G'day Alan,

My remark about saplings is to rebut a modernist tendency to portrait anything in the past as crude and primitive and to use kitchy bits to look "old". Many things made in the last century were of excellent quality, handmade to individual purpose - at the cost of a lot of labour (which was cheap).

Today everything is mass-produced at no cost in labour (the machine does it) and materials, which do still cost, are skimped. An old broomhandle has considerably heavier than a cheap supemarket stick and is a good median weight for a lagerphone. Probably the nearest thing is a good garden rake handle.

What strikes me as going too far, is to use something too heavy, like a heavy hoe handle ... but it does become a matter of style ... do you go for effects over which you have control (all the extra twists and taps that a traditional pattern permits) or do you launch a behemoth that carries on at its on pace ... while you hang on to it?

On the matter of the sound of bottletops on horizontal surface; the first lagerphone that the general public saw ... Brian Loughlin's one in the original Bushwhackers (1954/57) had two butt-joined hardwood boards (about 450mm/18" wide) mounted on the top. This gave a group bottletops bouncing vertically on top and an equal group striking a flat section in front. Both give more sound than tops striking only two points on a round handle. The tops on the stick are probably more important for appearance than for sound.

My lagerphone is based on Brian's design and gets both a loud sound and a range of interesting variation ... and it is possible to accompany songs without raising homicidal thoughts on the part of the singer!

Regards,

Bob Bolton