How to Make Saaps?

[kinnell]

Hey Guys,

Some of our saaps broke this year and since shipping costs are ridiculous from India, I'm planning on making our own saap. The basic layout seems simple enough (I'm an engineering student, lol) but do you guys have any pointers on how the make them?

What type of wood is best? Are there some nails and bolts that are better? Any personal experiences? I've seen both HUGE Saaps (Boston Bhangra has huge saaps, yo) and seen small ones - I'm planning on making something a bit larger.

I would ask POL, but it seems these days, you can get shot there for just misspelling a punjabi word if not for being gujju. ;D

Thanks,
kinnell

 

[Vic]

I've made them myself before. It's not hard at all ONLY if you have the right tools. One thing you should make sure of is SOLID wood. We made the mistake of listening to the Home Depot worker. He told us that 3 Ply wouldn't split, but it did. So I would suggest solid wood. For your handle piece, I would suggest to simply trace an old saaps handle and use the proper tools to cut and shape you handle. DO NOT use Chicago screws, they are hallow and will snap. We used bolts and nuts only thing was that they were to big and stuck out, no big deal though.

Hope that helps.

 

[Saleem]

Larger saaps are a LOT less agile; you cant do very quick moves (i.e., on the eighth beats. see recent SJPD or NJ or other opening segments for what i mean of a good sized saap for fast moves). Your speed with them drops off rather surprisingly, actually.

Thats my experience FWIW, Cornell had pretty good sized ones that we made in 05-06 and it was hard to do the quick changes.

 

[kinnell]

Thanks a lot, Vic and Saleem. I really appreciate it.

 

[Kaur]

Hey, I dont know what your budget is but we orderd our saaps from india through a online store and they came to $20 cdn each and that was with shipping. All we did was stain and oil them and they were ready to go. Ill find out exactly what site it was for you.

 

[kinnell]

Hey Kaur,

If you could let me know, that would be amazing. My contact in New Dehli quoted each saap to cost 1850 Rs. with shipping. I thought that was absolutely ridiculous.

Thanks,
Kinnell

 

[Kaur]

Hey,

The website is www.panjabemall.com Just search 'bhangra' and you'll find everthing. 1850 rupess wow, thats almost $50 a saap. I think these come to 22ish, and get delieverd in 2-3 weeks.

Goodluck
Harkiran

 

[DParhar]

Hey Vic, the saaps/shikkay/kainchys that you guys use, are those the ones you made yourself?

I also have another question... Which type of saaps do you guys prefer, the ones with the handles or the ones that PAU and Drexel uses, without handles?

if you have no idea what I am talking about... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlEEuNw-Kwc