Custom Bats Cricket Forum
Companies => Off-the-shelf companies => Gunn & Moore => Topic started by: Tom on January 14, 2009, 06:59:04 PM
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Just been watching my local news and there was a news article on the new Gunn & Moore machine.
Try the link below to catch it:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7828829.stm
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Good find! Interesting to see what an International thinks about it all.
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Stuart Broad wants five bats for the West Indies tour alone? And he's not even a batsman.
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that was great cheers. wonder how many bats he will come back with?
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Arthur, he is a good batsmen so i dont see why not?
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It's probably worth him taking more than he'll need as if he does happen to have a couple break or get one damaged in transit there's still some spares. If you only take a couple and they break it would be difficult for GM to ship a replacement out in time.
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Interesting that 5 bats out of a machine are good enough for Broady but some forum members wont touch a bat thats not made by a human ;)
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Good point leo !
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Remember this is pretty much an advertisment from GM, just because he says they're machine made doesn't mean they are. But of course they may well be made by machine.
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I've been told that the County boys have machine made bats but the International boys have hand mades.
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are there anymore machine bat making companies apart from GM??
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Newbery, Impala, GN, I think most of them do to be honest; just some companies machine to different stages. E.g Newbery will handpress, Impala use a basic copier.
Impala video is here: http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-au&brand=ninemsn&tab=s30&from=39&vid=c582d6ae-411f-4be3-9c9a-96044bebc456&playlist=videoByTag:mk:en-AU:vs:0:tag:ausport_aucricketshow:ns:MSNVideo_Top_Cat:ps:10:sd:-1:ind:1:ff:8A
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More than if you count the ones using a furniture copy lathe, only 3 have the big purpose built ones.
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I know i'm not a bat expert, but if you can program a machine to manufacture the exact shape you want etc. I think hanging on the the whole handmade obsession is all a bit romantic...
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A piece of willow is almost always different though, how would a machine know how to press that individual bit of willow or to remove a knot in the blade.
Machines have been able to copy shapes for years, yet people still rave more about handcrafted bats.
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Tom is right
Yep you can put your exact measurements into the machine but how do you know how it will pickup and what the weight would be. These machines dont weigh the cleft, measure the volume and density of the cleft. You punch in numbers, a shape comes out and the cleft becomes a cricket bat. I haven't seen a machine, in any aspect of life yet, that can replace something that is hand crafted.
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Got to agree with you there, the more bats i make the more i appreciate the skill in producing a bat which is well balanced, picks up well and still has a nice shape to it.
Obviously Norbs i aint as geeky as you when it comes to all aspects of willow, i feel embarrassed reading some of your posts not knowing what your on about when maybe's i should!
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Easby as Zoombats once put it
"Take a piece of wood, willow from Essex preferred,shape it, press it, shape it some more, sand it polish it then try it. If it doesn't work, throw it in the fire place and start again.When I started making bats I didn't think I needed a wind tunnel or a degree in physics to do it. My past experience with engineers is that they can't even use hand tools, they can only sit around and talk about designing a better one."
You know what he's right apart from the hand tools bit mind you ;D
edit:Oh and I would use Kashmir clefts if you are going to throw them in the fire, they burn better due to being brittle :D
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Seen a Zoom bat today, Norb, you have to get your (No Swearing Please) in the car...... bikini clad production lines don't sort themselves.
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I'm pretty sure I told you 2 to stop mentioning your Salix Mystery Tour :D
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I'm absolutley serious, you have to come out for the day, this could be big, masssssive.
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I hope its not just me here that gets seriously confused by these two lovers ;o)
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I hope its not just me here that gets seriously confused by these two lovers ;o)
Nope it happens to us all. I think these two should take their pipe,slippers and chat up lines to Personal Messages ;)
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This was in a local paper the other day:
FORMER England captain Michael Vaughan uses Gunn and Moore bats. So does South African skipper Graeme Smith. And Notts and England bowlers Ryan Sidebottom and Stuart Broad prefer the Nottingham-made bats to any others.
The firm has manufactured cricket bats for more than 120 years. And now the process has been made much quicker after a £500,000 investment in the Colwick factory.
Where previously the pieces of willow had to be left outside for up to a year so the moisture content could be dropped from 45% to around 10%, a new kiln is now used. This reduces the process to just two-and-a-half weeks. A climate room has also been brought in to store the willow and keep the moisture levels the same until it is ready to be designed.
And a computerised programme is now used to shape the bats. The new systems have been devised after a four-year study by consultants the Building Research Establishment which looked at how technology could be used to improve bat manufacturing.
Gunn and Moore managing director Peter Wright said: "The four years of research pointed to a more long-lasting and cost-effective way of sourcing and converting English willow into cricket bats."
The company has been producing bats in Nottingham since 1885. This is the first noticeable change in the system since 1904. But Mr Wright added they still use craftsmen to finish off the bats. "The company has been able to develop even further the art of bat making," he said. "Though there still is a fair bit of handwork." The 45-strong workforce produces around 35,000 bats a year. Many top players visit the factory and have their bats personally made to suit them. The rest are shipped to retailers.