Charmed balls and other throwing goodness

I wonder what people use for their charmed balls / magic packets / fireball representations / whatever other things are thrown?
I’m planning to make some new ones and since filling them with pieces of fabrics doesn’t provide much throwability, I wonder what else people use for fillings?
Looking at something heavy enough to make them fly, but not too heavy so that they are still safe.

On a slightly different, but related topic: do you tie them as piece of fabric around the filling with knots, or do you tie that fabric with some string, or do you sew them around, or something else?
Also, if they get wet, how you dry them?

Cheers :smiley:

Rice works pretty well. Haven’t thought any about drying issues, though.

the $2 shop have some nice foam balls.

Hackey sacks. Perfect weight, already filled.

They usually come in some weird set of colours.

But it’s possible to paint them, or put cloth around them.

Get cheap ones from 2 dollar shops Hopefully…

Ooooh cool, thanks guys, I shall look at these options.

The problem with these is that they tend to get lost. So it is best if they are bio-degradable e.g. made from cotton, organic string and filled with some kind of seed.

Skirimish uses a lot of these, so we long ago settled on cotton fabric, birdseed* for the filling, and jute or cotton string to tie them together. Ensure the ball is not too tight so it can squish when it hits someone (decreases the energy absorbed over time, reducing the pain factor).

Bright colours are good so you can collect them again. Fluoro pink etc; anything that is distinguishable from the grey/green/browns of your typical forest floor :wink:

  • rice is good too, we were sucked in by the “rice explodes in a bird’s stomach” meme, and birdseed is about the same price.

[quote=“Mike Curtis”]* rice is good too, we were sucked in by the “rice explodes in a bird’s stomach” meme, and birdseed is about the same price.[/quote]Rice can do that? OK, I take back my suggestion - bird seed sounds much better.

[quote=“Stephanie”][quote=“Mike Curtis”]* rice is good too, we were sucked in by the “rice explodes in a bird’s stomach” meme, and birdseed is about the same price.[/quote]Rice can do that? OK, I take back my suggestion - bird seed sounds much better.[/quote]To the best of my knowledge, no. Its an old urban legend that goes around. Snopes.com has a debunk of it here.

I believe the only spell packets I have come across had rice in the middle (although they might have been Mike’s birdseed packets), and I think they were sewn around the outside. I seem to remember that they worked very well - they were quite obvious and you would know if you had gotten hit by one, but they didn’t hurt. The noise of the insides really helped you know if one was being thrown around. I think they were reasonably underfilled, so that there was a lot of room for the innards to move about in, like Mike said about.

Where does one buy birdseed? Do they sell them in supermarkets?

[quote=“Aiwe”]Where does one buy birdseed? Do they sell them in supermarkets?[/quote]I’m pretty sure they would in the pet section.