Great Progress After School

So today my goal was to get my second pen assembled, laser engraved and take some pictures of my next step, turning the mini bat. The laser engraver wasn't working so I didn't get that accomplished and I can't assemble the pen until it has been engraved. However, I got a ton of other work done that is more important. After school I had plenty of uninterrupted time on the lathe, and not only did I get to start turning my mini bat, I finished it! Here are some before and after pictures of the little bat.  

This picture is a little bit far away, but I wanted to capture the whole lathe. It is almost exactly the same as the small lathe just bigger. The black knob on the left side is the on/off switch with speed controls ranging from 1000-3000 rpm  The wheel on the right ride with the red knob is used to tighten the wood further after you make the larger adjustments by sliding the green apparatus on the right. In respect to the wood, it was just a simple block of scrap pine that Mr. Cowell had. 

That is near the finished product. The wood underwent about an hour of turning and 10 minutes of sanding in order to get down to that size. I wasn't expecting to make my mini bat today so I just eyeballed the dimensions and the shape. I have played baseball for the majority of my life so I am very familiar with the general shape of a bat.

This is the final product after I took it off of the lathe and used a band saw to cut off the excess. Overall, my product came out better than I expected for a freestyle.  However there is always room for improvement and I definitely learned a lot from my experience today. For example I got a little bit carried away and carved the handle a bit too thin and the bottom knob is not at all what I wanted it to be. Also since nothing was really planned or measured, there are some other size issues. All of this being said, I am very happy with how today went. I plan on making at least one more of these, maybe even two or three because Mr. Cowell has lots of scrap wood that I can use, and practice makes perfect. Also Mr. Cowell suggested that I do some research on how to properly sharpen the tools that I will be using because they get dull with use and dull tools cause errors. I hope to get this research done this upcoming weekend.