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

Wow, the glove making posts are great.

Can anybody do one for Bat making?
'How to' etc.

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hi, heres a few tips on making sticks. or bats, if you are australian. breadboards if you're european? ah, just kidding.

anyway.

i've been making sticks since i started playing in 93, and have been through a constant evolving process since then, with a couple of periods of heavy experimentation in terms of stick design, and have gone through i dont know how many stages in differing ways to make the things.

i have at varying points manufactured thousands of sticks here in nz for schools players, adults and elite players, both custom to their designs and for the last few years mostly just making my favoured stick at the time for others. i've mucked around with plastics, and mates of mine have even made their own laminates. in the end the simplest always seems best!

first materials... pine is strong and light but feathers easily and doesn't last as long as some wood, can sometimes break if you don't select your wood carefully and for some players doesn't have enough heft or weight for heavy tackling.

some players prefer hardwoods... you can make your stick a bit slimmer while keeping it's strength and heavier wood is sometimes better for passing, with the weight of the stick managing the follow-through for you at the end of the pass... debateable. hardwood sticks tend to get waterlogged more easily and may lose their floating properties unless gently placed on the water for a refs test. of the hardwoods i've tried i like jarra the best, aussie hardwood.

try both and see which you prefer. remember though, when you try a new stick or design, a couple of passes isn't enough. if you really want to find out if the stick might suit you, use it for a week or so, or at least a couple of sessions. give yourself a chance to get used to it, it wont work for you straight away.

don't use ply. it's rubbish. some people use plastic but the stuff that's tough enough to survive is also completely dead and gives no feel of the puck when it's on your stick... and plastic which is flexy enough to give some feel, like the dorsals from nz, flexs hugely in general play and while moving the stick through the water let alone bashing mindlessly on the wall... great for kids starting out cos no need for paint but i wouldnt recommend.

in terms of design, there are so many out there but in essence they come down to a couple of differences, the front passing edge and the angle and offset of the handle. i was interested to read belindas comments about handle size and wrist probs... i think shes probably onto something.

the passing edge can be either straight (like a ruler) or curved (like the front of a steak-knife). this sets a general shape which the rest of the playing area tends to follow, whether you like a huge hook or not. if you are french you might want to put a sheperds crook on the back face of the stick, if you are canadian you might prefer to have no hook at all, and most of us prefer something in between the two extremes. whatever works for you, just bear in mind that a large hook means more wood and greater surface area to push through the water with slower stick skills, while no hook tends to make passing slightly less consistent and slapping down pucks slightly harder. a curved passing edge makes rolling the puck around the tip of your stick a wee bit easier and helps to minimise surface area, while a straight edge makes quick passes off the end of your stick a tad more effective and gives you a flat stick end some people like to use.

i am getting massively sidetracked, anyway, unless you have a laser jig or a lightsabre, a bandsaw is probably the best thing to use to chop em out with, because you can set the table to a given angle which will give you constant bevels on front and back passing edges... none of this doing it by eye with a jigsaw or filing it with a bastard file. dark old days. dont go back to the stone age!

i'd suggest trying an 8 or 10 deg bevel for using aussie pucks or similar, 12 deg for dutch or kiwi pucks or old school SA ones. 10 is pretty all-purpose. whatever works best. i stick the same bevel on the back edge but some people prefer to use that just for curling, in which case dont bevel it so much or at all.

if you do want to pass off the back edge, sorry i'm sidetracking again but... be aware that back edge passing works differently to front edge passing. passing with a front edge, if the puck starts next to your finger it will generally leave the stick halfway down the passing edge, or 3/4 of the way down for a huge pass... very rarely if at all will it actually come off the very end, even though it may sometimes feel like it. (the way i pass anyway, i've freeze-framed it). passing off the back edge, the biggest passes do come off the very end, due to the angle of the hook.... i think this is why you can get such big backpasses with comparitively little movement of the stick. (i dont really know). if you want to pass it off your back edge i'd recommend bevelling all the way to the end of the hook. the trublue aussie sticks have a great inside edge bevel and are good for backflicking... i say this cos i've seen sticks with a flat pane on the hook with no bevel to try to help with curling control, which may help but which destroy the backpass. anyway.

