IGX

I just made a pair of these to take to the beach. These particular wiffle bats have a screw off top, eliminating all the tape and crazy glue. They were so easy to make I did it in the parking lot of Home Depot ( not w/ Quickcrete, playground sand) and just chucked the extra sand, no muss, no fuss at home. He says they weight 9.75 lbs. Feel a bit heavier since they're a little longer. Total cost for 2 CBs - $23.

http://maxwellsc.blogspot.com/2008/06/s ... clubs.html

Nice. BTW, forget the lead shot or nuts and bolts. Just cut pieces of rebar to length. Might want to take a good hard look at the threads on the screw-off caps to make sure you wont' have a sand/shot/rebar slinging incident.

GoDogGo! wrote:Nice. BTW, forget the lead shot or nuts and bolts. Just cut pieces of rebar to length. Might want to take a good hard look at the threads on the screw-off caps to make sure you wont' have a sand/shot/rebar slinging incident.

Yeah, it's probablty worth a couple pieces of gorilla tape to back up the top.

Nice!

Been waiting six years now for somebody to tell me what's wrong with a sledgehammer.

Garm wrote:Been waiting six years now for somebody to tell me what's wrong with a sledgehammer.

Nothing, like Steve I use mine all the time.

GoDogGo! wrote:Nice. BTW, forget the lead shot or nuts and bolts. Just cut pieces of rebar to length. Might want to take a good hard look at the threads on the screw-off caps to make sure you wont' have a sand/shot/rebar slinging incident.

I used the same plastic bat over a year ago to make clubs and added the rebar as well mainly to reinforce the handle but it gave it a bit more weight. Mine come in at about 13 lbs. I'm sure I could easily get 20 lbs with this bat.

ab g-d wrote:

Garm wrote:Been waiting six years now for somebody to tell me what's wrong with a sledgehammer.

Nothing, like Steve I use mine all the time.

So why would anyone buy, make, or borrow an indian club? I can get a 35# maul on a nice hickory handle at Tractor Supply for eighteen bucks, a 7# sledge at Home Depot for about the same price, can use them for their intended purpose as a nice bonus, saw off the handle or just choke up if it's too long, etc. Seriously, I don't get it.

For all you lovers of DIY this site is hard to beat http://www.angelfire.com/ny5/shenandoah ... grunt.html
Clubs are in isotonics section. I'm a lazy NYC dude, I bought a 15 and 25 lb clubbells and a 10 kilo macebell and love them all, but every time I spend money I swear to do some shit myself next time.

Jack wrote:The clubs are balanced differently from hammers and tools, far safer than any DIY type or improv'd thing too.

I believe that the marketing copy states this, and I believe that you believe it, but us skeptics will need to know exactly how it is balanced, why that's superior and safer, etc. Anyone who remembers junior high school math will know that the balance is 100% defined by the distance between the force arm and the lever arm, which in this case means how long the handle is. There is no other factor.

Jack wrote:The clubs are balanced differently from hammers and tools, far safer than any DIY type or improv'd thing too.

If saving money is a concern for all of you six figure superior life types, then good on ya. But a CB is a well made implement for doing what you do with it. No DIY or knockoff can top it based on it's design.

Just say'n.

How are CBs constructed? What are they filled with/made out of?

Garm wrote:I believe that the marketing copy states this, and I believe that you believe it, but us skeptics will need to know exactly how it is balanced, why that's superior and safer, etc. Anyone who remembers junior high school math will know that the balance is 100% defined by the distance between the force arm and the lever arm, which in this case means how long the handle is. There is no other factor.

I spent $8 this weekend making a 7 lb club out of a wiffle-ball bat and some sand. The difference in balance between a club and a hammer is that the weight is distributed more evenly along the length of the club. If all you're doing is levering the club, then you could obviously do exactly the same thing with a hammer. If you're swinging stuff around like the Iron Sheik, you can feel the difference in balance.

