Henrys Factory Tour

It was with Marie and Damien that we embarked on a visit to the Henrys factory in Karlsruhe. The visit was proposed during the EJC 2008 which took place just a few minutes from the factory.

The Henrys Factory:

The tour of the factory begins in the warehouse which is used for storage. A large part corresponds to the stock of equipment made on site (mainly clubs and diabolos as well as some diabolo accessories). Then, we cross shelves of circus equipment of all kinds distributed by Henrys or only sold to the public via their website (the Kyrolan make-up range to cite just one example).

Henrys' offices:

Passing in front of Henrys' offices... On the computer screens, some 3D animations of future juggling equipment... We won't say more, but it all looked very interesting!

Assembling a diabolo:

Passing in front of a diabolo assembly line. Here are assembled the Henrys Kolibri diabolos. For those who don't know, they are certainly the best diabolos designed to achieve very high throws. They are very small and are used a lot in street performances. This is the Jazz's little brother.

Fire Devil Staff Assembly:

A person was assembling fire devil sticks. The final assembly step: inserting the wick.

These fire devil sticks are available on our website.

Manufacturing a Henrys' club:

Henrys clubs are designed around an ash wood dowel. It is a wood widely used for high-end tool handles. The wood supplier carries out a first sorting in order to offer very good quality wood to Henrys. The supplier realizes approximately 30% of losses on the pieces of wood which it supplies to Henrys by carrying out its sorting. Once this wood arrives at Henrys, it is milled into dowels. A first automated system performs a first sorting to eliminate the sticks that are too heavy or bent. This system also resizes the sticks along their length, the margin of error being +/- 1/2mmm! We were able to see this system in operation and it is rather impressive. The sticks are also sorted according to their mass (depending on their mass they will be used for different types of clubs. Thus, a Delphine club is assembled on a heavier stick than a Classic Pirouette). In this sorting, about 8% of the wood corresponds to waste. But it doesn't stop there. Once this first "machine" sorting has been carried out, each stick is sorted manually, one by one, to observe the direction of the grain of the wood. If the grain is perfectly in the right direction and if it is not twisted, then the wood can be used for a club. For information, about 40% to 60% of the wood corresponds to waste to make a Delphine type club. To make a Pirouette club, approximately 80% of the wood will be "lost". Ash is a wood at an attractive price in relation to the quality it offers, but once this process has been applied, this wood immediately increases in value.

What happens to the waste? Part of the unused sticks are reworked to make Handy diabolo handsticks. But unfortunately the rest does not always find use. It will sometimes be recovered by a local factory which manufactures floors from wooden slices cut from the strips ;-) Or even for the little anecdote, one of the Italian employees of Henrys also works in a pizzeria and the wood is burned in their pizza oven!

The Pirouette clubs are available on our website. Click here to discover them.

Decorating a Henrys' club:

We are witnessing the process of decoration of a club. Everything is done by hand, and it takes time and patience! Here are some pictures:

Manufacture of a Circus diabolo:

Like children, we are witnessing the birth of Circus diabolos: Tony is very attentive to the fateful moment when the half shell of a Circus comes out of its mould!

The Circus diabolo are available on our website. Check them out by clicking on this link.

Thank you Henrys!

Many thanks to Henrys for making this visit possible. It has been a very interesting visit. A very good memory of Karlsruhe.

Some key moments:

Henrys pulls out all the stops, travel by bus from the convention site to the factory. The Shilton family is on board as well as Tony Frebourg with whom we will visit...

Henrys does it with precision. Here is the control of the mass of a Pirouette.
+/- 2 grams is the maximum margin of error!