Turning a baseball bat

Making a baseball bat is fun. It's a relatively straightforward woodturning project. As little leaguers graduate from aluminum and composite bats, it's good for them to hone their skills with a classic wood bat.

Step 1 Tools and supplies

The tools and supplies needed are

36" wood bat blank
wood lathe
turning tools
square
outside calipers
sandpaper
oil/varnish finish
fine Japanese saw 

Comments

[kmpres]

Excellent instructible! I've often longed to make a bat and even bought a lathe some 25 years ago but life intervened and I never got the chance to use it. You made turning a bat look easy so I think I might finally try my hand at it. Thanks!

[affyx]

great instructable! much respect for anyone who masters the skew chisel!
how about one on making your steady rest?

[carlbass]

That's a good idea. I found it's easier to make the instructable while you're making it rather than after the fact. There are several commercially available steadys that work like that but I'm working on one that is circular since it will better enable me to position the wheels.

[seamster]

I almost hate to ask this, but is your kid's team the "Gaters" or the "Gators"?

[carlbass]

It's the Gaters as in the Golden Gate not the animal -- that would have been a big screwup

[seamster]

Indeed that would have been a mighty screw up! I'm glad it wasn't.

Still, it reminded me of a painful mistake I made in wood shop in high school. I made an elaborate wooden sign that had a picture of a skull and crossbones that read "DANER: DO NOT ENTER!"

That was a screwup!

[wilgubeast]

Or the Gaiters??? :-P

I bet it's a reference to the Golden Gate Bridge, somehow.

[mikeasaurus]

Great project, thanks for sharing!
I've never heard of hollowing out the end of a bat before, does it improve performance, and is it just hollow or do you fill the cavity with something heavy to achieve more inertia?

[carlbass]

The theory is that it makes the end of the bat lighter> Hitting a ball of the end of the bat does no good and by having the bat be lighter out at the end of the barrel, you should be able to swing it faster. It's a job for mythbusters.

[canida]

Nice! This makes me nostalgic for long-ago tours of the Louisville Slugger factory.
How many bats have you made?

[carlbass]

I've made about two dozen bats -- a few with my kids and some for the kids on the teams I coach

[valpone99]

What is cooler than that! Nice work.

[angelabchua]

What an awesome project to do with your son! That just makes the bat extra special when he goes knockin balls out of the park!

[randofo]

Nicely done. That is a great-looking bat.