Jon Lanier
03-31-2010, 1:44 AM
My 14 year old who has been turning pens for a couple years had an interesting class yesterday. The teacher brought in a Wood Bat and the discussion/questions started going toward how is a bat made?
Josh tended to have his hand up most of the time and was the only one who knew what the machine was called that makes them. He thinks the teacher was a little perplexed how he knew so much. First, he loves baseball and has been wanting to make his own bat (I only have a Rikon Midi, no extension). Two, he's being working a lathe for a couple years.
I told Josh I had some Hickory and the lathe is up... just not much else. "You wanna make him a mini-bat?", sure! So I cut off a blank of Hickory for him and he went at it. Now he's probably not even turned a pen for about 6 months. So, I was curious how it would go. He just Eye-Balled it as he went. 1 roughing gouge and 1 Lancer style skew and he came up with this.
He signed it to his teacher as a gift. (Oh, and Josh gets the be the first one with a finished project in the new shop.)
Josh tended to have his hand up most of the time and was the only one who knew what the machine was called that makes them. He thinks the teacher was a little perplexed how he knew so much. First, he loves baseball and has been wanting to make his own bat (I only have a Rikon Midi, no extension). Two, he's being working a lathe for a couple years.
I told Josh I had some Hickory and the lathe is up... just not much else. "You wanna make him a mini-bat?", sure! So I cut off a blank of Hickory for him and he went at it. Now he's probably not even turned a pen for about 6 months. So, I was curious how it would go. He just Eye-Balled it as he went. 1 roughing gouge and 1 Lancer style skew and he came up with this.
He signed it to his teacher as a gift. (Oh, and Josh gets the be the first one with a finished project in the new shop.)