to turn a baseball bat you need a square piece of wood. You can either glue a few pieces of wood together or just use one piece that is square or make a piece square.

The machines: you will need are a lathe, bandsaw, tables, jointer, planer. The chisel for the lathe you need will be in the picture

Step 1: Finding the Center

You have to go from Corner to corner to find the middle. Like shown and make sure you do it on both ends

Step 2: 45degreeing the Wood

First you put a circle on the end so you know how much wood you will get out of it. If it's a hard wood then you will have to make all the corners into 45 degrees so it will be easier to turn. If it's a soft wood you can skip this step. Some softwoods are hemlock, fir ,pine. Some hardwoods are alder,ash ,beech ,birch

Step 3: Putting the Live Center on Right

You have do put indents with the live center into the stock but have to make sure it in the middle and on the lines. If you can't do it with the live stock you can use either a bandsaw or handsaw to make grooves for you where your lines were. For the bandsaw you just have to go in like a millimeter deep. Which I did because I didn't like how the marks were from the live center

Step 4: Starting to Lathe

The first thing you do is try to make it all round. You will hold the top and bottom like in the photos. You also don't have to hold it very tightly. You will start above the wood and slowly come down hearing it knocking then get it to start cutting

Step 5: Getting It to a Circle

You just keep going tell the whole thing becomes a complete circle. Like so

Step 6: Make It Look Like a Bat

You pick a side to start from and then make a bottom of the handle and then go narrow to wide to make it look like a bat.

Step 7: Making the Handle

You can make it look like what ever you want I got some ways you can make them there

Step 8: The Top of the Bat

For the top of the bat you can either round it over or just leave it at a corner. Like in the photos

Step 9: Sanding

You will want to go from rough sand paper to fine like 80-320 grit while on the lathe with it on. Then turn it off and sand with the grain to get the starch marks from the sand paper out

Step 10: Cutting the Bat Off

For like the last inch of the bat on both ends you will want to cut off so you can get the marks from the live stock and dead center off of the wood so it looks better

Step 11: Finishing

If you want to you can stain the bat with wipe on poly or lacquer or some water proof stuff. You don't have to stain it though. The wipe on poly is more for looks and the lacquer is durable. While the water proof one would probably be best if you are going to use it. If you don't have any stain or want to then just sand up to the highest you have. You should do at least 3 coats. After the second coat or finish you should sanding with smoothest sandpaper or steel wool