This afternoon I helped Jason Rice and John Tartt run a Club Coach refresher course at the Guelph Curling Club. During the course I got some interest in the Junior program at Elmira and, in particular, the Junior hack we use for 7- and 8-year-olds. I realized that I didn’t have any photographs of the Junior hack posted on Throwing Stones, so here they are.
As you can see from this photograph:
the Junior hack is constructed of 2×6 cedar planks, held together by a combination of 3 1/2 and 4 1/2 inch galvanized bolts, and attached to the side boards of the curling club adjacent to sheet 1. The hack consists of a single Marco hack on each end, which when mounted sits directly on the center line. I went with a single hack design simply to save on weight, to reduce the amount of torque on the structure when it’s in use.
Attaching the hack to the side boards is done with matching 1/4 inch steel plates, one plate with two 1-inch diameter steel pins and the other plate with matching holes attached to the hack. Over the course of a curling season, the ice level can change due to flooding and scraping. The hack design accommodates this height fluctuation by “floating” over the pins. Since the steel plates on the hack do not actually attach to the side boards, but “float” over the steel pins, no hack adjustments need to be made as the ice is maintained.
The reason that there is two Marco hacks facing in opposite directions is that I arranged for two sets of mounting plates with pins to be made, one on either side of the extra set of rings on sheet 1. This arrangement permits the children to start curling on 1/2 sheet. After a few months, once they get some experience and confidence, I can move the Junior hack to the opposite side of the extra rings so that the kids are now throwing about 2/3 of a sheet. And, of course, once they master that, they can then move to play on a full sheet of ice on either sheet 2, 3, or 4.
