A Power Broom? What are the Rules?

After participating in the Gay Lea bonspiel at the Vanastra Curling Club last weekend, I was completely worn out. As a result, I have several questions about brooms and brushes.

I know there was considerable controversy when brushes were introduced instead of the old corn brooms. But that transition went fairly quickly.

I'm sure others have thought of this many times, but is there some rule against have a power brush in curling? Several possibilities present themselves:

• Something with roller-brushes and a small electric motor, perhaps a bit like the small hand-held vacuum cleaners that have power heads on them. I can imagine that curling clubs would want to ban these because they could easily cause low spots on the ice after just a few ends.
• but what about something that vibrates, like the Gillette Fusion razor (or the motor in an orbital sander)? Something that vibrates, even just a bit, might enhance the sweeping effect considerably, especially for people who struggle with a broom. How much would something like this damage the ice?
  
  For example, suppose I strapped just the little vibrator portion of a Gillette Fusion razor on the head of my broom
  
  Would doing so increase the efficiency of my sweeping?
  If so, would doing that have any noticeable additional detrimental impact on the ice?
  And would it be a violation of the rules? Which rules?
  Where should the line be drawn?

And to be really cynical, how do we know some curlers don't already have little vibrating gadgets inside their brooms, with switches up in the handles to turn them on and off? Is there some sanctioning body or some method to appeal the nature of the equipment used by the different teams, a la the mechanisms for challenging bats in baseball?

Curling Brushes and "Picks"

I suppose most curling clubs are like ours. The club has some brushes that are available for people to use, but members are expected to get their own equipment after they have been members for a year. The brushes, at least at our club, are full of crud -- tonnes of gray dust that collects on them very quickly.

I have often wondered if the amount of crud that collects on our brushes might be reduced dramatically if we had a better filtration system for our ventilation and air circulation. I also speculated earlier that poor air filtration might have contributed to the poor ice conditions at the 2007 Tim Horton's Brier. I have no idea how much merit this speculation has, but my own brush sure seems to pick up a lot of crud awfully quickly at our club.

Let's Hear It for Neon-Orange Skips' Brooms

Most of you have probably known about this for quite some time, but only during the 2007 Scotties have I noticed that nearly all the skips (and vices, when they are skipping) use a neon-orange coloured brush/broom to provide a target for the curler who is delivering the rock.

I expect they use these brooms because they stand out and are much easier to see when settled into the hack. And from the perspective of a television viewer, the neon brushes certainly are much easier to see. It looks as if each team has just one of these brooms/brushes, and it is used by whomever holds the broom.

It reminds me of the time when a catcher in major league baseball (who? Lance Parish, maybe?) had a pocket of neon orange sewn into his catcher's mitt, hypothesizing that it would make a more visible target for the pitchers. It didn't catch on in baseball. I expect it will in curling, though.

At the club level, I've often threatened to put some neon-orange tape on my own broom for when I'm skipping, just so the other players can see the broom more clearly.