MammotHunter
Interfector Viris Spurii
Offline
Give me a rock, a sling, and give me some room
Posts: 1020
virginia, for now
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I make my darts out of 4 ft wooden dowels. I take 1 dowel for the mainshaft, and cut another in half, producing 2, 24" long foreshafts. I take a length of PVC about the same diametre of the dowels I am using (1/2" dowels, then take 1/2" PVC pipe)and cut it to about 7-8" long, and use a penknife to widen the ends slightly, so they form a cone at each end slightly wider than the central inner diametre. Taper one end of the mainshaft slightly, just enough for it to slip into the PVC pipe about halfway along its length, and do the same for one end of the foreshaft. Put the PVC pipe segment on the end of the mainshaft, and jam it on there pretty tightly. Then, take the foreshaft, and if you want blunt wooden points, sharpen it in a pencil sharpener or on a rock, like I do. If you want to insert a stone or metal tip, you can do that, too. Slip the tapered end of the foreshaft in the pipe segment, and fletch the end of the mainshaft with feathers, carve the dimple in the butt of the dart and you've got an atlatl dart! I made mine like this initially because there is no usable cane in the area, and I wanted to simulate the utility of a removable foreshaft you might get with a cane dart with the dependibilty and availability of wooden dart. The one disadvantage this system has that I can see is that the wooden dowels may not be perfectly straight, and after repeated usage, the PVC pipe segments tend to bend and may require restraigthening after each throw. The proper adjoining of the fore and main shaft in the middle of the segments minimises, but does not omit it. However, I have thrown with these darts for some time now, and I've hit everything from the target, to the ground some distance away, the street, and even my own house, and the only damage I could see to the dart was a point that needed resharpening, and silverfish have gotten to the feathers I use for fletching, so they look a little ratty, but the dart as a whole is still potentially lethal and very cheap! In the end, what you should end up with, as pictured in this "clever"ascii drawing is
/ ////// ------------#####-------------------------------------- \\\\\\\\ where --- is the dowel ### is the PVC pipe segment and \\\ and/// are obviously, the fletching.
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