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Friday Lunchtime Testing

All this reporting about Ian and none about me... time to change that.

I have been working on a few blanks here and there and had a stack of about ten ready to test. I decided to take them to the field at lunch today and give them a whirl. Here are the results.

Fever B: Boomerang Fever Variation with the lead arm mirrored to the dingle arm. Excellent flight and very easy to throw. (looks like Chet's Mantis)

Fever V: Boomerang Fever Variation with the dingle arm mirrored to the lead arm. Excellent flight and very easy to throw. (Looks like a flared vee/omega)

Victor: From leftover wood, works as expected.

Victor/Joey hybrid: my Victor boomerang with a Joey type lead arm. Doesn't get the range of the Joey but works well. (had two with me)

Upper Perk Hook: Was turning but crashing and rolling about 3/4 through flight.

Billy Bob Hook: 35-40 meters, works well now that I added significant undercut to lead arm.

Smith Standard Hook: Always an awesome flyer! (had two with me)

DH-9: Kendall Davis Dingle Hook. Not happy with this one. Made one a week or so ago that is terrific but this one is not. time to compare them.

Above boomerangs all in 6mm 5 ply Finland birch plywood.

BadBoy hook: Crash and burn special. In several throws I could not get a good flight. Don't know what is wrong. 5mm 10 ply.

Smith Columbia Hook: Lap Joint in cherry. Was having trouble with this one and finally added lots of lead arm undercut. Worked really well to, 30-35meter flight. Think I finally fixed it.
 
Saturday Update: I added some lead arm undercut to the Uperr Perk hooks which improved them. I also found another troublesome Cherry Columbia hook which I also gave lead arm undercut. It performed great. The Upper Perk hooks were still not right so I popped thm in the microwave and added diheadral to the lead arm. That finally fixed them. The BabBoy is still being BAD!
Dave

Photo: Fever V and B decorated.


Added on August 24, 2007 by bvdrangs

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USBA National Design Contest

A few weeks back David Hirsch suggested that Ian send some of his boomerangs in to the USBA National Design Contest. Ian and I were reluctant to do so since these are the first boomerangs Ian has ever made. We finally decided to send in three of Ian's Batarangs. Knowing that Rob Stewart was headed out to Eau Claire for the long distance contest, we asked if Rob minded taking the boomerangs with him.

Rob picked the three bats up Monday (the day of the really good throw) and took them along. He ended up passing them off to David Hirsch in Eau Claire and David made sure they got entered. The judging wasn't until Sunday and Rob was already back here, doing a boomerang demo in the rain with me. After the demo and after I returned home, I got a phone call from Rob. He had received a call from David telling him that Ian's boomerangs did well. He gave me David's phone number and I called him. When David called back he had huge news. These were the winners in each category:
First Place Craftsmanship: David Fantone, Grants Pass OR
First Place Decoration: David Hirsch, Dallas TX (Supersize Voyager "Starry Night")
First Place Design: Ian Guldner, Allentown PA !!!!!! (Batatrang with blinky eyes)
Ian had won a first place! I was beside myself. I quick dashed off an email to Ian to let him know. I am sure from his response that he is very excited and probably didn't get to sleep very easily last night. I am so proud of the work he did on this project. I thought he did an excellent job and now he has an award to prove it. I don't know what kind of grade Ian wil get for his project. I think it deserves an A+ and it appears that others in the boomerang community feel the same way. Lets see what the teachers have to say. All we can do is wait until he delivers his presentation in November.
 
Dave
 
Photo: The top three bats in the photo are the ones entered in the contest.



Added on August 20, 2007 by bvdrangs

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One mighty good throw

Here's a good story. Yesterday Rob was stopping by to pick up Ian's bats to take to the nationals. He got out of work before me and wasted some time throwing at the field near my house. I went by the field and saw him throwing. I had the DH-9, 3 Herb Smith Hooks and three Goldfinch booms. I head on the field and toss him a Goldfinch to test. He proceeds to toss it and crash it.

I am standing there while he chases it down. I grab one of the hooks and without warming up, give it a mighty heave. It roars out about 40M soars up and makes a beautiful flight. I turn left as it it comes in slightly behind me. I am thinking that maybe I need to take a few steps and can catch it. Instead I stand there and watch as it hones in and lands in my hands without me moving an inch! Rob is watching as he retunrns from retreiving the other boom and yells: "Showoff!" It was an amazing throw and an amazing boomerang. Rob tried several times to squirrel it away but I managed to stop him. Barb was watching from the edge of the field and couldn't believe the throw on my first try. I'll remember that one a long time.
Dave

Added on August 14, 2007 by bvdrangs

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Bandsaw update

Friday night: I stopped at the Woodcraft Store and got an Olsen 93-1/2inch blade. It was $19.99 compared to the $7.99 and $9.99 I paid Sears for their's. When I got home I pulled the shims out of the bandsaw and installed the Olsen blade. It fit and tensioned perfectly. Cuts nice too. 
 
Also, the heat broke and it was only 65 degrees when I was in the garage. Now that was comfortable working!

