Two More Ermeys for the world at large

A couple of Juggle Batons were purchased by a members of the local COAI. Oddly they wanted one Red, White and Black (Steel City Clown Brigade colors) and white, yellow and blue. They are both 2 foot long Ermeys and came out rather nicely if I do say so myself. They are called that because they have short stubbly ends similar to a famous Drill Sergeant and motivational speaker. Actually I am not sure if R. Lee Ermey does any motivational speaking. I do know that he goes around and does rallies for Marines. Still, Marines really do not need that much motivation. Every Marine I have met has been what one would call a self starter. Still, I think that he would be rather good at if he did. They should really make an R. Lee Ermey alarm clock. I do know they make some kind of action figure of him in his Marine Corps Uniform.

Anyway back to the Devil Sticks. As I type this they are drying out. The end are glue together and then you let them dry and put the decorative tape and grip tape on them. Before I finish this post I hope they will be close enough that I can tape them up for a picture. Also with these particular stick they will have the head mongrammed. I do not know what they want on them so they will be monogrammed at the COAI meeting on Monday. The picture here is them with in complete ends. If they get finished at the COAI meeting I may put up picture of them.

Also just for fun I have put there map location of where this post was made. I am not sure why this feature is there. Maybe is makes it easier for loonies to hunt blogger down and kill them.

Well be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

Making Juggling Batons & Number 10

It is two in the morning and I am cutting out pieces of vinyl to make a juggling baton. At Tuesday practice Apprentice Brimage {There are five Brimages at this point} used a juggling baton for what I think was his first time. He did rather well so I am making him one for him to practice with.

On an interesting note his favorite type was the kind that I use. This is the one that Walt and made three years ago. This has become the most popular stick that we have been making for ourselves. This will be the fourth or fifth one we have made for a member of the Brigade. I have also made a couple for people outside the Brigade.

The particular stick is your basic two foot long flower stick. Apprentice Brimage has requested that it be red and black. I think that it is going to be an attractive stick. The nice thing about making the same kind of stick is that you can be sure of the balance. One of the people in the Brigade wanted a rather special stick that was longer and had head that we had never used on a juggling baton before. The sad thing was that it took me three attempts to get something that had the right balance.

On another subject an interesting question as possed to me. If you could choose a handful of people to make immortal who would they be? I am pondering a list of ten people. For a place to start I think I am going to choose the Emperor Charlemagne.

He was an enlightened leader who believed in education in a time when the average King was a brutal dictator by modern standards. I think we would be living in a more enlightened and interesting world if the Holy Roman Empire had not fallen apart.

Well be safe out there everyone and keep your stick on the ice.

Various Randomness

Working on several project at once at the moment. The one that has been consuming a great deal of time is juggling batons. The rub with these things is that it appears that the size of the stick in some way helps or hinders the person that is using it. And our group has people of several different sizes making it hard to pick the right size for each person.

To add to the complication of this we have come up with several styles for the heads. This mean that the size had to be right and then the ends of the thing also have to be right. Juggling balls are a lot simpler. they come in three sizes and you just pick one. Juggling clubs primarily come in one size so you are just stuck with what ever you have.

Today I was making a stick for one of the shorter members of our group. So it a shorted stick with a smaller diameter. the heads on this stick are also smaller. I am a bit worried that we might not have any idea what we are doing. the companies that make these thing make them all at around two feet in length. If you are under four feet tall you spen all of you time hitting yourselvf in the head. This of course turns off most people.

In the end I suppose what we are making is better than what we can buy. The down side is that we are experiimenting on inexperince jugglers. Thus it is hard to tell if it is the skill or the stick.

Well I will let you all know how it is going.

The four armed stick is coming along very slowly. I have had more sucess with rolling trick rather than flipping tricks. The thing that it the most difficult is that my control stick always are in the way. I am simply going to have to be better at this before I know if it is a lost cause or not. As soon as i stop hitting myself in the head I might take some video. If I think about it i will post it.

Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

The Anti Christ

frequent reader of this blog, both of them. Will know that occasionally a strange experiment started with an odd idea from one of our clowns. this weeks strange idea came from Walt.

there is a juggling implement called a juggling baton, flower stick or devil stick. As best I can figure most of what our Brigade uses falls into the category of flower sticks if you ignore the fact that it is nor made from recycled materials. It is not that we hate the planet. We simply have not found a good source for recycled materials at this time. It is a shame but that is what it is.

Anyway the juggling batons that we use are a shaft with a flowery head on each end made from vinyl. They are good looking and have proven durable for the most part.

For what we are doing they have been working great. This is when the strangeness comes in. Walt suggested that we make and x shaped juggling baton. At one time I recall someone duct taping two devil sticks together. And by Devil sticks I mean that poplar bare sticks that Dube makes that do not have soft plushy heads on the end. I have head some jugglers call these pain sticks. At you might imagine the reason for this is because when they hit you they hurt. Well this experiment went horribly wrong for the people involved. As I recall the person tried and tried and only managed to get a black eye.

Well we have been using PVC pipe and the nice soft heads that i have been talking about. So despite all the evidence it looked as if it might be worth a try. We built one of these things. Thus far it has proven unwieldy and I have not been able to make much of it. I honestly do not know if I am ever going to be able to do something useful with it.

to be honest when we want to learn a new trick with the juggling baton we simply look it us on line or read a book. We have found no evidence that such a thing has been created before. So there is no one out there with saged advice. I will throw up some picture and maybe a video if I can do anything but hit myself with it.

Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.