The fletching on plumbatae isn't at the very end of the dart, it's between the middle of the dart and the end with a couple inches of dart behind the fletching sticking out. You throw it like a lawn dart by grabbing the tail of the dart and swinging it either underarm or overhead. Your darts should look more like this:

        \\\\\\\                                                         
=========================[||||]===----->      
        ///////   

And you hold them by the red part.

hawk_chucker wrote on Apr 4^th, 2011 at 8:32pm:

Lead lawndarts with hooked barbs that you throw like bowling in cricket.

Well I am all for this. Build a proto and put it up. I think it would be something cool to play with. i actually made a game out of apache thowing stars that the little one and I play while camping. it is like horseshoes meets golf. A tree is picked as the target usually about 70 yards away and we have to not only it it, but keep score. She actually is becoming quite good. This summer weare going to figure out a way to work Rabbit sticks into it.

So i am sure i could figure out something the kid can use it for. the Trebuchet plans I was looking for is actually going to be used on the beach sending tennisballs into the water to the kids. It is like a fun history lesson.

Some time ago i made one that was historically accurate,wooden shaft about 17" with a barbed point make from iron,with a lead egg cast around where the point meets the shaft .The point was inserted in the shaft about 1" and the lead cast around it so it did hold well,it had thin,hard leather fins,4 of them if i remember correctly,it was nice,cool,sturdy,good weight,the only problem was that i lost it at the first throws,so i get upset for all the work being lost and forget about doing it again..casting lead around it is the best thing you can do..as a cheap solution you could wrap copper,or steel wire for weight,or glue some hex nuts on it.And don't forget to leave about 4" on the shaft's tail end clear,for grip,then the fletchings can start from there.There's enough good info on the web showing how it should look like.

Then it wouldn't be a plumbata. The plumbata is a stiff, heavy dart that is inflexible. If you try to put a string on the plumbata and throw it like a swiss arrow the plumbata will tumble end over end. Swiss arrows are light, flexible darts that are made to bend when you throw them like a normal arrow. The two systems are incompatible.

I would dispute that, Swiss arrows dont bend as they are much too short. Atlatl darts have to bend but they are five feet or longer.

The purpose of the lead on the plumbata is to concentrate its weight well away from the tail so that the length of the shaft acts like a lever when you hold it by the tail and throw it like a tomahawk. You get the advantage of greater speed due to an extended radius of throw.

You could throw it like Swiss arrow but this would need both hands to attach the string which is rather too fiddly when you are trying to hold a shield. You could use a fixed amentum like a javelin, to my knowledge nobody has tried that yet. But I still think the tail-throw and a bit of seesawing in flight is the way it was done.

paracordslinger wrote on Apr 7^th, 2011 at 10:00pm:

They weren't so much breakaway as soft and bendy. The head of a pilum was hardened steel with a soft steel shank designed so that the head would get stuck in a shield and the shank would bend and sag under it's own weight. Then even if you managed to pull it out of the shield the front is bent and unusable. This wouldn't be too effective with a lighter dart like the plumbata.