Z-Rang is a cottage industry in Minneapolis. Each and every Z-Rang grew out of a passion and love of throwing and catching boomerangs out in the parks and on frozen lakes with great friends.
While there is not an aeronautical engineer behind the various designs of Z-Rangs, there most certainly is a team of fun-loving, hard-working friends that talk endlessly, study thoroughly and design thoughtfully. Finally and most importantly (most educationally) comes the throwing, throwing and more throwing with a very healthy mix of catching.
Z-Rangs are made by hand. One at a time. Each one is unique and prior to painting them they are tested. That’s right, each one is thrown and caught before it gets painted.
They are made of a gorgeous and rare Finnish birch. These aircraft grade sheets are the purest of the pure and clean of any blemishes (even knots).
Here are some of the faces behind Z-Rang:
Chris is our Zen Master, kitchen cleaner and all things helpful to keeping souls balanced (or even knowing that we are better off with a balanced soul). He often feeds our bellies with veggies and just as often enlightens us regarding our habits and our souls. None of us would be quite as deliberate, nor as thoughtful if he wasn’t around. He is all about the three winged Z-Rangs. He throws them with a wide variety of tape, rocks and coins attached. It’s ALL an experiment.
Mary is a design graduate from the University of Minnesota. Her understanding of colors, base coats, flow, masking effects and paint coverage is what makes the Z-Rangs look the way that they do. She has dedicated much effort to Z-Rang and we all love her for her loyalty to the brand (and Chris is working out a way to reach a nice balance). Her favorite Z-Rang? I don’t think it needs to be pointed out, but we will anyway: Z-Mary’Z
Every cottage industry needs someone willing to clean the toilet as well as be the face of the company, it just so happens that in the case of Z-Rang “they” are Luke. He’s given seminars to engineering students on the joys of flight and the math behind an airfoil (no pun intended), but finds his comfort zones throwing in the park with friends or buried behind a pile of sawdust with a never-seen-before design in his hands. Luke loves the predictability of Z-Tandem and the versatility of the Z-Ultra-Lite V.
C. Dean’s gentle touch give his rangs a beautiful flight pattern and his friends a warm glow. Without his keen eye spotting a boomerang on the shelf (was it at the Minnesota Science Museum?) we’d all still be throwing frisbees and disc golfing (not all bad, but the boomerangs fill out our resumés nicely). He loves nothing more than watching the massive, low, ever-circular flight of Z-Quinzee, even if there’s an unpredictable wind and he knows we’ll likely end up spending the day climbing trees to save it : )
