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Sunday, June 12, 2011

Return of the Dark Knight

Back at stately Wayne Manor…the Batarangs received their coatings of super slick, friction reducing paint.

Once the Batarangs were complete, Batman donned his cowl of secrecy to test his latest tools of justice!

With cool resolve the Caped Crusader keenly focuses on wielding the Batarang with an accuracy that humbles perfection.  The demise of evil will come at nothing less.

The overhand attack…

The side-arm strike…

Every throwing technique is executed with unmatched power and expertise.  Stand back evil…better yet, run as fast as you can!
I had just one question for Batman after his Batarang display.  “What if you’re facing the Joker, the Penguin and Cat Woman at the same time?”
I caught an eerie, yet confident glint in his eye as he answered, “I throw three Batarangs at once.  Wanna see?”

You’re all free to feel safer now!
Back in the Bat Lab, continued research and development was underway to take the Batarang to the next level.  As a young superhero myself I had an old plastic boomerang that not only worked, but I got pretty dang good at it.  After doing some digging online I found several great articles and videos on making boomerangs.  A fellow woodworker posted this picture of the boomerang’s flight pattern.  I’m not 100% sure, but I believe this was one of the same diagrams stamped on the underside of that old plastic boomerang.

The key to generating the spin needed to rotate the boomerang and then create the lift to bring it up and back to the thrower are the airfoil shapes applied to the wings.  My research reveled where to shape the airfoils for a right-handed boomerang, so I clamped up one of the Batarangs and began to shape the wings.

Batman and I then tried out the latest modification on the testing field.  While we did see a different flight path…and by different I mean that it glided wide to the left and into the side of the neighbor’s house…it wasn’t exactly what we were looking for.  Back to the drawing board!
Version 2 has hit the sketchbook incorporating much of the research I found.

The wings will need to be longer, with a wider spread between the ends.  The pointed ends will need to be eliminated so that the airfoils can be shaped into the wings, and the overall size of the Batarang will need to be larger to generate more lift.  I’m pretty excited to try this latest design…uh…I mean, Batman is really excited for me to build the next design.
Stay tuned for more exciting updates…same Bat time, same Bat workshop!
Pete

1 comment:

FenceFurniture said...

Pete, how do I send a message or email to you? I left a private message on the Australian Woodwork Forum for you a few days ago, but I suspect that you probably only look at it every now and then.

The message was to do with rasps. My forum name is FenceFurniture.

Regards, Brett