Forward Controls Design – Carbine Sling Forward Controls (CSF)

CSF (Carbine Sling, Forward Controls) is a simple 2 point adjustable sling with typical Forward Controls Design attention to detail.

When creating the CSF, we follow our established project development procedures: define the objectives, develop means to achieve them, early proof of concept prototypes, and weeks and months of tweaking and refinement before it becomes a shipping product.

CSF isn’t modeled after or based on any particular sling, though one may say Vickers comes close.  We defined the areas we deemed important and honed in on these.  There are only so many ways to make a 2 point adjustable sling, CSF isn’t meant to be ground breaking, it is designed to be a hard use sling that is easy and intuitive to operate.  As shooters ourselves, we’re no strangers to slings and using them, we have experimented with quite a few throughout the years, including the much maligned single point nut busters, which eventually turned into leashes for our Poodle mix, Charlie.

Here are some CSF highlights:

1. We use a smooth military grade webbing for the sling body, but a slightly different (also military grade) webbing that has a rougher texture for CSF’s quick adjustment tab.  We prefer the fabric pull tab, as it offers a great deal of surface area, and isn’t picky about how a hand grabs it to provide traction.  CSF’s quick adjustment tab is always a different color than the body of the ling, so the user can quickly identify it with only his peripheral vision.  This isn’t done for looks, colors can be helpful in many ways.

2. A quick detach buckle on the buttstock or rear end of the sling, oriented in a way the buckle won’t pinch the user’s finger when he uses it to quickly and easily drop the sling.  The quick detach buckle is only on the rear side of the sling, not in front.  When released (carbine in the typical slung position, with the buttstock near the user’s shoulder pocket), the rear located quick detach buckle allows the sling to drop free by gravity alone, out of the way of the user, whereas a front located quick detach requires the user to squirm out of the sling.  It’s a small thing, we realized the benefit of a rear attached QD buckle and used it all the time, and never the front attached buckle, so a front end QD buckle is omitted altogether.

3. Ample front and rear webbing to allow the user to double back on the triglide buckle for added security for QD swivels attachment.

4. A triglide in the “adjustment loop” of the sling to act as a feed guide.  We tried CSF with and without, it’s better with a form of feed guide.

5. Total length of  65″ (max length, with 100% slack removed in the adjustment loop), with 11″ of quick adjustment range via the pull tab, and additional length adjustability in the rear quick release buckle.  The total length is calculated to be very slightly longer than necessary, but not so long as to require 2 triglides to eliminate a large opening, or loop, created by having too much material on the sling.