If you want to make a fire stick that spins smooth and stable, and offers a good control gradient along the length of the stick, you should make it with most of its mass focused at the ends of the stick, ie the wicks/wick assemblage should provide most of the weight. The greater the % of the body's mass focused at the ends the great the moment of inertia for angular momentum (for a more in-depth discussion on the physics of stix talk to Adam: people.tribe.net/8b956b74-...f21ff61d). If on top of that you want a stick that won't spin too fast and get away from you too easily, you need to find the right ratio of wind resistance to mass. With flower sticks, the tassels create wind resistance (drag) to balance out acceleration. Speed and acceleration are not a matter of weight. You can have a light or heavy stick with proportional amounts of drag and they will spin similarly. Another consideration is that when tassels hang down some and don't fully spread out around the axis aligned with the length of the stick, rolling is minimized or stopped all together. So the challange is to make tassels that stand up to fire or emulate their effects somehow.

My friend Stix* makes and sells a pretty sweet Crystal Stix mod for fire spinning. I need to look up his website again and then I can post it for anyone who is interested. In the meantime, Crystal stix's website is: www.crystalstix.com/.

-Alien Jon


*named for his drumming, although the name is apropriate for is skillz with crystal stix. He's pushing 20 years experience I think.)