Our ULAS Uckers set circa 1970 did indeed use offcuts from a standard military broom handle for the ucks! They had then been dipped into the chippy's paint before being allowed to grace the IPS!
Our games lasted most of the day on Black Flag days - and even on flying days, players would spell for eachother when chosen to go and commit aviation!
"Fever four? Shall diddly-dum* and lurk!"
*Means to leave one uck alone and take both dice scores with the other - but the higher score had to be taken first - i.e. the 5 before the 4 even if that caused a self-hack (back to home and 2 hacks to the oppostion). "Diddly-dum" was the noise made by fast trains of the period; thus one uck moved forward by nine and the other stayed put - lurking just before the opponent's donk was a valuable tactic as a hack on the donk counted double.
Sorry - you had to have been there - it's sadly a bygone age!