Having had my eye open for a
Stuart Surridge Turbo for a while, I finally found one on ebay. The listing said that the owner had sanded it down and that all it needed was a quick oil. Oooh, I thought, I'll have that. The pictures look okay.
This is what turned up. It's a 2lb 12oz SS Turbo Supreme, with reasonable grain structure and a pretty damn good pick up. It's also got rather a lot of rebound off the mallet, which I wasn't expecting and is a bonus. I am really very fond of the shape of the bat as it has a very traditional and classic profile, as can be seen looking up the toe, and for a bat of its age, it has quite a bit more wood than I expected, and a lot more than the SS Contour I also own, which is thinner and very heavy.
This is dressed in the early nineties livery of around the same period as the 333 and is a surprisingly chunky bat for its era. Okay, it's not the special laminated one that Gooch used, but still, tt's a nice piece of willow. I also remember our opening batsman in the school U-16 team having one...
It has unfortunately had a bad refurb... Pictures first and then I'll go into it.
On the face of the bat can be seen a piece of bat tape. What's that for I wondered? Well, it is to hide the dirty great scar where whoever did the sand down used some form of electric sander and took about 1-2mm off the face but didn't want to damage the stickers. you can also see a similar, if not quite so exaggerated line on the back of the bat.
With a little judicial sanding, this should be possible to blend in.
They also appear not to have sanded it down with a fine grade sandpaper, so it's really quite rough, leaving me a weekend job of additional sanding and wire wool/wax cleaning to try and clear it up.
I don't think it's terrible, and as I say, with a little TLC, it should be as good as new, but it also demonstrates how easy it is to cock up a refurb!
Author
Topic: Vintage Bats (Read 345028 times)