The Chop Stick

This one is interesting...
I'm not much for defense and chopping but I like to play around now and then.
I am particularly bad at chopping and tend to chop too hard thus hitting over the other side of the table. To facilitate some chop training I thought I'd make the slowest possible blade. And I did.
It's willow-poplar-cork-poplar-willow, and I'm fairly confidant it's the slowest blade of all time. It has a nice handle with decorative veneers of bloodwood and poplar sandwiched between maple. I dressed it up with TSP Curl P-2 (ox) on one side and Globe 999 (1.8) on the other. I hit with it a little last night and it got to the point that I could return just about any mid-grade loop with a nice, floating, slow moving, backspin ball.

Two Heavy Hitting Beat Sticks

Here are a couple of real clubs. I haven't had a new beat stick in a while so I thought I'd make myself up a few.

The first is composed of my favorite ply combo walnut-cypress-balsa-cypress-walnut. It came out to be around 85-87 grams and with a thickness of 8.7mm. The handle is a lovely 5-ply combination of wenge and purpleheart.



This next blade got my blood pumping just for it's raw power. It's got an extra thick core and came out to be exactly 10mm thick. It weighs in at a dainty 100-105 grams and is made up of zebrano-cypress-balsa-cypress-zebrano. It plays pretty well too.