Yes, after years and years, We’ve just been up in the Borders  (Reiver country,
Paddy)   and came across an antique place which had some forlorn wooden bowls -
3 of them. and I gave up the search.

SWMBO was buying a bit of cut glass, and I managed to tack one bowl onto the
deal.

So now I have a lignum vitae bowl  -  For our American members, bowls does not
have lanes, ten pins, any pins in fact.  It is played on a grassy square, one
with a camber, using wooden bowls which are weighted to not run true.  You are
given 2 or 4 bowls, and have to judge the camber of the green and the bias of
your bowl and the degree of friction of the grass be it wet or dry.
 A game of skill, relaxation, sunshine, good ale, and fine talk.   Too important
to be interrupted for approaching Armadas bent on invasion and all that sort of
thing.

Anyway, the point is that a redundant, wooden bowl, is almost a mallet head.
Not many of them about these days, as they are made of a composition material
these days.   Way back when I lived in Suffolk, and set up shop in the one room
of our cottage (Can’t think why she married me)  I worked at a place which had
been a pub.  It still had its bowling green, and a greenkeeprs shed, and the
locals kept and used the green.  In the shed were a number (lots) of ancient
redundant wooden bowls.  We used them at lunchtimes in summer.  I didn’t know
then that they were of value, a dying breed, and I could have been given them
for nothing.

Fast forward a half century - no, less - my Mother in Law was a county bowls
player, and asked her, as she went around so many bowling greens to keep an eye
out for old wooden bowls “Yes, they often have some.” she said - but bowls never
came to visit with her.

but now I have a one of my own.  And I have a question for the porch.

Does anyone have any knowledge or advice about making a dead bowl into a fine
and living again mallet?


Richard Wilson
Northumbrian Galoot
from Yorkshire.