Since he started making hurls only two years ago, Tom Walsh has forged a stellar reputation nationwide for the sheer quality of his workmanship. From his Boardsmill base, the Kilkenny native makes hurls to order and his ever-burgeoning customer list now includes Meath County Board amongst many others such as Carlow, Dublin and Wicklow county hurlers. It's only two years since Tom Walsh began making hurls on a part-time basis. But, in that time, the project has grown rapidly, buoyed by phenomenal demand for a high-quality product. Word spread across the grapevine like wildfire and, today, Tom Walsh Hurls is almost a mini-industry in its own right. The challenge now facing the founder is to take his fledgling enterprise to the next level. The capacity seems to exist to transform Tom Walsh Hurls into a full-scale company. How and when did the Kilkenny man start making hurls? "I first got into it about five years ago when I started fixing them for friends and bringing some back up from Kilkenny for a few lads. I enjoyed that and after realising the demand for a good hurl I just decided to start making them myself," he reflects. The demand for Tom's hurleys has been little short of extraordinary. He began to supply hurls to some Meath and Kilkenny hurlers and into clubs in Carlow. As his reputation spread through word of mouth, he began to take orders from club players, both near and far. "I owe a lot to John Andrews for giving me the chance to get involved at county level, it has helped in getting my name out there. My main job with the county team outside of match day was to make sure the lads had their favourite hurls repaired and ready for Sunday. As if I wasn't busy enough this made sure I was." Then Meath County Board got in touch to source hurls for their U12, minor and senior hurling teams as did the camogie Board for their county team. Today, hurlers from clubs all over the country are in regular contact with the Boardsmill maestro and the business has taken on a life of its own. "I could expand it, no bother," he notes. "It's certainly too big now for part-time work." As for the actual manufacturing process, Tom makes each hurl with tremendous attention to detail. The end product is a perfectly sculpted, handfinished hurl which can be cut and shaped to precise customer specifications. "Every hurl is made out of ash and everybody starts off with that same ingredient but you must take note of what the customer wants," he explains. "There are lots of different styles of hurls, with slightly different shapes used in different counties. For example, if you look at Kilkenny and Cork hurleys, you will notice that they are completely different. I chose a style that is in between those and that's the shape I specialise in although I can make slight alterations if requested. Just recently I introduced a senior Kilkenny style which I intend to make in every size before the start of the 2009 season. "I give a lot of attention to each individual and literally no two hurls are the same - unless a customer orders identical ones. Each hurl is tailored to the individual, to the exact size and weight requested. Of course, all hurleys will get damaged, so as an extra service, I repair all my hurleys for free. A typical senior hurl costs about 22 and these start at 35, 36 or 37 inches in length. "It goes down from there but you can literally make a hurley in any size," Tom continues. "For underage, you wouldn't really go much smaller than 28", but I made a 9" hurl last year for Mickey Cole's young daughter. You can tailor-make them in any size but clubs generally order them from 26"  up to 36" and occasionally 37". Tom hails from Slieverue, on the southern tip of Kilkenny, along the Waterford border. He's been living in Boardsmill for eight years and is married to Caroline a Meath lady. The couple have two kids Robert aged 10 and Evan aged 7. He played underage hurling in his native county and also lined out for Kilkenny Vocational Schools football team before a motorbike accident at the age of 17 effectively ended his career. After five months in hospital with multiple broken bones, it was no surprise that Tom never played any sports again. "One of the injuries I sustained was 11 breaks in my right arm." It's strange, though, how his life has come full circle and he's now providing an extremely important service to gaels all over the land. As for the future, it is becoming increasingly likely that Tom Walsh Hurls will have to expand in line with growing demand. Quite how the proprietor will achieve this objective remains to be seen, however. "It has broken my heart to have to refuse orders in the past and let people down, but that's the way things have gone. I'm unbelievably busy and it's hard to find time to make the hurls and do my job. I'll have to come up with some way of making things work. My intention is to let the business grow, somehow. "Since I got involved with the Meath lads, about a dozen of them are getting their hurls off me direct and they all went back to their clubs and that brought in more orders. It took off and, to be honest, I wasn't quite prepared for it. It's only now that I'm starting to think about the best way forward." Tom invested in a special lathe from Italy which can make four hurls at a time. The machine was originally designed to manufacture items such as table legs, gun butts or pick axe handles but the Kilkenny man has adapted it to his own needs. "It basically copies the template. A lot of preparation goes into setting up the machine." And there's still plenty of additional work once the hurls come out of the machine. It's not just a matter of pressing a few buttons and waiting for the hurls to pop out like bread from a toaster. If only life was so simple "I insist on finishing all the hurleys off myself and that has caused a bottleneck in the supply chain. I've purchased a second sanding machine and band saw for next season to speed up production and, from now on, I'm just going to band them and do the finishing sanding work myself." A man of many skills, Tom is employed as a project manager within Mercury Engineering's mechanical division. He has been working for the company for 18 years. "Before I started working on the hurls, I had never done anything with timber in my life. It's all mechanical engineering I do with Mercury. The hurley making is a totally different thing altogether." So far, the demand for Tom's hurls has been little short of remarkable. To borrow a pun: from small acorns, mighty trees grow. But it's ash, not oak, that Tom Walsh reworks so lovingly. Tweet

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