Mini Bat Started!

On Friday, I finally got started on my mini bat. The first step was to prep the wood. Since I was just using a scrap block that Mr. Cowell had, some work needed to be done. First I had to cut the wood so it was a manageable size, I'm making a 16.5" bat so I wanted to leave about 2" of extra wood on each end. This was just some simple measuring and cutting. Then I had to use a block plane to round the square edges of the wood. Basically that is a blade with a handle that is run against the wood and chisels off how much you want. The purpose is to round off the square edge so it is easier to turn on the lathe. After that was done, I set the wood in the lathe and began to turn the wood. Initially using the gouge, my goal was to just get a round shape from the square block. It is the biggest thing I have turned so far and the wood is fairly hard so the shavings were flying all over the place. After about 20 minutes I was covered head to toe with wood shavings and I had a nice round piece of wood with which I can make my bat next week. I have my dimensions all set and will be ready to start and finish the actual turning of my bat next week.

The first picture is the block before I started rounding off the square edges with the block plane (upper right corner) and the second picture is the block in the lathe after I made the whole thing round.