Drum stick Drum stick A drumstick is a type of percussion mallet used particularly for playing snare drum, drum kit and some other percussion instruments, and particularly for playing unpitched percussion. Specialized beaters used on some other percussion instruments, such as the metal beater or "wand" used with a triangle, and particularly beaters or "mallets" used with tuned percussion such as xylophone and timpani, are not normally referred to as "drumsticks". Drumsticks generally have all of the following characteristics: The archetypical drumstick is turned from a single piece of wood, most commonly of hickory, less commonly of maple, and least commonly but
Ship's wheel the helmsman relied on a tiller—a horizontal bar fitted directly to the top of the rudder post—or a whipstaff—a vertical stick acting on the arm of the ship's tiller. Near the start of the 18th century, a large number of vessels appeared using the ship's wheel design, but historians are unclear when the approach was first used. Some modern ships have replaced the wheel with a simple toggle that remotely controls an electro-mechanical or electro-hydraulic drive for the rudder, with a rudder position indicator presenting feedback to the helmsman. A typical ship's wheel is composed of eight cylindrical wooden spokes