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Make your own mallets
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Ipswich Gateballer Don O’Doherty owns an impressive array of homemade gateball mallets, none of which cost him more than $25. At the recent Queensland Inter-Regional gateball competition (Feb '09), won by the Ipswich club, Don’s collection of mallets were photographed for gateball.com.au and gateball.org.uk. Don explained that he obtained unwanted, broken golf club shafts from a local golf club. Some shafts were free, while for others there was sometimes a charge of a few dollars. That is a real bargain when you consider that the mallet on the far right of the picture sports a carbon graphite shaft worth around $200! Additional grips have been placed on some of these mallets using shrink wrap grips manufactured for fishing rods or tape for tennis racket handles. The heads are solid aluminium and cost about $15. Don takes great care when setting his mallet heads into his vice prior to drilling the hole for the shaft. He makes the diameter of the hole ½ mm larger than the diameter of the shaft and uses Araldite to fix the shaft in the mallet head. If there is any need to change or adjust the head he stands it in a hot pan of water and heats it up until the Araldite melts and the shaft can be removed. Many of the McIlwraith players in the same competition use home made mallets assembled from golf club shafts and aluminium heads. Beryl Holmes persuaded her brother to make more than twenty when the McIlwraith Croquet Club expanded its range of mallet sports on offer several years ago. These mallets have not only been valuable for members at the club but have been loaned to other clubs, not only in Queensland, but even interstate! The McIlwraith team were runners up to Ipswich in the recent QIR competition, so perhaps the magic ingredient in the competition was the home made mallets! For those interested making their own mallets the correct dimensions are found on page 8 of the 2007 Rules (as shown below).
(article John Park, McIllwraith Croquet Club) |
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