Hello, can someone elaborate about this regulation:
1.3.3.2.5. The maximum outside diameter may not exceed 65 ± 0.5mm
What was the reasoning behind the Ø limitation. My feeling is that the roots of it was that over Ø65 old tube heads had therefor a too big scoop/open side.
I cannot relate or think of any “exploit” implying a “too big” outside diameter.
In general the idea of the mallet is, that it is an elongated cylinder. It has small round ends, about the size of the ball and a straight side, typically longer than the round side.
We can all agree, that the mallet length has to be limited. In the early days I saw 25-30 cm “goalie mallets”, which looked like a broom.
With the same logic one can argue that the diameter should be limited.
I do not exactly know why the number was set to 65mm and not 70mm or 60mm but it seems a very decent number to me, which keeps a nice proportion.
If one makes the outside diameter bigger, this will impact the wall thickness, since the max outer hole diameter is capped at 58.5mm.
Hence, overall weight goes up as well as lever effect (between handle and head) will get worse. How much worse? I don’t know, maybe it’s negligible.
Not entirely true: you could still have really thin wall thickness and keep the open end at max 58.5.
Here’s the example on an old design (2011…) :
I see, it’s pretty much was i thought and also the fact that NAH have experience with UHMW tube that had a too big ID (open scoop) when you go after 63.5 or so mm.
That said we can agree that there’s no valid, or let’s say crucial point to not allow slightly bigger OD, like 66 or 67. (at 66 we are talking +0.5mm from the ruleset).
That said i’m thinking about prototyping anyway so not much of a big deal even it the rule stick to 65+/- 0.5
maybe the first step would be to go 67 or 68 and see how a truly bigger OD impact the handling? and maintaining a scoop end of 58 of course
