Making a Wooden Baseball Bat
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Select and Prepare the Wood
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The first and most important part of making a wooden baseball bat is to select the piece of wood. Most wooden bats are made out of ash that comes from 50-year-old trees, but since the 2001 season when Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs with a maple bat, many people are choosing that wood for their bats. The log should be 3 inches in diameter. It should be straight and contain no knots. Full-size bats are 42 inches long. Once you have the perfect piece of wood, let it dry in a kiln to remove about 6 percent of the moisture.
Turn the Bat
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After inspecting the log to make sure that it has a straight, flat grain, turn the bat on a wood lathe. You can buy baseball bat patterns that have been created using machining/computer numerical control (CNC) technology to program your lathe so that it will produce the kind of bat you want. Copy Lathe is a company that sells many lathe patterns for baseball bats (see the link below).
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Apply the Finish
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After the bat comes out of the lathe, hand-sand it to a smoothness of 1,200 grit. Hand-burnish it so that the wood is smooth and almost shiny enough for you to see your reflection. Stain the wood with a brush-on wood stain, and finish the bat by applying a sealant. After the finish is absolutely dry, you can any engravings, logos or stickers.
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