Front View	Rear View	Left Side View	Right Side View

Technical Details

I made this Drumstick in late 2021 and Amy Skowronski welded it for me in 2022.

My Drumstick is 357 mm. tall, 114 mm. wide, 101 mm. thick, and weighs 1359 g.

The frame is made from 3/8" (9.5 mm) cold-rolled 1018 steel rod. The drum is made from 2" (60 mm. o.d.) black iron pipe, and the flange is cut from 1/8" (3.2 mm.) 4160 steel. The brake bars are commercial Rockfarer bars.

Comments

I patterned this Drumstick after the one shown in David Hughes & Bill Torode, 2007. "Photographic Portfolio of some Vertical Caving Relics." Georgia Underground, V42, #2, p4. They described it as follows:

Immediately after John Cole's invention of the rappel rack it was clear that the rack enjoyed several advantages over the spool. Subsequently, [Bill] Cuddington wondered whether a hybrid combination of the spool and the rack would result in an even better rappel device.

The result was dubbed the drumstick. The drumstick was invented by Cuddington, and named by Huntsville caver Dorothy Patten.

This picture shows a drumstick (seen here without the brake bars) that Bill Torode fabricated for himself. It is one of only a few drumsticks in existence - a relic of a rappel concept that never really caught on.

A full wrap around the spool is equivalent to about three brake bars, so it is not surprising that the drumstick provides a fair amount of friction. Logically, the idea has its flaws. The drum is huge, adding considerable bulk compared to a standard open-frame rack. The spool has superior thermal characteristics to a brake bar (or three), but putting it at the bottom where the heat input is minimal fails to utilize the advantage. I have drawn designs for similar devices that place the spool at the top, one of which I made and christened the Dumschtik.

The drumstick can also be used as a J-Bar.