always make a cardboard or plastic template of the stick design you want to use, so you can reproduce the same shape easily... dont just draw around old sticks onto the wood. you need to be able to reproduce the exact shape every time, if you play with sticks that are different you have to adjust every time you pick one up and your progress with skills and passing will be slowed. you should ideally NEVER have a favourite stick. if you do, your sticks aren't made well enough.

when you trace the template onto the wood make sure the template is upside down, ie NOT the way it looks to you when you hold it in your hand... put that top side of the stick face down. then when you cut the bevels they will cut inwards and come out correctly. if you get this wrong, you'll see what i mean, you'll end up with the bevels sticking out of the template shape instead of being cut in.

you can also chop out an undercut of the handle if you like with the bandsaw.

you can use a lot of things to sand off and finish the stick, i've found the easiest is a simple electric drill with an orbital sander attachment. hold this on the edge of a workbench with one hand and sand away with the stick in the other, you can easily get all the angles you need like this and can chomp through dozens of sticks in quick time.

..... put a hole in the handle for string, and use it in big games! we all need string.... unless you go for some weird kind of tape around the fingers or something. anyway, that is quite enough of a ramble.

liam

Awsome! Very helpfull, think you convered everything.
Belle

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i think it ruptured my brain

yes, it hurt my brain too :-) Well done Liam. I was going to write something on making sticks but figured I had blown my literary career on the glove making thread :-)

Great story. You must write it down. I agree that you dont must use ply
But i dont agree with you about plastic. See the pice i wrote by the "artikels"

But how to make sticks?
In wood it is diffecult to make 2 sticks that are exactly the same. You always have a favorite stick.
After times by wood always how exact they are made they will be differend. . ALso you must time after time paint those sticks. Thats the reason in my competion that you may not play with some sticks. Not feeling anything has nothing to do with wood or plastic

But this has nothing to do how you can make them.

If you made them from polyurethaan like me, At first you make 1 sticks and test it in the water. If its good you let it dry.(we also at that moment make those line on top off it. Those reduce the drag etc.
Then you can make a mold from it. After that you can easy make 1 or 20 or more exact the same sticks. That dont need any painting.

Easy to make. Iff you have a mold it cost 4 minuts to make a compleet stick. how exactly i do that i dont tell.
But it is hours less then making wooden sticks.(including painting and sanding)

Then if you want a hook or not. That depends off the technics you want to use. My teams almost everybody hase a hook (one exeption) Playing with a hook can be defensive but also offensive. It it how you play. Yes a hook gives a greater surface area. Thats why some sticks off my design having holes in them. A bigger stick has a small drag sideways by that. Thats not only for defenders a great thing.(i dont now how big a sabre is, but my own stick "sven h3, is 28 cm long, A big underwaterhockey stick , but smaller than the "fishstick" i thinkt thats a canadian or amerikan stick and is 29 cm long) Yes you can not give with the back off the stick some slapshots. But you can trown the puck with a hook and controll the puck easy with a hook. and shooting/flicking can also with the underside off the stick.

Thats why there will be never a final an best stick.
Some wants wood, some wants plastic.
Some wants a hook, some wants no hook.
Also the angle off the grip and the front side of a stick is what you want. A great angle make it easy to shoot very fast. But you dont have much control with your backside left. A smal angle gives a great control over the puck with the backside but shooting is not as easy.

By all it is what you want. Everybody that say "i have the perfect stick for everybody" do not now much about sticks and technicks.

