He throws it into the sky as art, and it comes back as science.
Local artist Chris Lohan says a boomerang is both: a curved, sleek figure in the sky one moment and a restful slab of wood in his hand the next.
Lohan constructs boomerangs from his home in Tempe out of plastic, carbon fiber and wood. Three curved, wooden squiggles with orange, black and white patterns ornament the wall next to the TV stand, some of Lohan’s first boomerangs. These are now “retired,” he says as he walks to his workshop in the garage, which is a small desk with a drafting lamp.
“I always have to have a project, I have to be doing something,” Lohan says as he provides a sample of his last project, a dorodango, or Japanese mud ball — perfectly round and glistening, it's a giant brown marble borne from the dirt in his backyard.
Through a thick Scottish accent, Lohan’s longtime friend Mark Pringle reflects on Lohan's projects — a new one every few years.
“He has a very obsessive personality and his brain never shuts off,” Pringle says. “There’s always something going on, whether he’s recording some music or … making a boomerang.”
The boomerang project started about a year and a half ago when Lohan heard didgeridoo music playing all day at the Phoenix Zoo, where he worked. He says it's a matter of osmosis.
Lohan then pulls out an old birch wood boomerang with notches along the side, a gift his uncle made for him as a Christmas present when he was 11 years old. Lohan and his uncle made boomerangs together in Lohan’s homeland of Scotland.
“We took the boomerang that we bought and then we traced around it and started making our own,” Lohan says.
They then went over to a park across the street, threw it a couple times, never caught it on the return, and “that was that,” Lohan says.
But today, like a boomerang, Lohan has swung back to the craft and works on them with scientific precision.
“It’s physics. You’re making something move through the air in a deliberate outcome. So you have to figure out the science of the material [and] the science of the weather,” Lohan says.
He says two of the most difficult aspects when making a boomerang are creating the correct balance and dealing with the weather. When changing the balance of the boomerang by adding pieces of tape or rubber bands, Lohan says, the dynamics of flight can change dramatically.
He says the long side of the boomerang, the lift arm, gives it lift and controls the first part of the boomerang’s path. The shorter side, the dingle arm, provides stability as the boomerang returns to its owner.
Lohan says he read the work of several “serious boomerang makers” to learn the craft — some of them aerospace engineers — but has also learned through trial and error.
“I try and figure it out on my own and then get confirmation from sources … You understand it better. You know the mechanics, you’ve gone through the whole process on your own,” Lohan says.
Each boomerang has a personality and flies differently in different types of weather and in different parts of the day, Lohan says. To him, the most magical time of day to fly a boomerang happens during the sunset.
“The air temperatures start to change and [the boomerangs] … come alive and they float a little bit more,” Lohan says.
Don Monroe, a professional boomerang thrower and craftsman for 18 years from Tucson, says that it takes time and experience to “read” all conditions of weather for throwing, but that Arizona is an ideal place to learn how.
“We have the weather to allow us to throw more days of the year than most of the other states,” Monroe says.
Despite these good conditions, Monroe says he would like to increase the amount of "boomerang people" in Arizona, which he estimates is only a couple dozen.
Monroe has taught more than 11,000 children to make boomerangs, he says, and has directed about eight or nine regional tournaments in Arizona. He says he wants to spread the magic of making boomerangs to as many people as possible.
“I am still absolutely amazed that I can throw this piece of plastic or this piece of wood in this certain shape away from me at near maximum and have it turn around and turn back. It’s just like magic,” Monroe says.
Monroe already makes boomerangs out of every material possible and wants to expand Lohan’s ideas of the materials and shapes for boomerangs, he says.
He adds that any person can make a boomerang for almost nothing from two paint mixing sticks, some glue and a piece of sandpaper — all done in 30 minutes or less.
“By showing [Lohan] some designs that he may not have necessarily considered to be a boomerang shape that end up working as a boomerang will increase his joy of thinking how he might better the ones he’s making now or create new and exciting different designs,” Monroe says.
Lohan says solving problems is the best part of making the boomerangs because he feels a sense of completion when he figures it out and then moves on to the next challenge.
In the case of boomerangs, the next challenge is a new material, Lohan says.
He first made wooden boomerangs, which he described as “excellent” because, “you’re throwing a piece of wood through the air; how cool is that?”
Lohan started with wood as his first material and then moved onto plastic, which he says is cheaper to make and more dependable. He now constructs boomerangs out of carbon fiber. While he still makes all three, he focuses on making them out of carbon fiber for a lighter, longer flight because it is his newest challenge, he says.
To make a boomerang out of carbon fiber, he layers the carbon fiber, a black plastic net of sorts, in a mold over a layer of balsa wood, which is layered over another layer of carbon. He keeps it in a homemade vacuum compressor for about an hour and leaves it in the mold overnight, he says.
But the science of boomerangs also blends with the art, Lohan says.
Lohan currently sells his custom boomerangs at the newly opened novelty shop, ICON, on Mill Avenue and hopes to work with local artists to create custom designs for boomerangs.
“I want to give blank boomerangs … to my artist friends and have them do the graphics for me, so they can put their stamp on it too,” Lohan says.
Mary Beth Bannon, who finds workshops and galleries for local artists and creates her own recycled art from glass, recommended Lohan and his boomerangs to the owners of ICON.
“First of all, they’re unique. Second of all, you can’t find a boomerang on Mill Avenue and third, they’re hand-made, which just gets me — it’s amazing,” Bannon says.
Lohan’s ultimate goal is for people to want to buy his boomerangs and have interest in his passion, he says.
“You spend a lot of time and energy doing this kind of thing and it’s really nice when somebody [is] interested,” Lohan says.
Reach the reporter at hhuskins@asu.edu
Correction appended.
An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified Chris Lohan as Chris Lane. Don Monroe was also incorrectly identified as Don Mason.
