Hi Everyone. Like a few other people recently, I’ve spent the last few months lurking on this forum, whilst getting to grips with making my first* bat as a hobby during the lockdown. I’m a bit wary of this bat being my first post, but I thought at least some people might be interested, so here goes…I hope it’s not too long.
Design backstory (skip if necessary): I wanted to make a bat that I couldn’t buy, and that tried something different (but within the rules). After stumbling upon a recent
study that used genetic algorithms (artificial intelligence) to try to optimise the design of a cricket bat, I was hooked (no pun intended)! I’m not an engineer, but my understanding is that the design minimised the distance between the Centre of Percussion and vibration nodes, to increase the ball speed upon hitting. To my mind that would mean a smaller middle, but a hell of a sweet spot. It also leads to some interesting design ideas.
The design has been put into prototypes called ‘Algobat’, which to me look like they would be, how to put this, pretty terrible to actually use. So I wanted to see if I could replicate this design as much as possible, while improving the pick up and making it look not quite as ugly.
Making the BatSo, step 1, a lovely butterfly part-made from Hell 4 Leather, which I loved straight away.
Next, working it down to the basic outline shape using my limited tools and a very cheap workmate. I actually spent ages looking for second hand drawblades and the like on eBay, but still ended up using my old plane most of the time (and a LOT of sanding later on). You can just about see the original edge markings, which I ended up changing.
Because I was trying to follow quite a weird design, I made templates from the original study design to check how I was getting on. You can see that the toe and middle were not so bad, but above there was pretty difficult for me. Look at the shape I was trying to follow at 279 mm!
After a lot of planing, sanding, and swearing, it’s starting to come along. This is probably the point at which I stopped following the design template, and started to see if I could lighten it up a bit, and make the pick up better.
After a lot more sanding (I discovered putting sanding cylinders in my drill, which is now my favourite pastime) the final shape. And seeing as this was going to be different, some nice rainbow twine I found online. If you look closely, you can also see where the really fine grade sandpaper took a few little thin strips of wood out, which annoyed me no end, and meant I had to think about stickers to hide them 😊
Really embracing the different design now, I found a Kookaburra translucent silicone grip and it feels amazing! Although after a month it looks like the rubber in the springs has discoloured it slightly.
Final side view before stickers. I’d already whacked it on a radiator while trying out a fantasy straight six, hence the dent on the edge.
And because I have a bit of a soft spot for branding and logo design, I thought I’d give it a go at coming up with my own. So here are a few different angles of it all finished. I thought it was ugly as anything at first, but it’s kind of grown on me. Perhaps it’s just a baby that a parent can love!
So overall, here are some of the measurements:
Weight: 2 lbs 10.5 (before twine, grip and stickers)
Edge: 37 cm
Spine: 60 cm
Toe: 14-33 cm
Shoulders: 12 cm
Sweet spot (estimated): 8-23 cm from toe
Now, I haven’t played in years because of work and little ones and a million other rubbish excuses, so I just need to figure out how to try it out! I’ll let you know how it goes.
Cheers,
Pete
*Technically, this is my second home made bat. When I was about 14 I cheekily wrote to Millichamp and Hall, and said that I was going to make a bat for a school project. That, er, wasn’t’ strictly true, but the teacher let me use the workshop at lunchtimes, even though it wasn’t actually for a school assignment, just fun. Anyway, I got a very nice letter from either Julian Millichamp or Jonathan Hall (I have a terrible memory), saying they’d basically send me a part made for £50, which I had to give up my paper round savings for. I’d like to say that my design was a success, but I knew
next to nothing about bat design, other than thinking that the more I took off the worse it was likely to be. So it ended up being something like 3 lbs, which is basically Thor’s Mjolnir to a weedy 14 year old. But it helped me practice in the nets, until 6 months later when it snapped in half.
[EDITED to make the photos bigger inline. Thanks for the help!]
Author
Topic: First home made bat - designed by artificial intelligence (Read 27715 times)