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[Alvaro]

Your bats look great @edge

[edge]

Your bats look great @edge

Thanks mate, always nice to get compliments from fellow forumites!

[alba caerulea]

Here's my Serbians, first is my favourite bat which is 2lb10 and won't get even vaguely through a gauge, I pretty much sanded a cleft down:




and a more normal size one, 2lb11 short blade with more traditional edges and a convex back:




Both perform exceptionally well, both need constant repairing! The density is wildly different between the two, both are pretty dry. Would be interesting to know if the Serbs process the clefts differently - what I was told by the supplier I got these clefts off was that there seemed to be no particular correlation between moisture levels and cleft weights with the Serbian clefts they'd had, whereas with the English stuff they generally got lighter the drier they were.

Woosh, that first one is an absolute monster for 2lb10!!

Perhaps there is something in the growing that makes these clefts more brittle. I know that willow in UK has a pretty high water requirement, have even read somewhere that winter flooding of the plantation is a good thing. Maybe the Serbian grown stuff isnt exposed to these high water levels and the finished cleft isnt as robust as a result.