I recently made a system for quickly switching my disc golf retreiver accessories (link). My Rogue Iron retreiver seems strong and I’ve never had issues with it - but I have seen other retrievers break before. I wanted to run some numbers and see how much extra stress I may be putting on my retriever with my change.

I started by weighing each of my retriever accessories. I weighed the wingnut which comes with the RogueIron accessories to compare:

  Base Weight With Wingnut
Single Hook 9.8g 13g
Double Hook 24.8g 28g
Mailbox Slot 63.8g 67g
SuctionCup Ball 63g 66.2g

When I made my accessory adapters I made each one a different length (weight). I weighed each adapter I had made

Quick Switch Accessories With Adapters

  Shortest Medium-Short Medium-Long Long
Adapter Weight 4.6g 7g 10.4g 30.7g

From there I calculated the weight of each accessory using the shortest and longest of the adapters:

  Base Weight With Wingnut With shortest adapter With longest adapter
Single Hook 9.8g 13g 17.6g 43.7g
Double Hook 24.8g 28g 32.6g 58.7g
Mailbox Slot 63.8g 67g 71.6g 97.7g
Suctioncup Ball 63g 66.2g 70.8g 96.9g

I also need to add the added weight of the adapter I put on the retriever itself.

My original retriever modification was permanent unfortunately. However - this means I removed 2.4g from the original retriever before adding 15.6g (+13.2g).

The part on the left is what I cut off of the original RogueIron retriever. The part on the right is what I added by cross-drilling a hole and pinning with a cotter pin.
I've made another adapter which should work without modifying the original retriever. It weighs 22.7g. I think I can make the shaft a little shorter - hopefully getting the weight closer to 15g.


This gave me some final results on how much each accessory might weigh with with the heavier (non-destructive-install) retriever adapter. For this I only worried about my shortest and longest accessory adapters.

  Short Adapter Long Adapter
Single Hook 40.3g 66.4g
Double Hook 55.3g 81.4g
Mailbox Slot 94.3g 120.4g
Suction Cup Ball 93.5 119.6g

Seeing over 100g does have me slightly worried about the health of my retriever. A typical disc golf disc weighs around 170g. So I wanted to see how much relative weight increase each accessory might cause.

  Short Adapter Long Adapter
Single Hook 23.71% 39.06%
Double Hook 32.53% 47.88%
Mailbox Slot 55.47% 70.82%
Suctioncup Ball 55.00% 70.35%

The heaviest accessory (mailbox slot) with the heaviest adapter (the long one I use on the suction cup ball in the above images) means the retriever will have 71% more weight on the tip that with just a disc. Putting the accessory an extra 6” further out has some reach advantages - but does make me worry about the force being even higher for the retriever.

On the other hand. When my retriever is at its fullest length I almost never need to fully support the disc’s weight. I usually will only need to drag it closer into 10’ range where I use the accessory to actually pick up or fling the disc to me.