man. that is really cool..the ones ive made were just  sticks compared to that 

Hey, here's my rabbit stick I made.  The pics are kind of bad with bad lighting, I'll try and do better tomorrow as it doesn't quite do it justice.  It's not as nice as yours but it's made from the trunk of a birch sapling, I had cut if for a club but the root burl wasn't large enough and I learned of rabbit sticks and came to this design.  It flies wonderfully, seems to be accurate for the amount of practice and skill I have in using it and flies a very long way.   It is loosely based on a design I saw on the internet, I think it was a hopi indian one, but not sure.  The inside has a slow taper about 2/3 of the way across then the back has a taper of abut 1/3 of the way across.  The bottom is flat.  It is made of white birch, I would like to make one of yellow birch or wild pear next as it has gotten pretty dinged up hitting rocks, you might notice a few deformities of shape where I scuffed it and had to sand the scuff out.


 

LukeWebb wrote on Nov 11^th, 2010 at 6:00pm:



I look at all the stuff you have in your room and suddenly I realize I'm drooling over my keyboard...

That one is about two feet long, actually two handspans and a finger long... blackfellas invented ergonomics...  three fingers wide and two thick. packs a punch. would weigh nearly a couple of kg, made of mountain wattle - a kind of acacia, extremely dense and wind stressed, it's like iron. Can crack nuts, skulls, pound some seeds that are a little toxic unless you leach them in water... swiss army log, really. Very typical of the east coast forest people I am descended from.

It is symmetrical along it's length, for throwing overhand like an axe, at shortish ranges (15-35m,  I suppose). You can heave them a fair range though, if you had to... but really a long-standing design for close in work. You can't make it out well in the pics but it has a blade-like head with a sharper edge than the rest, with a slight chisel point for occasional digging or splitting.

Otherwise I like my possum stick (still going strong).  Should be floating around the boards somewhere. I use it for digging more than throwing, and it's for throwing UP rather than throwing out but it performs really well. Simplicity itself.

Bloody aussie wood, takes days to shape and once you do it lives forever.  And no pretty bits to get dinged up or knocked off, I suppose 

Should make everything out of pine, haha.

Time to make some excuses to make more things "just because..."... I rarely think to until I see whacky creations like those ones up there ^^ I do have a nice stash of old red cedar fenceposts, been seasoning a hundred years or so... time to get busy making stuff for looks.

Thanks for the inspiration!

I practice often with Rabbit sticks, but most of mine are the "field expedient"/"survival" types which is pretty much a good hard wood stick with a slight curve some prefer a steeper curve but I like a very slight curve which makes it easier for digging and batoning wood (not something you do with a fancy bommerang like that  )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VriOVU_pxN8

Kinda like this but with a little less curve

good stuff, fellas! 

rabbit sticks are often confused with throwing sticks. although similar, there are differences both in construction and use. throwing sticks tend to be shorter, less curved, and more round in cross section. the traditional technique for throwing sticks is a vertical overhand throw. rabbit sticks, on the other hand, are longer, lighter, and planed flat in a way as to resemble an airplane wing. they are meant to be thrown horizontal (paralell to the ground).

Masiakasaurus wrote on Nov 13^th, 2010 at 12:48pm:


Mine is a little shorter, and also a little thicker, same amount of curve though. (some prefer armpit to finger tip I prefer arm pit to wrist as we have a lot of brush arund here so a long stick like Paleo's wouldn't work very well  ).
According to paleo what I have is actually a throwing stick, but I usually end up throwing it sidearm anyways.