Home-made Hockey Stick

home made hockey stick

There’s a couple of reasons I decided to try making a hockey stick…

1. Because ice/inline hockey isn’t very popular in this part of the world, the equipment is harder to come by, and quite expensive.

2. I only want it to skate around on my own up at a local old outdoor roller skate area. (or on week-ends down at the school with my kids)

So I decided that all I really needed was something that resembled a hockey stick which I could dribble and hit a ball around with while I got some exercise on my roller blades.  Skating around in circles is pretty boring; chasing a ball around with a hockey stick is much more fun.

So after doing some research (via my good friend Google); I found the various measurements of standard hockey sticks, and set about looking for suitable materials to use.

I figured it was going to be all wood, and didn’t’ take long to find a piece of long thin wood for a handle and a small piece of compressed plywood for the blade section.

Blade cut out of compressed plywood

First task was to draw out the shape of the blade and lower shaft and cut it out using an electric jigsaw.

The piece of wood used is considerably thicker than a normal hockey blade, but this will (in time) give me the chance of developing a curve in the blade.

Although old hockey sticks never use to have a curve in the blade, it does make for better control of the ball or puck.

metal used to attach blade to handle

My next big problem was how I was going to attach the blade to the handle. Normal sticks are glued, but also made so one section partially slides inside the other to make for a firm attachment. I don’t have the equipment required to do that, so I decided to look at bracing the two pieces together.

I found a piece of angled aluminum from an old dead BBQ I had dismantled last summer; the metal was a bit too wide, but I decided to cut it in half (jigsaw fitted with a hacksaw blade made quick work of this) and use it as a splint brace to join the two pieces.

I was a little disappointed to find that the angled aluminum wasn’t as strong as I’d hoped it would be, so I needed to add a second strip on the other side of the join area for a bit of extra support, which worked out well.

So the end product is understandably heavier than a professional made stick due to the thickness of the blade and I guess the kind of wood used. But in time I’m hoping to get around to thinning the blade down and adding a curve to it, although I’m not sure of the woods strength so I’m a little hesitant to make it too thin.

home made hockey stick

I gave it a good work out this afternoon with a bit of one-on-one roller hockey against my son with his home made stick down at their school. It worked well and stood up nicely to the riggers of the game.