Making An Old School Baseball Bat – NO LATHE

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Thanks again is simply safe and let's get started on this baseball bat I'll start by roughing out a blank on my 93 year old Oliver bandsaw The blank is about 2.5" x 2.5" square I've milled the blank now to its final size I'm using this jig to cut the profile of the bat on my bandsaw Notice the plywood guide attached the bandsaw table I'll run my jig along this plywood guide to cut the profile This technique takes practice but works very well I rotate the bat and make this cut on all four faces Now you can start to see the profile of the bat taking shape With the profile of the bat established I can work it round using my spokeshaves This process starts by shaping the bat into an octagon I'm using my wooden spokeshave set for a heavy cut Now that I've shaped the bat into an octagon its much easier to form it into a cylinder using spokeshaves I use my flat sole spokeshave for most of the work here Handle broke! Now I'm using my spokeshave to shape a slight round over on the end of the bat Here I'm using a dowel plat to cut a 5/8" tenon on the end of the bat This is how dowels were made before Home Depot arrived! The dowel plate can only cut so much at once, so I remove waste and do it in steps I use my gouge to cut away the waste I place the dowel plate over hole in my workbench and pound away With the tenon finished I'm using my handsaw to cut a kerf for a wedge Now I can glue on the knob using epoxy from Total Boat The knob gets wedge in place I cut the wedge off but leave the tenon protruding The wedge actually causes the tenon to mushroom out above the knob locking it in place Now I need to cut the knob out, its roughly 2" in diameter I use my small bandsaw to rough out the shape Now I can use my disc sander to shape it round Now I need to round over both edges of the knob The outside edge is easily done with spokeshaves The inside edge is a little more challenging I have to use my rasp to form it I use some sandpaper to clean up the rasp marks I finish it with boiled linseed oil Finally I mark it with my AR brand from Pittsburg Foundrey, link in description Now its time to try it out…thanks for tuning in!

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