Finding Bats To Fit Shimpo Rk-2 Wheel Head

[IG céramique]

I've just bought a new "lotus wheel" head that fits for shimpos. Bats fit inside the wheelhead, and are easy to lift  .The bats you see have been sawed yesterday in plywood board. I used to have a wheelhead with two drills, but it was uneasy to fix the bats on it and I had to use a fork to lift it !

[Guest]

Maybe its my Bailey,

 

The bats that came with our wheels fit exactly on our 12" wheel head, both diameters are the same.

 

The first bat I made I decided to make it a little larger and I had a piece of MDF that was almost 13" and by the time Itrimmed it, drilled it and rounded it over it came out to 12.5". I planned to get a 1/4" overhang to make it easy to lift.

 

When I got to the studio the next day the first thing I did was to place the bat on the wheel to see if I did everything right. To my surprise I had more than a 1/4" overhang, closer to 5/8",  but the bat fit perfectly. Thinking I did something wrong I started measuring. First the bat that I made, yup 12.5", then the Bailey's bat... it was less than 12", Uh? Then I measured the wheel heal and it too was smaller than 12".

 

Now don't get me wrong, I really am not worried about the wheel being smaller than 12", its not a big deal. But if they made the bats 12" it would be so much easier to lift off the bats. I mean they have the space.

 

So my question is, are all 12" commercial bats smaller than 12"?

What about the wheel heads?

[neilestrick]

Northstar bats come in 13" and 15" sizes.

[Marcia Selsor]

I still have bats I made in Grad school in the early 70s. They are my larger ones.I also made bats for the UH when I was there and put a coat of polyurethane on both sides. The students tended to saturate them. I put and extra coat inside the holes for the pins. I did that for the tempered masonite bats of got from Northstar. I like Northstars Bat inserts and I got some Bailey inserts about 15 years after the Northstar ones.They are thicker and an inch bigger.

 

Marcia