This page is part of the official ARCHIVE COPY of the pioneering but abandoned Thrower website on knife throwing. Copyright and details |
Dec, 1998
I met
Bob Perkins of
BPS Engineering
over the Internet during the summer of 1998. He
offered to sell me one of his atlatls and 3 darts wholesale thanks to
my reputation as an impartial reviewer of all manner of things (he
said with a smile).
In any event, I took him up on his proposition, still an expensive deal
for me at $90 or so, and in exchange I promised him I would one day get
around to doing a review. I have already reviewed Bob's atlatl on the
throwing weapons mailing list, but this small page will stand as a more
enduring expression of my experience with the BPS atlatl.
My previous atlatl experience consisted of nothing more than a few dozen
throws with an atlatl simply made from a carved stick. The dart was a
bamboo rod, about 4 feet long, and fairly stiff. It also sported turkey
feather fletching tied with string. I was able, with this primitive
tool, to throw the dart 20 or more yards (I couldn't really let loose,
too close to a road or deep forest where the dart would surely have been
lost). Often my throw would cause the dart's back end to slip out of
alignment with its point. The dart would fly sideways, and never
recover from this bad throw.
The BPS atlatl is obviously a different breed. It starts with a stick
shaped to have flexibility in one axis (vertical), and remain stiff
in the horizontal axis. It has a nice leather wrapped handle, velvet
finger loops which are threaded through the handle wrap in such a
was as to permit easy tightening or loosening of the loops to accomodate
different sized fingers. The BPS atlatl has a weight balanced for the
size and weight of the rest of the implement, but moveable, permitting
a fine tuning of the atlatl's release point. The handle is also weighted
to balance out the whole system, including the dart's weight. The whole
is topped off with a glue and artificial-sinew tied ball or spur of
real antler, durable and shaped to make contact with the knock
(a hole in the back of the dart), for the longest possible time; conferring
maximum power. All in all a nice piece of work.
The dart is something else again too. Essentially a modern aluminum
arrow, but 5 feet long, it has considerable flexibility. This is a very
important part of the whole atlatl/dart relationship. The dart has the
virtue of being broken down for easy transport and storage. It is shipped
with a target head exactly like that one would find on an archery arrow.
I assume hunting heads can be afixed as well. Bob also sells what he calls
an "authentic" dart which is made from river cane, but very thin Bob tells
me. It is supposed to be flexible, just like the aluminum
version.
I was reasonably consistent with the atlatl with my first dozen throws. I
had to borrow a neighbor's property to really let loose with it. Pointing
the dart up at a 45 deg. angle, I could hit 100+ yards in a short time, and
I never seem to have that problem pushing the back of the dart to the side.
Long range groups were on the order of 2-3 yards sometimes. Not too bad
for the range. It was much harder to be accurate at shorter ranges when
I tried to throw flatter trajectories into targets between 20 and 80
yards. After many throws, my accuracy at 20 yards is no better than 1.5
yard groups, and those not consistently by any means. That doesn't mean
other's couldn't do better. I don't claim any particular skill at these
things...
The whole process is a great deal of fun. I've ordered myself 5 more
darts so I don't have to walk so often, and I will paint the back third
or so of those darts a bright day-glow orange. I recommend this process
if you throw in a grassy or otherwise over-grown area where green is
a predominant color. It is very easy to loose dark green darts against
a background of vegetation, especially when they land at low angles. My
daughter discovered this to her, and my, dismay when she lost site of
one she threw, and didn't see it again until she stepped on it! Another
thing you can do is to tie a 2' streamer to the end of the dart. I found
a streamer of old linen rag about 2" wide by 2' long worked very
well to make the dart visible. It also added drag to the dart making it
possible to throw forcefully even in places where I did not want the dart
to travel more than 50 or 60 yards. I found a 3' drag kept the darts
under 50 yards.
I am not competent to judge this technology in a hunting context. I surely
am not accurate enough to hunt with it, and this after several hundred
throws. It does not seem forcefull enough to hunt with to me. At 40 yards,
a range at which you can achieve considerable force, it penetrates an
archery target to much less depth then a arrow loosed from my 150lb
crossbow
which, in turn, is about equivalent to a 75lb hunting bow. I am
prepared to believe that people can hunt with such atlatl/dart systems,
but they will have a much more powerful arm than me.
I am also not sure of the price. I know only one other atlatl maker
(Chuck Butorajac). He customizes the
atlatl to the individual hand, and is more expensive than BPS, I believe.
I have never handled a Butorajac atlatl, so I can not compare them to
the BPS version.
My guess is that for an atlatl enthusiast the BPS price
is not too high for a high-end example of the technology. On the other
hand, there are few enough of us who have access to sufficient space to
safely throw an atlatl dart, to fork over $70 for even a well engineered
system of stick, weight, and ball.
Mind you the labor lavished
on the device is evident. It looks roughly comparable to what a
throwing knife maker would spend on three or
more throwing knives typically priced in the $35 range. Bob's asking price
is by no means out of line from this point of view.
I can honestly say that I am glad Bob made me the wholesale offer
and that I took him up on it. It just so happens that I do live in a
rural area, and I can step outside into my own back yard and toss the darts
up to 80 yards safely, and over 100 if I secure permission
from a neighbor. Although the atlatl requires considerably more space,
I find the throwing process to be as much fun as
knife throwing and
whip cracking, well complementing both.
Mail to mjr,
goto
Survival,
Throwing Weapons,
Primitive Weapons,
or back to the
Atlatl
This page is part of the official ARCHIVE COPY of the pioneering but abandoned Thrower website on knife throwing. Copyright and details