSW001.Simpleshot.indd 49 20/07/2018 16:33