boomerang - strip laminated left handed hook with lead weights by mickey kinley

Strip Laminated LH Traditional by Mickey Kinley

Item S94

This Item was Sold on 23 March 2019 for $70

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This left handed strip laminated Kinley Traditional is from my personal collection. I acquired it directly from Mickey in 1983. The strips are Ebony, Walnut and Ash. Mickey made very few of these and they were expensive. I threw this boomerang often for a couple of years and it has a very nice flight with lots of hover. This boomerang is in excellent condition and it has been stored in an environmentally controlled box for more than 30 years. A very rare collectible from one of America's most famous boomerang makers.

Specifications: Left Handed ; Tip-to-tip Span = 39 cm ; Weight = 103 gm

I first met Mickey Kinley in 1981 while living in West Palm Beach, Florida. I introduced my neighbor, Jim MacNeil, to the sport of boomerang throwing a few months earlier. Jim was throwing one of his Gerhards hooks in a big field in Boca Raton adjacent to the Florida Atlantic campus. A very excited man named Mickey Kinley introduced himself as a new boomerang maker and thrower. Mickey was a woodworker by profession. He had started making strip laminated traditional boomerangs on his own. He had never seen anything like a Gerhards hook before. Mickey begged Jim to loan him the Gerhards hook for a day so that he could make a copy. Jim agreed and made plans to meet Mickey the following day in the same field. I went with Jim to meet Mickey on the following day. It was hot and calm. Mickey arrived with an arm load of his strip laminated traditionals and a single copy of the Gerhards hook. This was a PERFECT COPY, complete with weights! The only problem was that it didn't return. I was not yet an expert at tuning and Mickey decided to adjust the flight by filing down the airfoils using instructions from the Lorin Hawes book. Mickey filed that hook down until it was so thin that it broke. The following year, I moved from West Palm Beach to Ohio, but I stayed in touch with Mickey. In 1983, Mickey sent me samples of his strip laminated traditional, hook and omega models. These were absolutely gorgeous. The hook and omega models were weighted and had a flight range of 75 - 100 metres. These were good returners, but they had a very slight tendency to spiral out of a stable hover at the end of the flight if thrown too low on the release. This was easily corrected by adding some tape flaps to slow the rotation down a bit. In 1984, Mickey moved on to make Boomalums, the first long distance boomerangs made out of Aluminum. Mickey is a famous and early pioneer in the long distance event. His name doesn't show up in the record books because he rarely went to tournaments, but his boomalums were the boomerangs of choice in the long distance event for many years.