I don't see the point, however, of buying special Sonnon-approved clubs. The aesthetics aren't important to me. If I have a bunch of stuffed wiffle-ball bats break on me, I might change my mind, but it's not like I'm going to be hitting shit with them.

CP wrote:

Jack wrote:The clubs are balanced differently from hammers and tools, far safer than any DIY type or improv'd thing too.

If saving money is a concern for all of you six figure superior life types, then good on ya. But a CB is a well made implement for doing what you do with it. No DIY or knockoff can top it based on it's design.

Just say'n.

How are CBs constructed? What are they filled with/made out of?

They're essentially a solid metal baseball bat covered in vinyl.

Pinky wrote:

Garm wrote:I believe that the marketing copy states this, and I believe that you believe it, but us skeptics will need to know exactly how it is balanced, why that's superior and safer, etc. Anyone who remembers junior high school math will know that the balance is 100% defined by the distance between the force arm and the lever arm, which in this case means how long the handle is. There is no other factor.

I spent $8 this weekend making a 7 lb club out of a wiffle-ball bat and some sand. The difference in balance between a club and a hammer is that the weight is distributed more evenly along the length of the club. If all you're doing is levering the club, then you could obviously do exactly the same thing with a hammer. If you're swinging stuff around like the Iron Sheik, you can feel the difference in balance.

I don't see the point, however, of buying special Sonnon-approved clubs. The aesthetics aren't important to me. If I have a bunch of stuffed wiffle-ball bats break on me, I might change my mind, but it's not like I'm going to be hitting shit with them.

Specifically, the center of the mass at the end of the handle is the balance point, whether it is symmetrical and aligned with the lever arm or projects away from it (like a pick as opposed to a hammer). From the center to where you grab it defines all of the characteristics of the implement's balance. A plastic tube full of sand will have a balance point that changes as the sand moves. FWIW, a solid argument could be constructed showing that a moving balance point actually imparts more training effect than a static one (physically the same argument that makes kettelballs superior to dumbells).

Jack wrote:I'm off CB at this time.

A guy showed me his homebrew wiffleball bat thing in a parking lot once and Granny really did have some 5 pounders in her antique store when I was a kid, but that's all I know about Indian clubs. I read the Brookfield book back in '95 or whenever it came out and was still in 'try everything that sounds effective' mode, so I did fool with various sledgehammers and such for a while. My DL 1RM's limitation was my left hand, meaning I could pull more than I could hold onto, I needed to attack the current weak link, bla bla bla.

Anyway, it turned out that the right answer was reducing the amount of time it took to complete the lift, which involved almost exactly what you are doing now. It's funny how often the experiments into esoteric and seemingly brilliant solutions come back to the standard bread & butter exercises and tools in use before we were born. Hard work with simple tools and proven exercises beats the latest geegaw and recently-developed master plan, every time.

The problem with a sledgehammer is weight limitation. I have a set of homemade "clubs", and mine are 25, 35 and 45 pounds. Hard to duplicate with a sledge. Mine are made from a 30" piece of 3/4 iron pipe with a cap screwed on each end, the required # of 2-1/2 pound standard weight plates. A 3/8 bolt goes through a hole drilled at the right place to hold the plates in place (a couple 1" washers help tweak the tightness of 'em) Some gorilla tape over the plates and some grip tape around the handle and it's done. I bit of file work around the edge of the pipe end at the handle end to remove the sharp edge.

Garm wrote: exercises and tools in use before we were born. Hard work with simple tools

You mean like... clubs?

GoDogGo! wrote:

Garm wrote: exercises and tools in use before we were born. Hard work with simple tools

You mean like... clubs?

In your zeal to 'catch' me in something you can correct, you miss the point and/or merge separate ones. Nothing wrong with a club/hammer/bat full of sand, but something very wrong with paying bagloads of $$$$$$$$ for something so fundamental that it's literally lying all over the woods. Simple and expensive is the incongruity, not cheap versus Sonnon.