There it is- the new guard. I haven’t put it onto a chair yet, but I have a good feeling about it. I think I got things fairly straight. A jig to hold everything during tack welding would have made things go together easier. It also would have been nice of I had been able to mill the edges of the inside edge of where the horizontal tubes come together at 90 degrees. I had to grind off the interfering edges, and any imprecision created a gap that I had to bridge with filler. It’ll be strong enough, I think, but would have been easier with a nice tight fit all around.
It weighs 10.8 pounds, about two pounds more than the World Cup guard. I don’t have access to a CAD system that will calculate rotational inertia for me (and I don’t feel like doing it by hand for), but I suspect that the new design isn’t quite as good in that respect. Regardless, this is about $80 worth of steel, compared to $300 for the cheapest commercially available guard. It also has a much more square tip, allowing the player to hit the ball with a spot closer to the end of the guard where the speed is highest.
