William

Looks like a little army of well disciplined soldiers 👍😁

Couple nice mibs...the Alley, see that fleabite in the white base? Looks like a little face when blown up 😬

👍

Would love to see more of em' 👍😊

Almost forgot the Big News. We were informed that the last day for softball and baseball bat production will be April 3rd.

We manufacturer both one and 2 piece bats. What I mean by that is...one piece is your conventional bat that everyone is familiar with. These are constructed of a combination of composite and kevlar weaves which are molded around a metal mandrel. Each press has a mold with 3 cavities. They all operate on 8 minute cycles. During the first 3 minutes of this molding process, a liquid resin is "shot" into the press. At the end of the cycle, the bats are taken from the presses over to the "puller", where the bat shell is pulled off the metal mandrel after a few minutes of cooling. If the are pulled to quickly, you'll have a squished barrel because the shell was still too soft. After pulling, they are loaded up in carts and taken to the surface prep department for sanding. You can stay pretty busy when all three presses are running simultaneously. Ones always either opening or closing. We have only ran 3 presses for some time now, but back in the heyday, we operated with 6 presses. Imagine 2 guys running all 6 at once. You had to have spot on timing always. 2 piece bats came into the mix maybe 8 years ago or so. They consist of a carbon fiber barrel with a handle that is glued to it separately. The composite layers are rolled onto smaller metal mandrels, then wrapped in both poly and nylon tapes. After this, they are baked for 3 hours. After that they are also pulled and sent for sanding. The handle is added to the barrel after sanding is completed and before arriving in finishing. I've always preferred the single piece bats myself. Just love the flex technology involved with the contact area, or "sweet spot" of the barrel. If anyone ever watched a video of a Miken bat hitting a softball in extreme slow motion, you can actually see the barrel BEND inwards at the point of contact. I'm by no means an athlete but when I was playing softball tournaments in my mid 40's, I was hitting home runs! Not the easiest thing to do especially since I only played one weekend a year! I quit when I could run that good anymore (smoking wasn't helping matters either!) My all time favorite Miken bat was the Intensit-E. Old school bats like that and the original Ultra 2 sell for big bucks. The Maniac series was pretty good too.

Page 2 on this thread you'll spot that vendors setup...he is set up in at least 15 locations in the tri state area...

Just grabbed what I could afford at the moment with the days leftover cash...the guy I pick this stuff up from has got alot more good stuff...wondering if I don't have a few pics of his display in this thread? Gonna look quick...

A few fossilized teeth I picked up with some leftover marble money 😊

I'll try to grab some pics at a later date. 👍

Simply awesome. Same here...snag!

Obsidian? That's a pretty big hunk! Your grandfather being involved in everything that you spoke of, that's just incredible! That tooth display, are those Megalodon teeth? What's the length and depth?

Unless China is taking our big prepreg machine. Then all they have to do is have the small premade spools sent there instead.

Actually I'm not sure how they are going to handle the production part of it as far as the base material is concerned. Our bats are composite, which yes, does have wood in the "mix". Here at the facility, we have this huge conveyor type machine that is fed with composite "strands, " that come off of small spools, I mean dozens of them simultaneously. They are all fed together into this machine, being mixed with resin and pressed together into a continuous sheet of composite material. It's then wrapped around a cardboard roll at the other end, then frozen. We pull these big rolls from the freezer for bat production.

Sure does! Granted it doesn't jump atcha like uranium glass but it's still cool.

Yeah, I've got a few...megalodon, mako, and the predecessor too the meg (can't think of it's name lol)...I'll throw on some Individual pics too soon....

Both modern (newer) MK IMO..

That's a nice one, definitely gets a free pass from me for being early 😊👍

That's what I'm beginning to do so I don't run out of space so quickly. Going with printers drawers too hang up. I've got a contact in Iowa that has a bunch that he's saving for me 👍

Houze Glass Candlestick Holder...wish I had a mate!

You've got plenty of time...post away 😊