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I've got something similar to your "rope dart", a present from a friend who makes armour and swords. I call it my 'String Driven Thing'. It's about 5 1/2" long, a slightly lopsided 1/2" diamond in cross section (hand forged), and the widest point is about 1 1/2" back from the front. At the rear end of the dart I have a split ring/keyring which I keep meaning to replace with a big game fishing swivel. It - and I - can handle about twenty feet of cotton codline. And if you have plenty of clear space you don't *have* to hold the line. My twenty foot tail of line keeps it point forwards even if I let it run free ;-) VERTICAL AND HORIZONTAL "WIND-UPS" You can do horizontal or vertical spins. Just a couple of feet on a vertical gives you - effectively - a longer arm. Judging the release point is fairly instinctive on vertical spins, although I found it tended to fly high at first. Horizontally you can let out a lot more line and spin a much bigger circle, but after a while this seems counter-productive and you need to really 'work' the thing to generate speed. (If you ever flew one of those control-line model aircraft and found yourself 'whipping' the thing to try and make it fly faster you'll recognise the feeling.) You'll have a lot of fun and to some extent it's like knifethrowing. Instinctive at first, then a right balls-up as you try and analyse the results, and then instinctive again. TWO WARNINGS Watch out for a rope burn if you let the line feed out through your fingers and an amazingly fast 'bounce' can occur if the line suddenly comes tight after you release the dart. Article continued below... 
"The top picture is compliments of Joe Darrah, the guy who made me this cool
toy! Thanks a bazillion man!!! The other 2 pics are from me in the backyard
after quite a few tries! (The piece of rope attached to my dart is about
20 feet long.)" - Scott Gracia
FUTURE EXPERIMENTS Although I've not tried it often enough to be confident with the results yet, include 'flicking' the dart from the end of a long bendy pole. I read somewhere about people beach fishing with what were effectively heavy duty hand-lines, cast out using a pole somewhere between twenty and thirty feet long. This predated modern and far more manageable high performance fishing rods. I slung the dart a few times from an old boat fishing rod with a cut down cup-hook whipped onto the end. The slit ring released cleanly enough most times. I tied a bright red rag to the end of the string so I could find it again, but the groundsman at the local golf club was less than pleased with my experiments so they've been put on hold for a while. I can't help thinking that 100 yards plus would be quite possible though. I also want to try it for accuracy against a target rather than long distance, using a shorter stick, rather like the way one can 'flick' windfall apples or lumps of clay from a garden cane. For this I think a rag streamer rather than a string would be best. Have fun, Article Contributed By: John Cragg - aka Gyppo (UK) It's free, and there's no obligation. |
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