Okay, so I decided to mess around with this idea I had, involving a rubber volleyball and some larch timber. Don’t ask me why, sometimes you just get these things in your head, right? Seemed like a straightforward thing to try out.

Getting Started

First off, I needed the materials. Finding a decent rubber volleyball wasn’t too hard, just a standard one, nothing fancy. The larch timber, though, that took a bit more effort. Went down to the local yard, spent a good while picking through the stacks. Wanted something solid, not warped, you know? Finally found a few pieces that looked okay.

Dragged them back to my workshop space. The place is always a bit of a mess, tools everywhere, sawdust. Just how it is.

The Actual Process

So, the main idea, as weird as it sounds with the “lvl” bit, was basically to see how the volleyball reacted with the larch. I wasn’t building furniture here, more like a test, a weird experiment.

• Prep work: I cleaned up the timber pieces a bit. Didn’t sand them down perfectly smooth, just knocked off the worst of the rough edges. Didn’t see the point in making it pristine for this.
• Setting up: Laid out a piece of the larch flat on my workbench. Made sure it was reasonably stable. Then I grabbed the volleyball.
• The ‘Test’: Here’s the core part. I started bouncing the volleyball on the larch. Simple as that. Dropped it from different heights, tried putting some spin on it. Watched how it bounced, listened to the sound it made hitting the wood.
• Observations: The larch is pretty dense stuff. The bounce wasn’t super high, more of a solid ‘thud’ and a moderate rebound. Definitely different than bouncing it on concrete or a gym floor. Noticed some slight variations depending on where on the timber it hit – knots made it bounce funny, obviously.

I also tried setting up two pieces of larch at a slight angle, sort of like a ramp, and rolled the volleyball down, just to see. It rolled pretty true, didn’t veer off course much unless it hit a rough spot.

What Came Out Of It

Honestly? Not much earth-shattering. It was mostly just satisfying a curiosity. The rubber volleyball bounces okay-ish off larch timber. It makes a particular sound. That’s about it.

It was kind of a way to kill an afternoon, work with my hands a bit. Sometimes you just need to do something physical, something simple, even if it doesn’t lead to a big breakthrough. Clears the head, you know? The timber’s still sitting there, might use it for something else later. The volleyball’s back in the garage. Practice done, I guess. Nothing fancy, just went and did it.