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I learned a little about grain when I was in the wood baseball bat business for a while...turned bats are sorted by grain count..the lower the count(particularly with ash) the better and that wood is usually ticketed for the major leagues and brings a premium...higher grain count goes to the general market which in many cases is desiring lighter bats...a 33" bat ideally weighs about 33 ounces but can vary from high 20's to mid to high 30 ounces in the same length of the same model depending on the grain count...big difference in weight and performance...don't know if it is helpful but you can sort your blanks similarly by grain count and those with more grains and therefore more softwood for topwaters and lower grain count should result in a heavier blanks for needles etc.....also straight grains, save the straightest grains for the finicky plugs for a better result, a grain that is not straight in a bat is death and even more so any knots...with maple bats you don't often even see the knot or small soft spots that the wood can contain until the bat explodes and you pick up the pieces...anyway...just some stuff to ponder....maybe it would be easier to just put some screw eyes in a dowel....nahhhhh...I can see the attraction to darters, they're probably like golf though...you swing like mad for 18 holes in the hope of that one great shot...when you watch a darter swim right, it's really a beautiful thing...
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