In “Body Switching” Loonah makes herself a sling out of the Tea Bag Strings. She founds a large number of used tea bags and removes strings from them, using it as twine and twisting it into strands that makes a rope at the end. It is painstaking job, but she is proud of knowing how to do and being able to make it.

Now it may sound a little bit too much, but I made something similar just as a proof of concept. It all starts with three folded strings, that are being arranged in such a fashion that their ends are offset for about one sixth of the length. When you start twisting them it is six strings that forms a strand, and when one string is completely used up, you simply add another, and it can go this way as long as you like.

This is an example. As you can see there is a strand that has been twisted and now is a moment when you need to add another string, since there are only four loose ends.

Once you have enough strands of desired length you can make a rope. That can be done in more than one way. Usually one would use the same technique of twisting, but I chose to make it in somewhat different fashion. The five strands were braided together to make a strong, but in the same time elastic rope.  I guess the effect of elasticity has to do something with the rigidity of the single strands, so that braid could not be too tight.

Now you can see here the inconsistency of the rope. It is due to the fact that I have been using strings from the several different tea producers, and my strands are not uniformly twined.

Nevertheless, the rope is strong and durable, if not so pretty as it could be. Here is a picture of the almost finished sling. It was a bad decision to chose five for a number of the strands, since the six would be much better for making that pouch in the middle of the sling, but again, this is just a proof of concept.

I have tested it, and it works, although I’m not the best sling shooter in the world and my shots were wide of the mark.

So it is feasible to make some primitive weapon from everyday objects; even those that are meant to be thrown away. All the strings used in this little projects are from the tea bags that I have used to make a tea for myself. If someone wonders how much tea this is, well, this is but a small part of it.