Introduction: Beater's Bat Replica With 3D Printed Parts From Harry Potter
This is an instructable to make your very own Beater's Bat
I will reveal to you the age old magical process to make this athletic equipment.
Please keep in mind, all beater bats are handmade and are indiviually unique since they all come from different pieces of wood with different characteristics.
The bats can differ just as much as 2 wands can.
This item is made of wood, with 3D printed parts to simulate the metal.
Here's what you will need for this project:
Materials:
- Wooden turning blanks (scrap wood at least 3" x 3" thick)
- Lathe Chisel Set
- Sandpaper
- Black Acrylic paint
- Paint brush
- Minwax Provincial wood stain
- Minwax gloss Polyurethane
- Wood Filler (maybe)
- Pewter Rub 'n Buff
- Crazy Glue
- Testor's Contour Putty
- White Hockey tape
- Tea
- Stain Rags
- Disposable Latex Gloves
Other Tools Required:
- Table Saw
- Wood Lathe
- Bandsaw
- Drill Press
- Dremel with wood cutting bit
- Venier Caliper
- 3D modeling software
- 3D Printer (or use 3D hubs)
Warning: Always wear proper protection for the processes. Wear safety glasses when cutting or drilling or dremelling wood. Wear a respiratory mask when sanding.
Ok, let's get started.
Step 1: Design
Starting from scratch, I looked at the concept art for the beater bat. It gives a few dimensions but a few are left unknown.
With some help from a friend I created a solid model of the bat with features.
From that, I've generated a dimensional drawing, I have included it as a photo and a 1:1 drawing. Drawings in mm.
Attachments
Step 2: Woodworking - Lathework
Now that you have a dimensional drawing it's time to get going on the woodworking.
- I started with a scrap piece of 2" thick wood and cut it into 2" wide strips, and then cut that to a length of 19" which gives an extra inch on each side of the bat for scrap. (My wood was possibly spruce, but I'm not sure)
Note: It's ok to make the bat smaller than the dimensions in the drawing, the bat will just be a bit narrow. It should normall be a 2.5 - 3" square blank to give room to remove material.
- Start by setting up your lathe to turn on 2 centers. And using a sharp gouging chisel, start to round off your blank.
- Next, mark off the important parts on your blank with a pencil line all the way around the bat, the parts you will want to mark off are:
1. Grip end, End of bat
2. Grip end, thin area of grip (opposite side of nub)
3. Lower Collar start
4. Lower Collar end
5. Upper Collar start
6. Upper Collar end
7. Upper end, End of bat
Once this is marked off, use a parting chisel and mark the areas into the wood so you know where the features wil go.
- Next, bring down the 2 collar positions down to the dimensioned size, then bring it down by about 4 mm in diameter, or 2 mm deep cut.
- Finish bringing the rest of the bat to the overall shape for the bat, cut down the 2 ends of the bat, making sure not to cut the ends off completely.
- Start sanding the bat with low grit working your way up to high grit.
- Take the bat out of the lathe and cut off the scrap ends using a band saw, then sand down the ends of the bat.
- Then make a second bat using the first as a reference. Remember you need a set of 2 for any team.
Step 3: Woodwork - Stiffener Holes
Here is a step that is often overlooked in Bat lore.
The bat being made of wood needing to be strong throughout, we need to strengthen it.
- Mark out the positions of the holes along the bat
- Clamp the bat to a surface and drill your first hole with a 7 mm drill bit making sure the bat is straight and centered.
- When drilling the next holes, you can place a holder (such as another drill bit) in a previous hole as a visual indicator that you are drilling the hole in the same orientation as the first.
- An alternate method is to set the bat up in a vice and use a hand drill to make the holes.
- When finished one bat, clamp the two bats together with the drilled one on top, and use the drilled holes as a guide to match the holes on the second bat.
- Now you've made room in the bat to be reinforced to be stronger than ever. :)
- Next, use a pencil and mark the de-boss pattern along the sides of the bat facing the stiffener holes.
- Then using a dremmel with a wood cutting bit, cut away a channel along the drawn pattern as well as at near the handle where you will have to remove more material.
- If you mess up the dremmel work or a hole, apply some wood filler to fix the issue, smooth it out and let dry.
Step 4: Staining/clearcoating
- You will want to wear rubber gloves during this stage, I use a pair of dish washing gloves, and turn them inside out when I take them off each time. This makes them very re-usable.
Staining Time!
- Using Provincial color Minwax Wood stain apply stain to the surface of the bat using a disposable brush.
- After having the stain sit for a few minutes, rub it off using a stain rag.
- Let the wood dry for 24 hours
Clearcoat Time!
