Balls Come Home

When our boys came home with their rubber, it coincided with America's giddy Mickey Mouse age. Perhaps from the exposure TV was giving juggling, and perhaps from the back-to-peace turnaround of our factories looking for new outlets, juggling toys hit the street through the mass markets.

 

The '50s were spinning on yo-yo strings, kid-size diabolos showed up at recess, and boys who couldn't hula worth a hoot were rolling their Hula-Hoops down the alley with reverse English on them.

 

And Harry Moll of Denver, an old veteran juggler and late-night reveler with Francis Brunn, introduced his boxed juggling set for children. As far as can be determined, he was the first to combine three balls, directions, and mass marketing. At one point, he even sold molds to make juggling ice cubes!

 

There was no booming success, no over­night sensation, but he had run a flag up the pole and more than a few saluted. There was something in the air. Two decades later, it hit like a thunderclap.

 

Stuart Raynolds

Stu Raynolds' close association with Harry Lind began when Raynolds returned from military service in 1947 with a renewed interest in juggling. He ordered clubs from Lind and Lind urged him to attend the first IJA convention. There he met Bud Carlson, Lind's grandson, and the two formed a juggling act at Cornell College, which both were attending. Their act was almost completely based on Lind's coaching.

 

Raynolds' formidable background in chemistry (he later obtained a doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh and is now a senior research fellow with Du Pont) naturally inspired him to turn to new polymer materials. Despite the greatly improved durability of Lind clubs over predecessors, Raynolds found himself going through a set of them every six months.

 

He began experimenting with various processes on a part-time basis in 1950. Lind's death 17 years later put Raynolds and countless other jugglers desperately in need of a source of clubs. Raynolds was convinced that epoxy resin with fiberglass fabric gave the most controllable system and by 1969 he was into production.

 

The unique process he uses to manufacture these Rolls Royces of clubs involves wet layup laminate on an outside mold. An inside mold system, requiring the joining of five separate parts, was rejected earlier. The total amount of epoxy fiberglass can be controlled to within plus or minus one-tenth of one percent, and distribution along the mold, for purposes of balance, is also minutely controlled.

 

Despite Lind's craftsmanship, he could only control his weight to within three­quarters of an ounce and his balance to within one-half inch, due to the vagaries of wood. The Raynolds process makes variances virtually undetectable, with the balance points varying no more than one­eighth of an inch.