Saturday: I got up early and headed to the garage. Within another 20 minutes I had 30 boomerangs cut out. I quickly packaged 5 blanks to send to Dave Hughes. I then set up my router to rout a 45 degree bevel on the face of each blank. I held off until later for that as it was still early on a Saturday and the router screams!

Later I returned and routed all the booms then proceeded to Sand the rest of the airfoils. With that done I headed to the field for flight tests. The 15 Skippys were fine, along with my new design and both Herb Smith copy. I am particularly impressed with the Goldfinch copy. It had range of about 40 meters and was quite easy to throw. Can't wait to decorate is like Herb did. 

 
Dave


Added on August 11, 2007 by bvdrangs

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Hot, tired and angry.....

Thursday Aug 9: Sometimes it's just trying to work that becomes frustrating. For two days I have been trying to cut out some blanks to make some boomerangs to sell at a demo in just over one week. With the heat and humidity, my garage becomes unbearable. In addition, it seems like a family of yellowjackets has built a nest inside the a cinderblock that frames the one window. I see many flying to and crawling in a crack in the corner of the window frame. I tried spraying in the crack in the evening but still see them. Tuesday evening I grabbed a can of bug fogger and spray everytime a few more try to enter. Soon I have many yellow jackets buzzing around on the floor dying. That sort of taken care of I tried to cut out the boomerangs and found that the blade on the bandsaw was pretty much shot from the work Ian and I had done. Besides, it was a scrolling blade and not very suited to stack cutting. I waited to try again Wednesday, hoping it would cool off a bit as garage temperatures were over 100F.

Wednesday evening I try again but find I have no extra blades. Looking around I found one I had remover from the saw but it looks rather old. I install it and am soaked from sweat in the time it takes to do that. I grab the wood and start cutting. It is terrible and I give up after one cut. I now know I need blades.

Thursday morning I go online with Sears, locate 93-1/2 inch blades and order them for pickup at lunch. I pick three up, a 1/8, 1/4 and 3/8 inch wide version each. When I get home I again try to cut. After installing the 1/4 inch one, I thought it was looser than normal even with the tension at the maximum. Any more and the top wheel of the saw would hit the case. I try one cut and after about 2 inches of cutting the blade pops off. I struggle to get it to stay on and decide this blade must be a little long. Even though the outside temperature dropped a bit from the last few days, it's still very hot in the garage and I am soaked with sweat again. I remove the 1/4 inch blade and try the 3/8 inch one. Again I cannot get proper tension. These blades all seem too long. I don't understand this as I have been using the 93-1/2 inch blades since 1989, when I bought the saw. I am stuck and don't know what to do.
 
I try to get creative and loosen the bolt holding the support to the upper wheel. I slide two 1/2 inch thich plywood shims, one on either side of the bold, under the support post to raise it some. After tightening it up I try the blade again. Now I can get tension on the blade, but I can't get it to stay on. It appears that adding the shims have thrown the support out of alignment and the wheels must not be parrallel now. I am really sweaty now, and the sweat is pouring off my forehead, into my eyes and on my glasses. I can't really see to work and am about ready to take a sledge hammer to either the saw or blades.
 
I can't understand why the new blades don't fit. The one I took off the saw was bought at Sears about 18 months ago along with a couple others and they worked great. Has 93-1/2 inches somehow become larger in that time period? Did my saw shrink? Is it the heat and humidity? Am I just crazy? I think I'll try to get to the Woodcraft store in town for a blade from them, and see if the Sears blades just don't fit anymore. As it says in the title, I am hot, and sweaty, and tired, and very angry. And...... I still have no boomerangs cut out!

Dave



Added on August 10, 2007 by bvdrangs

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Taming of a triblade

Here's a midweek update on what has been happening with the project.



Ian has been working on painting the remaining boomerangs while I tackled the problematic triblade. We had thought that because the quad version worked so well with the wings swept forward, so would the triblade.  Well, the triblade just rolled around the field in a large circle, having trouble keeping in the air. My next thought was that if I reverse it to wings swept back, it should be fine. A quick trip to the field provided another disappointment. Now it had way too much lift and almost flew straight up. Back to the shop and the band saw where I reduced the chord of the wings and re-sanded the airfoils. I went back to the field again, only to have similar results. I was beginning to hate this boomerang.



Time to sleep on it...... I got up Tuesday, with a day off to get car and appliances repaired. The forecast was for a hot humid day with temperatures in the high 90s and heat indexes above 100. My garage gets very hot, very fast. I took a quick trip out to cut a new version of the triblade. I reasoned that wings forward, was too low and wings back was too high so maybe wings straight will work? Grabbing a piece of 5 ply 3/16 inch Okoume plywood, I cut and sanded the latest version and headed to a nearby field. My first toss had a beautiful flight with the boomerang landing at my feet for 10 points in accuracy. Finally, a working version we could be proud of.



I emailed Ian with the good news and put the testing to rest.