- Using Minwax gloss polyurethane apply a light coat to the surface of the bat, I let the bat dry in a soda can cardboard box holder (the 24 can kind) with the handle end resting on a cardboard at the bottom, and the collar area resting on the upright edge.
- Let dry between 4 and 24 hours.
- Very light sand the surface with 200+ grit sandpaper
- Apply an additional coat
Step 5: Small Details
- Using black acrylic paint, paint in the channel you made with the dremel. If you go outside the channel, when you are done, you can go back with a damp paper towel to rub off the excess paint. Let dry.
- Follow this up with a light sanding everywhere except where you painted black, and apply the third coat of polyurethane to the bat. Let dry 24 hours.
- Starting at the end of the handle grip area, wrap white hockey tape around the bat to cover all the wood on the grip part and work your way up to just below the first stiffener hole, cut the tape and straighten out the tape for the last area as seen in the close up photos.
- Now you are ready to start designing the "metal" pieces :)
Step 6: 3D Modelling/ Printing of "metal" Features
Time to model the 3D printed parts that will represent the metal portions, but will be much lighter.
- Measure the diameters of the collar at both ends (this plus 1-2 mm will be the inner diameter of your collar piece.
- Measure the diameter at the upper end of the collar (this plus 3 mm will be the outer diameter of your collar piece
- Create a revolve the necessary length with the inner and outer diameters that you just measured. Only half a tube shape is needed.
- Add a chamfer on the top and bottom edges 1 mm distance.
- Follow similar method with the lower collar piece.
- Model the stiffener pieces in halves. 7 mm diameter and on an angle approx 1 mm the center to edge dimension on both sides. This technique is to make both ends angled and still printable.
- Once this is finished, create STL files for the pieces and have 2 of each part printed. If you don't have a 3D printer, I highly suggest 3D Hubs that's where I had these components printed and it was very reasonable pricing and fast.
- Each bat is different based on how the creator made the bat on the lathe so this process needs to be specialize for each and every bat :)
Step 7: Assembly With Plastic Printed Pieces and Wooden Bat
- Dry fit all the 3D printed pieces on your wooden bat. You may have to dremmel away some material from the back side of the collars to make sure there is only about a 1 mm gap between the collar pieces when installed around the bat. When all the pieces fit properly we can begin.
- Using crazy glue, glue the stiffener flat ends together with their matching pieces.
- Wearing a disposable latex glove, apply some pewter rub 'n buff to the ends of the stiffener pieces as shown in the photo.
- Apply a glob of crazy glue to two sides of a stiffener and put it into the bat, it's best to rotate the piece a bit as it goes in to spread the glue around, make sure it sticks up about 1 mm on each side of the bat.
- Repeat the process for each other stiffener.
- Apply some pewter rub 'n buff to the ends of the large collar and dry fit it again on the bat.
- Remove one piece of the collar and apply a liberal amount of crazy glue to the wood portion of the bat, and place the collar piece back on.
- Repeat on the other collar piece keeping approx a 1 mm gap between the pieces where the edges meet.
- Apply a bead of crazy glue in the gap between the collar pieces on both sides, and clamp.
- When the crazy glue dries, apply some Testors contour putty to the seam and rub it down smooth as shown in the photo.
- Apply pewter rub 'n buff to the collar surface rubbing it into the plastic well (do not leave it waxy) after you have a uniform colour, leave to dry about 20 minutes. Then rub the surface with a rag to shine up the silver color.
- Repeat this process with the lower collar.
Step 8: Final Finishing / Optional Aging
Congratulations, you now have a completed beaters bat, but traditionally the metal is painted black and through wear and tear the metal shows again. So you should paint it with a coat of black acrylic paint. (Hint: it you don't want to use it but want it to look used, scroll down a bit)
Repeat from step 6 for the other bat.
Now get out there and play some Quidditch.
What's this? you just want you bat to look like it's been used, so you look experienced out on the pitch?. Well, we can apply a little magic to help out here.
Here's a technique I used to get a worn and used look for my beater bat.
- Coat a strip of the collar in black acrylic paint, then take a paper towel and pat the paint down to take most of the wetness out of it, then I make small streak marks at various places and angles. Then start another strip next to this one.
- Repeat for the lower collar
- When the collars are finished, wet a paper towel and wipe the excess off the wood parts. Then with a damp (not soaking or dripping) paper towel, dab on a spot on the black collar, and with a dry portion of towel streak it again for a streak that would be much more silver color, like bare metal.
- Take any Tea bag, and run it under hot water, then dab it hard against the grip tape on the handle all over, make sure you get all of it. Pat it down with a paper towel when finished.
There you have it, a used and worn beaters bat ready to awe all your teammates!
I hope you enjoyed this instructable :)