Ways to make Staff handles

Dudes....

Ive come back to canada to find that the Kereosene here kills any tape that I use for the grip of my staff. I thought that if I do a funky design with electritian tape then cover it with shrink wrap that the proplem would be solved... the design of tape with the grip of shrink wrap makes a super handle. No.... the kareosene penetrates all and destroys all ! What can I do?

Peace out ,

P-Nut

U could try to use another fuel such as fire water, u can buy it at most juggling shops but it is rather expensive or get some waxed string, even the the string tha they use for curtains and wrap it around the staff until the handle is big enough and wax it up yourself
cheers

Use redford hockey tape instead of cheap crappy stuff.

electical tape and gaffa tape dissolves in kero but duc tape does not, however it is slippery when you get kero on it. i would recommend tennis grip with duc tape to hold it on (duc tape is silver, gaffa is sometimes silver but has lines in it the duc tape looks like normal tape)

o yeah leather is also good...... then again wooden sticks dont get slippery

you can also get duc tape in other colors.. I've been able to find it in red, black and blue (as well as the silver color)

in addition to ben-ja-men's replies, along with ducttape, i have actually used masking tape before, for some odd reason, it worked pretty well, but definately use ducttape. ducttape is the best thing, used for anything anywhere and anytime...

As Astar said

Hockey tape is good

I agree with hockey tape, BUT........
I have some friends who work on the oil rigs and they let me use their shop to make a few staffs. For my alluminum staffs, I had some rubber tubing (looks like a big rubber hose or pipe) actually melted on to them; (you slide it on to where you want it, then melt it on with a big torch). So now those staffs have an awesome non-slip grip handle, but the handle sticks off of the staff about 1-2cm (it is slightly thicker than the rest of the staff). But does that thing ever grip (I don't even need to use hockey tape on those, only on my wooden staffs).

on some very good advice, i have used a bicycle inner tube, secured with electrical insulation tape to grip my new sticks.

if you put a couple of layers of tape on it holds well and if you just use a rag to hold your staff when dipping you shouldn't have any problems with the tape degrading and no slippery hands when spinning.

the shrink-to-fit rubber tubing sounds amazing - how thick is the layer of rubber that is left...?
by comparison the inner tube adds about 2-3mm to the diameter of the staffs.

Coleman, the shrink-to-fit rubber tubes I used to use for electronics etc. were probably about 0.5mm or less so they wouldn't add much padding, only grip. The one's i used also didn't shrink a terrible amount, so they had to be fairly tight in the first place.
I quite like thicker padding, i find it also adds to the grippyness of the staff as it has a little give to bumps on hands/body especially with contact stuff.
I just use tennisracket grip with electrical tape at the ends, which just needs replacing from time to time.

What's the inner tubing like ?

Mike

have to admit that i've only just started spinning staffs so i'm not really a very good person to ask but seeing as you have already and i'm bored at work i'll answer anyway...

i used the innertube after i saw it on one of glass' staffs and he recommended it. as i said, i have no previous preference or point of reference but drew seems to think its great and i like the look of it too so it seemed an obvious choice.
my new sticks are both aluminium, sprayed black with the rubber innertube for grips and secured with black and red tape.

there's very little padding but this also means there is very little noticable difference in the diameter around the gripped section - something i have found i prefer.

love the video by the way man

Thanks a lot man! glad you liked the video Hopefully more on the way when i get my hands on a camera again ...
Very impressive stuff you're doing on SmallBoy's video too!

My sticks are fairly thin (19mm i think) so the thicker padding sort of brings the diameter up to something more confortable for me. Also have made the handles as broad as possible so i hardly ever grip the staff outside the handle.

Mike

the footage from smallboy's video was from a while ago and only really has my normal spinning stuff on it - and i hardly ever spin that fast any more

the new one from his party on saturday should have some more fun stuff on it - hopefully simian got some of the glow stuff

i might have caught a glimpse of it

and while i'm here i might as well cast my vote for bicycle handlebar grip tape, and tennis racquet grip is cool too.

Have to give this innertube business a go though...

will bring me new stix along for you to play with tomorrow if ya like?

Cool

I believe I've finally found something that works for me... I came across something called "grip tape" for tennis racket grips (K-Mart). It only sticks to itself, so you can wrap it around the length of where you want your grip, and it provides a porous (it kinda resembles black drywall tape) layer to glue the outer grip to. I then use tennis racket grip which I glue to this using elmers white glue, which as we all know hardens when exposed to heat.

So I not only have a decent grip on my staff now, but NOW that decent grip won't roll up or shred off!

Cool guys,

Thank you for the help... will experiment. The shrink wrap shrinks about 50%. So an 1 inch thick goes down to 1/2 inch. As it was mentioned the thickness of the wrap is small. So what I am trying to do id wrap the grip with copper wire and then put the shrink wrap on top of the wire. I will make appropriate notches to show the center point on the staff . A work in progress.

Benoit