Making you own equipment

garthv

So ive started getting into the fire arts and since im not the kind of person to spend 80-100 euro just for one fire staff i decided to make one myself.
Started off with a fire club to begin and came out with this :

Not half bad for a first time.
Fire staff is in the process of being made at the moment too

Hugh Hefner

Very cool.

garthv

Heres the Fire Staff :

5 feet of flamey goodness

Hugh Hefner

Lol. I assume you can actually use it, right? Or are you going to learn with it?

garthv

Teaching myself at the mo

Adam

Care to post instructions as to how you made that there club?

loafer's glory

good lord, that wick is freakin' huge on the club! have you lit that yet? it's going to take your hands and half your face off. I used the second smallest wick I could find for mine (next one up from the 20mm, I guess it's about 45mm or so) and even at that I can't juggle them so well until I let them burn down a bit... but then, I suck at fire juggling.

and if anyone else is planning on making a staff, here's a tip: using steel is bad for spinning, but good for contact staff because it gives it a heftier momentum. if you want a spinny staff, use aluminium.

loafer's glory

Incidentally, here's a good recipe for juggling balls:

1. Get a little plastic bag and fill it with rice.

Alternatively, fill a balloon with rice. This gives a better shape but is trickier because the elasticity in the walls are acting against you filling it. you have to fill up the neck of the balloon, then inflate it so the rice drops in, then let it slowly deflate around the rice. and repeat again and again, one neckful at a time.

put in about 100g.

2. cut the neck off another balloon, and stretch it around the first one (so that the tie of the first one and the open neck of the second one are at diametrically opposite points on the ball).

3. repeat, until you have about 4 or 5 layers of balloons.

I made these and they dried out and cracked on me eventually, but they were lovely balls until then. to prevent drying, maybe one could try smearing KY jelly or something between the layers. I don't know if oil-based lubes would eat the balloons or what. and obviously don't put it on the outside.

yaledo

The fire club looks great, here are some construction tips:
- What kind of metal did you use? copper is bad, it conducts heat too well and can melt the handle or burn your hand. Aluminium is good.

- Have a separate handle: such as a bit of broom-handle rammed into the metal piping - again, this stops you from burning your hands, and it stops the handle from melting.

- Put a big washer about half-way down the club (ideally between the metal & the wood)- one problem with fire-clubs is that the fuel likes to run down the side of the club when its hot, again more burning of hands.

- When using the club, let it rest a minute before re-dipping & lighting. Partly for safety reasons (the club can heat up to a high temperature if you don't give it a rest) and also - you'll save a lot of fuel (dipping a hot club into fuel just makes all the fuel evaporate out of the bowl/cup).

loafer's glory

Another tip: Don't waste your money on grip tape (like for tennis racquets or hurleys or whatever). Go to your local bike shop, and ask them if they have any busted up inner tubes in the bin. Take them home, cut them open, wash out the chalky stuff inside, and use them for grip tape. Wrap it around and then glue the loose end down. On a 1" diameter club/staff, you get about 2' of grip per inner tube, roughly.

cocoa

about the juggling balls:
I've been experimenting with making balloon balls as well right now, been using flour up until now (add a small amount of water and you get a REALLY squishy ball), rice never occurred to me, I'll try it tomorrow, thanks for the tip.

also, do you think it is really necessary to have that many layers? I've been using 3 or 4, sometimes just 2, will they wear out that fast?

yaledo

The balloons do wear away before too long, so its good to use more than 2.
I guess if you use 3, then you can always replace the outer 1 as soon as it breaks.

loafer's glory

The reason I used 4 or 5 layers was because the bag of balloons I bought happened to have about 15 in it.

5 layers includes the innermost one full of rice, since I did it this way instead of using a bag. So it's more like 4 balloons outside.

One of the biggest causes of bursting that I found was that the balloons were simply stretched too tight. I wanted the balls to be about 110g each, and using rice they wound up a nice size, but maybe the balloons I had were a bit small.

If I were doing it again, I'd use something denser. But not flour. If that burst it'd be a nightmare to clean up. Especially wet flour.

But instead, I'm going to buy some glow in the dark DX balls tonight. yay.

larryone

I tried two layers of baloons.... they didnt last too long. Best way to fill them faster, without spending hours doing it:
- cut the bottom off a drink bottle to make a funnel
- put the baloon neck over the neck of the bottle
- pour rice into the funnel
- place the bottle over your mouth, make sure it's sealed well enough around your mouth.
- inflate, holding the neck of the baloon on tight.
- let the air out very slowly. otherwise you choke yourself with the rice that shoots back up.
- rince, repeat.

Problem that I had was where I cut the bottom of the bottle the plastic was a little sharp, and dug into my cheek a bit.

yaledo

Balloon balls: A lot of people use half rice & half flour, think of the size a balloon inflates to without bursting... 110g of flour should be no problem - the reason they burst is cause you're weakening them every time you drop. The solution is just to have some spare balloons standing by.

On the subject of glow-in-the-dark balls -
Passe-passe make some delightful dx-balls with lights in, and they have just last week released a new&improved version to fix the problems they had with the battery & light housing. They're almost reasonably priced (about €10 each I think). If you go for them, make sure you get new stock (some places will still be stocking the old version) Maybe buy straight from passe-passe's website.

I'd be hard pressed to spend money on any glow/light balls other than samballs though. They're not dx-balls, but they are quite unbeatable for price and battery life, plus they are durable & very nice to juggle with (I've flashed 8 of them, and Ben Beever has juggled 9)

larryone

my guide (linked from the thread named "devil sticks") on how to make your own devil sticks.
must try the tyre inner tube thing... it'd be cool to use bits of it at the ends of a flower stick too

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=2558235&postcount=12

loafer's glory

larryone wrote:

Problem that I had was where I cut the bottom of the bottle the plastic was a little sharp, and dug into my cheek a bit.

aww, dittums...

loafer's glory

@ yaledo

I don't know if I'd bother with actual battery-operated LED balls. I just want regular ones made of that greeny glow in the dark stuff.

And I meant to buy some DX balls before but either I misread the catalogue or they screwed up my order but I wound up with Stage balls. blah... they're these big chunky solid plastic things. horrible.

nah, I really like DXs and want some of those. besides, UCD are putting in a gear order at some stage so I'm kind of limited to Beard for that.

larryone

loafer's glory wrote:

aww, dittums...

You come here on MY advice
You STEAL my avatar
You CORRUPT my signature
And now! You belittle my woes!
Surely my flaming diabolo shall scorch thee!

Details will soon follow on how to construct a fire diabolo. Once I actually get around to it.

cocoa

Sort of pointless now that you don't want samballs, but, beard do supply samballs, just in case you were wondering.

garthv

I got a piece of stainless steel tubing and cut it about 2 feet long for the club. Filed off the edges and wrapped hockey tape around the end of one side. On the other side i dilled two holes about an inch apart and wrapped the Kevlar wick I bought in Visuals around the top. Drilling into the wick with 2 wood screws to secure the wick and Hey,presto a fire club.
Stainless Steel tubing makes for a heavy club but I'll say I'll get used to it

loafer's glory

But what are the wood screws gripping? From what you've said there, it sounds like they go in through the kevlar, through the hole in the metal, and just sit there. That's only going to last for as long as the screw will stay put in the kevlar. and as the kevlar frays around the edges of that hole, the screw will just slip out and the wick will unwind in the middle of a throw.

I've never heard of clubs being made without wooden dowel in the middle to grip the screws, or else a bolt going in one side and out the far side and nutted on.