Can we have a bat making 'How to' please?

dont worry todd, clubs still work.

for every player using a tiny toothpick stick you'll probably find another with a big club that still manages to play well with it

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it's more polite on the grating than on the subs bench

after havring look at the pic of the britbat i realized i have had a go of one before. i did not like it. as well as all the stuff everones already mentioned the main things i noticed was that the front and back edges were to angled( possibly because my clubs have no angle on back edge and only slightly on front) for my liking and the puck slips over the top on evan slow moves, and also when hitting another player.it is also, then cause the bats only skkiny, hard to regain control as well hard to catch pucks . i reckon im going to stick to good old clubs made out of pine. i was thinking on trying out some of lez buchanins sticks(true blue) though. do anyone like his sticks

i recently tried out a new wood for my bats, which is beech

it's pretty sturdy (no breaks over a comp), and extremely light, and the best part is the stick doesn't get water logged; the timber naturally doesn't absorb a lot of water - so with a thin coat of watered down varish it doesn't get waterlogged.

it furs up quite alot after it's cut out, and with the coat of varish and after painting it gives it a rough edge, it gripped the puck really well without any sanding or anything needed

the only drawback that came with the lightness was the inability to hit with as much power

Interesting. I go to great lengths to get my sticks waterlogged as soon as possible. I find it gives the stick a more neutral buoyancy and greater strength.

hang on a minute, you class no breaks over 1 comp as a positive attribute???
Wow... I break on average, maybe 1 stick every 4 or 5 years...

The trublue sticks are all good Rangi, buy with confidence.

meep

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It's not whether you win or lose - but whether I win or lose.

haha yeh . ive never had a problem with the pine wood i use. adn i dont seem to notice if the water logging makes a difference. i have broken a couple of bats , but the fact that more other peoples bats have broken against me must count for soemthing. and i use a sander to do all the edges, is very time consuming for me so used to just get dad to do it and woose out but not anymore. and then spray paint with a matt paint and the bats always grip enough. execpt one time i used a gloss paint , that didnt work out.

when i originally felt the wood i expected them to break easily

i've only had 1 stick break in the 4 or 5 years i've been playing, and that stick was snows which was god knows how old...

really that pretty strong i guess. ive bhroken a couple in 5 years. but my dad has proabbly broken about 8 and cause we share bats so there kind of my bats aswell. but we make them in reasonable amounts proabbly make 10 bats everytime we make them .

Hi Rangapride

I bought the britbat in february as I was sick of having my wooden bats smashed up

needless to say, it sucks and on certain pucks it is downright unusable.

however Benson pointed out that a lot of the problem of the bat breakage was the angle I was holding the bat at. This was putting a lot of stress on the wood (and my thumb) which is why my bats were breaking and my thumb was aching constantly

by adjusting the angle I held the bat, the pressure from a tackle is now directed and absorbed by my arm now rather than the wood of the bat and my thumb

I've gone back to the wooden bats and in the last 3 months even though I get bashed to hell, I'm yet to break one or get any real pain in my thumb like I used to.

you've gotta let the force come through the stick into the butt/heel of your thumb, or let your thumb slide out so that can happen on a big hit, rather than taking all the pressure on the pad of your thumb.

aussie pine is definitely better thn pine in other countries, or better than nz at least.

look, some people like light bats but WHY? makes no difference to speed through the water at all. you pussies, get some hardwood, nice waterlogged hardwood! doesn't break, lasts longer, wears better, heavier for hitting, better for passing, feathers less so keeps clean passing edges...

as you can see, in my humble opinion light wood is crap. dont waste your time with it. aussie pine is about the same kinda wood as light rimu here in nz which is at the soft light end of the hardwood scale... stuff like beech is rubbish, it feathers way too much, way too light. you may as well try balsa... which i have, and it's also crap.

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it's more polite on the grating than on the subs bench

Because when waterlogged the xylem in lighter woods swells a little bit more, giving a nice grip on the puck and they compact well through impact - which means that instead of bouncing off (as with hard plastics and to a lesser extent jarrah), you actually get more surface area in contact with the puck and can retain more control. The reduced mass also means they move just a wee tiny little insy winsy bit faster through the tricky stuff. Oh, and they flick crap.

Now, I'm not talking exceptionally light woods here - my current sticks are made of Ash - but tasmanian oak and a few of the NZ natives are good examples of lighter woods that make good sticks. I guess I just don't like anything that's tooo hard. If you can find something a timber merchant calls a hardwood that has a long grain, then you're probably onto a good thing.

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It's not whether you win or lose - but whether I win or lose.