Making New Double-staffs

I didn't like the drilling through kevlar bit, I found the drill bit always got clogged up. Then ian introduced me to the: Pre drill the metal method. Where you pre drill the metal tube. Mesure the distance of the holes and mark a line on the metal longer than the wick, then you just get a phat needle and poke it through the wick till you find the hole, the needle hole provides a nice hole for the screw to go down. You might think this is a bit needle in a haystack like, but it's surprisingly easy to find the holes, and works much better if you have trouble with drilling through kevlar.

Just my 2 lamas.

very true, I predrilled this last time with just a regular drill bit, slightly smaller than the screw, and it made a huge difference. Saved me using the metal self drilling screws too.

Yep I ended up putting dowel all the way through. Unfortunately I find it doesn't much help to stop the whole unit bending, apparently the force of the steel warping is more than the dowel can resist =/. But the bending isn't that bad, easy to bend back into shape. And I don't think the dowel adds much weight either. Also, since the dowel I got was a tiny bit thinner than the tubing, sometimes when the staff hits something it makes a twang noise!

But oh well.

Yeah I heard about the pre-drill method, even using the drill on a reverse setting so you can sort of 'edge' a hole through the kevlar to begin with, so you don't fray it at all when you drill proper. Oh wait, I guess I DO use the pre-drill method, in that, we drill the hole first then screw in 2nd, and not with self steel tapping screws or anything.

Tape works a real treat, though Mo-seph may be right about just using heaps of masking tape instead cos its more paperry. Though I'm convinced it wouldnt be as easy to compact the wick as well, since masking tape doesn't stretch.

- Klaymen

I was just thinking about staff weight and moments of inertia etc (instead of doing work). Mo-seph said: I think heaviness is good for contact, but you don't really need weights on the end.

The weight helps you to feel the staff on your body, and makes it slower.

I think no, you don't 'really' need weights on the ends, but it does make the staff act as if it were longer... so the contact moves get easier. The more weight on the ends the longer the staff virtually becomes...

I need to dig out my physics text books.

If you have a staff with a fixed weight, then the further toward the ends you distribute the mass, the higher the moment of intertia is, which gives you more angular momentum at a given speed. I think it's the moment of inertia which affects how well contact moves work, as the larger it is the more the staff will keep going.

So you could have a lighter staff which worked similarly to a heavier staff because the weight was more distributed towards the ends. Not sure about all this, though - it might be that the weight to moment of intertia *ratio* is important too...

we're both geeks! Yay!

Yes I think you're right mo-seph. But I need an easier way to visualise moments of inertia in my poor minion-monkey-brain.

Weight plays a big role in feeling contact moves on your body, but the 'feel' of a staff could indeed depend on some strange ratio.

Plus: 2 x 1 unit training is better than 1 X 2 unit training. (ie train with more breaks!)

And if you want to learn things implicitly, with no explicit knowledge of how you do them, try making up a number task and doing it while you learn something. Like reciting the fibonacci numbers, and counting in primes.

i pre-drill the wrapped wick with a handscrew, and it makes a narrow but thorough tunnel to the metal. 'tis wide enough to drill with a screw after that.
the lesson abour srewing and staff completely escapes me at this point, but if you have the answer, please write it ont hte back of a postcard and tape it to a passing wind marked 'smelly'

ey, another good use for duct tape, wrap it around the dowel to make it seat solidly inside your tubing. No need to wrap the _entire_ dowel, I used one wrap every 3 inches or so. I used aluminum tubing instead of steel, but mine has a nice hum when you catch it. I got it right on the doubles I made, but a couple of the other staffs don't have that hum, so they don't really feel as solid.

That's a good idea musashii, I wish I had done that, darn.

With regards to contact staff, besides maximising moment of inertia, my only other assumption would be the longer the better, simply because you can imagine as the staff gets shorter, any shift from the exact centre of the staff has a greater % effect at unbalancing the smaller the staff is. Ie, imagine doing a roll around the arm or elbow, you won't touch the staff in the exact centre after doing this move.

This isn't THAT important though, just another thing to think about. I mean, I've tried a bit of contact with my 1m staffs, and they're just a bit short.

- Klaymen

heh, my contact staff was 6ft long. Makes any move possible, but I see Knox, Meg(MCP), or BlooCat pulling the same moves off with 5(or less) footers(or so it seems) All the same, on fire 5-6 feet seems to be the norm for contact..Long n heavy eh..

yeah thats like 1.5 m, huuuuge :P. For me atleast. My mate has a 1.6m one that is just so way huge and heavy, its really fun to twirl slow, I really should get some contact skills happening, they look so smooth. His staff would be perfect for it.

- Klay-smooth

i've always pre-drilled my wicks but mcp that idea about using a pin first is geenious! i'd always just kept trying and re-trying with a screw till i finally got it right and it was usually still a little bit wonky anyway...