Practice heads for fire poi

Hi,

Apologies if this popped up somewhere before in the forums and I just couldn't find it, but I recently got my first set of fire poi and I find the heads (monkey fist knots) to be a bit light. I've used mostly sock poi before, and need to relearn a couple of things (mainly stalls and isolations), and test recently learned tricks, on the chains before I burn.

Any ideas on how to make practice heads that (A) securely attach to my chains (the attachment is just an 1/8" steel oval quick link), (B) weigh 1-2lbs? Right now the heads weigh substantially less than the chains, which is throwing me off. I'd prefer to put them together myself, and not buy ready made practice heads. The first thing that occurs to me is a metal or stone core for a monkey fist, but I don't know where to find something like that with a hole through it (for installing some sort of eye). I'm sure there's something perfectly simple, but it's not occurring to me.

I say get the fuzzy covers sold by HoP and fill them with fishing sinkers to whatever weight you want

Fish sinkers are pretty hard, try bags of sand if you don't want something so... fatal.

1-2 pounds ?
The chains are heavier than the wicks ?

Sounds like you have some very heavy chain there and you might want to replace that with something a little lighter.

AS to practice heads, You may just want to cover your monkeys fists with socks to protect them from impact and abrasion. Little kids socks work just fine here and you'll be spinning with the same rig that you'll be using with fire.

Apparently I may have been unclear. The current heads I've made are synthetic core cotton rope dummy heads, and they only weigh 40-50g, less than a tennis ball. The chains are fairly standard for fire poi, and being metal it doesn't take much for them to weigh more than 40g.

My interest was in making practice heads that *do* weigh 1-2lbs, or something in the general neighborhood of what the wick *will* weigh when fueled. But because this wick design doesn't have a solid core, they're very light before they're soaked.

Incidentally, I was in the hardware store the other day looking for the solution, and it turned out the first clerk I happened across was also a fire spinner. A monkey fist around an eye bolt loaded with fender washers has worked out beautifully.