 

Dave



Photo: the old version (top) and new (bottom)



Added on August 08, 2007 by bvdrangs

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Successes and failures

Saturday was a day of ups and downs. Ian and I had hoped to get the Flying Note to work and to finish making the boomerangs in Ian's Storm. After working in the shop and three trips to the field, we had mixed results.

First, after flipping over the quad storm, and making it with wings swept forward, it flew great. We were quite happy with it. Ian had also redesigned the two arm version into a flared vee from a suggestion by Dave Hughes. That was also working well. The triblade became our problem. We made a wings swept forward version and tested it. It made a nice circle, running like a fast catch boomerang but hitting the ground and rolling on and on. It never seemed to lay down during flight. After several throws I finally broke it. Our guess is that place where the bolts meet the center hub got a bit thin and on wing snapped off there. Ian was amazed, as he had never seen a boomerang break. He had barely commented about that when I tossed the Flying Note and broke it too. Rob had suggested weighting the tips but that did not work. Two broken rangs in less than a minute, must be some kind of record.

Ian is keeping the broken rangs as part of the project. We both feel it was an important part of the learning process and should be included.

We made another triblade and went back to the field. It still ran circles on the ground. Maybe in this case we need to make it with the wings swept back like a trick Catch. It might be worth finding out. We made a couple acrylic rangs while in the shop. One was the Small version of David Fantone's Tick. That was flying real nice for Ian. We spent a bunch of time throwing and taking photos. If you click the link For Ian's Boomerang Project Photo Album in the links section, you can view many of them. We got some excellent photos of the Batarangs in flight.

Ian had brought all his completed boomerangs so that I could see them. We epoxied the blinkies in two Batarangs and the entire series of them look very good. We finished sanding and testing the additional five blade boomerangs which we inadvertently started sanding as a lefty. We both thought it was important to have a left hand boomerang in the project, as to show the difference.
 
We still have a bit to go. Right now Ian must work on sanding and painting the boomerangs finished Saturday. I promised to work on the triblade to see if I could make it work. One other thing we discussed was attempting to make a hardwood lap joint boomerang. I have the material and I think we could manage to make one. This would be an excellent way to complete the project is we can still find a session to work before school starts.
 
Ian has worked extremely hard on this project and has done very well. I am proud of what I have seen him accomplish and am very happy that I could be part of it. Ian had to learn about boomerangs and how they worked. He also did research on how to make them. It was another matter when he actually had to use hand and power tools to do the work. The jigsaw was a challenge but Ian became quite good with the band saw. He also did well with both the belt and drum sanders and well as a palm sander. His finishing efforts we very nice as you can see from the photos. I don't know what his teachers will grade him, but I give it an A+ . 
 
A big thank you to all you who have supplied comments, suggestions, assistance and encouragement including Rob Stewart, Dave Hughes, Kendall Davis, David Hirsch, Alberto Sabal, John V, Pat Steigman, Karen Bray and Bob Burwell.

 
Dave
 
Photo: Ian arranged some of the boomerangs into a face!




Added on August 06, 2007 by bvdrangs

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HELP!!!!!!!!

Ian and I have been struggling with his lightning bolt design, now being called Ian's Storm. Someone suggested that Ian make a set of a traditional, 3 blade and 4 blade lightning bolt and paint them the same. It sounds like a great idea but theory and practice are not always the same. While I have been trying to get the original 4 blade design to work, Ian has been drawing out other designs. The traditional one has been giving us fits. Ian writes: "I think we need help with the two armed lightening bolt boomerang.  I tried the bolts that would match the triblader and quadblader and then a straight version similar to the first idea, but can not get anything to work.  I think maybe we should ask for design help on the journal.  I thought taking away the curve would help, but it really did not.  Either way it is a pretty awkward design."  Photo at:
 http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2984294180015394531vVbfyL  
 Please offer suggestions!!!!!
 
Other problem areas. I made a quad from Ian's photo in the previous journal entry. I made it from 7 ply 4mm plywood. When I tested it it flew out, curved left and up high, and sort of essed back. I thought it had too much lift so took it back in the shop to modify it. I reduced the chord of the wings by removing some material from the trailing edge and a bit around the center "cloud". It performed a bit better last night but it is still not right. Any suggestions???? Photo of boomerang is at: http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2562221570015394531TRtDhl

Last problem. We are trying to make the Flying Note boomerang from Pierre's plan database. We made it from 7 ply 4mm plywood. It flies out and arounfdbut never seems to retun all the way. It does more of a reverse "P" shape. Photo is at: http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2010003360015394531YqSIbE
Again, any input is helpful.

Dave & Ian



Added on August 01, 2007 by bvdrangs

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Ian's Storm revised!

Enough questions about Ian's of the lightning Bolt boomerang. He has drawn up the plans for a new one and here it is. A larger file will be loaded to the photo album "Ian's Boomerang Project" which can be accessed through the links.

Update: I made a version from Ians photo in 4mm plywood and thested it. Ths one has way too much lift. I may try reducing the chord on the wings and/or reducing the size of the center hub.

Added on July 27, 2007 by bvdrangs

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