Javelin Design

Long ago at about age thirteen or fourteen I was in a woodworking class where we got to plan and build something and got to learn how to use power tools. Some made coffee tables, some made gun racks. Influenced by the collegiate track and field meets that were held at our school I decided that  wanted to make a set of javelins. No wood lathe was available that big to turn something approaching nine feet in length, and so I had to band saw pieces of Banak after doing a little bit of research, and then sand on it with a belt sander for what seemd like a whole week. What follows is the common breakdown of the older Olympic standard for the javelin with a bit of history courtesy of Wikipedia.