Kiteline for poi cords?

Kind of thinking out loud here, but I'm toying with ideas for making weighted practise poi before investing in actual fire poi. Probably going down the fill-a-tennis-ball-with-something route.

For the cords, I have some offcuts of kiteline of various strengths (none less than 100kg) but some of it is pretty thin - the thinnest, hell I think I've flossed with thicker stuff - so I'm wondering about speed and balance.

Kiteline, although very strong, is thin and light. I can happily tie it to whatever I make my poi out of (got to get some swivels tho) BUT is it a good idea?

Does cord thickness have much effect on poi speed? Anyone tried spinning with a cord of say, 1mm thickness?
Maybe I should braid it up?

Also, would I be shooting myself in the foot with regards to weight distribution, balance, momentum etc? Kiteline is very very much lighter than chain. I am guessing they'd feel very different when spinning, but I'm only guessing.


Any thoughts?






PS - I'm using juggling balls in socks for weight just now but not happy with the lack of handles - they keep slipping out of my fingers! lol

My only concern would be the tension on it - could be a bit awkward to hold on to if you're spinning fast with a decent weight on the end, if you're holding right onto the string, that is. If not... Then I'd say go to it, there's only one way to find out!

Ow! Hell no, I'd make handles too. Kiteline HURTS under tension and can give nasty friction burns (especially when sandy!!)

Hmmmmmmmm.

Could be my project for the weekend

Yeah, kiteline is nasty under any sort of tension at all... I remember having some looped around my wrist to keep it tidyish and then there was a mega gust of wind.... ooooowwwwwww.....

omg oowwww indeed! Run out of cheesewire, use kiteline.

Most kitesurf harnesses come with a hook-knife in a back pocket, for emergency linecutting. I've yet to figure out a way to attach one to myself. I'm a kitebuggier, so I spend most of the time sitting on my butt, no accessible back pockets. Need some sort of leg holster maybe. My worst fear is powered-up kiteline to the neck.

Anyway!

Off to bed now, fun with tennis balls and stuff tomorrow.

Yeah, seen that done before. We've done lighting stuff with it (really high tech way of moving some lights if they need slight adjustments, kite line.... :P). You just have to make sure that nobody walks into it - that's always a VERY bad thing. >.<

I suppose you could do it with like... An elbow brace or something? Upper arm brace, just jam the handle down it or something. Or forearm brace, have it stuck in there so you can just swipe your arm over the cable and it cuts it?

Most practice poi weigh practically nothing along the cord, and unless the chain you use for your fire poi is very heavy it shouldn't be too hard to adapt.

As others note, I would braid up or get some thicker cord if you're planning to wrap at all. Thinner is not often a virtue, and my favorite pairs of poi these days use 3/8 or 5/16 inch rope.

So far I've got tennis balls with holes through, kiteline through them, with 4-pass solid cored monkeyfists as stopper knots on the bottom. I even did them the untidy way, with two ends protruding, so I could be absolutely damn sure they won't come undone. Planning to seal these with glue before filling the balls.

My next question is how heavy do I need to make them?

Looking at the monkeyfist poi that I want here in the HoP shop, it says 440g per set - does that mean per pair or per setup of head/cord/links/handles?


All handled up and ready to go now, unweighted but spinnable. As expected they're a bit fast and hard. These bad boys are going to HURT

Probably 440g per pair, so 220 or so for each poi--at a guess. Sounds about the right area for a monkey fist and HoP's chains, at least.

Spot on sister, I also emailed HoP to be sure


Update: The kiteline poi work. They are fast and hard. However, I can take the unpopped popcorn back out of them because someone very lovely bought me the real poi I wanted

So maybe now I'll put some tails and padding on the practise poi to slow them down.



(practise or practice?)

Practice.

"Practise" sounds like the name of a fancy-pants salon LOL if only all the English language was spelled and pronounced sensibly...

Congrats on the monkey fists, you will LOVE them!

Unless you're me and they're too small I would have to go for at least the 3.5 inch ones haha. But I love how they look