I was just thinking to myself that you must have way too much time on your hands to write so many essays Liam! Then I realised that I'd probably spent just as long reading everything! It's great that you did write so much though as it saves me having to write so much :lol:

I agree with most of your design concepts Liam and also agree with you Sven that stick design is a very personal things depending on an individuals tecnique and strengths. I've been making my own sticks for a few more years than Liam and use a different method too.

I remember at a junior training camp quite a few years ago that I was helping out with, the coach used me as an example to show how an elite players sticks are all the same and that he should be able to pull out any sticks from my bag and they'd all be the same. I think he was a little disappointed when he didn't find 2 the same! That doesn't mean I had any favourites, I could grab any stick and play just as well with any of them. I've seen so many players filing and rasping sticks on the pool edge to get them just right and have been perplexed as to why they should have to do this.

When I'm making sticks I used one of my old sticks (sorry Liam, no template!) and trace around that onto carefully selected pine. I use pine because I find it gives the best feel of the puck, and it's pretty cheap too. I then use a jig saw to cut them out pretty roughly paying no attention to angles of bevels (bandsaw is also good if you have access to one). Then for final shaping I use an angle grinder with a sanding disc on it to sculpt each stick into a work of art! All angles are cut by eye and handles shaped by feel. I guess a lot of this comes from experience and would be hard for a beginner to achieve. Making sticks this way I can knock out 15-20 in an hour and have always had a 90% success rate.

Something else for you to play with!

It is how i made sticks 8 to 10 years ago for my club. It is very easy to make that count in an our.
then you must paint them.

How many i made in an our. :lol: It is depending how many i want to make.If i want to make 1 it is possible. If i want to make 100 is also possible. and all the same vorm. It is pure what you want to play with.

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go the sanding disc, yeah i'm a big fan of it.

i guess when i've sold to schools etc it's always looked more professional to have them all looking exactly the same... i'm just pretty anal.

that coach of yours would have got his uniform selection of sticks if he'd looked into my bag but only if it was just before a tournament cos everyone always "borrows" mine and i generally only ever have a couple in there!

i'm a pretty firm believer on the old feel of the puck through the stick though sven... plastic is just dead. polyurethane may be better than nylon, and i have made and trialled a polyurethane stick, but i just didnt like it as much as wood. i like the look of your sticks in part, the south african style one you have looks nice and simple, but generally i wouldn't let our schoolkids near sticks with such pronounced hooks as it restricts the type of passes they can make and encourages lazy skills. i kinda go with the theory that a good tackle should be made with good body position to create a strong angle to pull the puck away and not rely on the hook of the stick to do the job by itself. but thats just me and you're right everyone likes what they likes. unless people are too lazy and just like what some other sucker will make for them, in which case they like what other people like. i have lost my point.

plus soon all the petrol will be gone and no more plastic for anyone. go wood!

Yes plastick is dead material. THat you dont feel the puck with plastick it is your own thinking. I feel the puck better with plastick.I also find that important. I schoot better with plastic. More people find that. Like Long Paul. you now him i think. He is scared to shoot with the stick i made. It shoots to well. (beter then that old wooden stick he has) They are not scared about the hook. It is legal in the rules and not all the sticks i made have hooks. Some have hooks some dont. It has nothing to do with how to make a stick but only how looks your stick.

And if i use lazy skills playing with that stick you dont now. I dont remenber playing to you.
But iff you want to talk about skills and lazy skills just start another discussion.

Or people get lazy? And want sticks other made.
I dont think it has all to do with lazy people.
Some indeed but most people dont have the skill or time to make there own sticks. But they have most off the times a sticks they like. Then we make a stick exact the same as that , only in plastic. In the last day off the competition yesterday some players started with there old wood stick and ended with the plastick and the next game the did not play anymore with wood. The form/model was the same only wood was chanched to polyurethane. They like those sticks better. It is not only my opinian.

Soon al forrests are gone and there is no wood.
Petroll will be gone also. But technick will find other materials to make things.
Will you react then the same. Use the last tree in the country to make sticks?

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