Making Your Own Baseball Bat
To realize this, you need to have the following required materials. You require wood measuring about 4″ in diameter by 37″ long, a wood lathe, parting tool, roughing gouge, gouge spindle, sandpaper, measuring calipers, wood burning tool, vanish, and finishing wax. To start a project of making a custom wooden bat, one requires dedicating their time to finding the fundamental woodturning tools necessary to do the job.
Making a baseball bat requires one to observe industry-set regulations guiding the production and subsequent use of the product. For instance, the international softball baseball federation has set out the minimum requirements any given bat should meet. To start the whole process of turning a baseball bat, you need to have blank wood that can be turned and still manage to get a diameter of 3 inches, especially at the barrel.
Having met this minimum requirement, you now need to attach your wood blank to the wood lathe and start the process of obtaining a bat from wood blank. It’s now time to calibrate the bat blank at long intervals of 4″. You need to observe caution in the process of woodturning; have your face mask in place and where necessary, where your workshop gloves. You now need to make your bat blank round. Carefully use the roughing gouge to make the bat round.
Turning, sanding, and finishing
Here, your starting point should be the barrel. With bat standards in mind, ensure that your bat blank’s diameter meets your diameter requirements. The parting tool comes in handy to help you make this diameter cut. It’s important to note that, for you to realize the diameter you want, you must keep re-measuring it using a caliper as you do the turning.
You can use the roughing gouge to excavate the surface until that time you achieve your required size of the groove bottom. Having done that, you need to measure and calibrate the bat’s handle. Use the roughing gouge to remove all materials not needed in the handle. Be keen not to make the handle too thin or huge. Ensure you get the desired handle diameter.
The other important feature of this bat is the Knob. To get the correct knob distance from the bat barrel, measure the bat length, up to where you intend to have the handle reach. Then use a skew to mark this point as the starting point for the bat knob. Usually, the diameter of the knob is about 2″. Here, you need to use a skew chisel to round the knob.
Having done most of the work, it’s now time to make the bat more attractive. To do this, you need to use sandpaper to smoothen it. The cardinal rule in sanding is that, when doing it, you need to start at 50 or 60 grit sandpaper, while increasing the grit gradually to 220 or higher.
Apply the finishing as the lathe is still running; use a dampened rag so that the finish is on the bat and not all over you. Here you can apply to vanish in two coats and then give the bat time to dry before detaching it from the lathe. After drying, you need to detach the bat from the lathe.
At both ends, make a visible mark or grove by using a parting tool. Saw the tendons off of both ends, then wax the areas exposed after cutting the tendons. Now you have your custom wooden bat courtesy of tools acquired through http://www.yourwoodturningtools.com website.
