Monthly Reflection of September

1. Monthly Reflection of September Sam Wiske

2. This month, I talked to my mentor about the mentor agreement and more importantly, if my project was do-able. He said that the bat making process doesn’t take that long at all. That’s why I came up with the idea to make 2 bats. He also told me that the most important piece of equipment that I would need, would be a lathe. He said we would need to rent one in order to make my project work.

3. Most of my work this month came in the form of research. Most of my research was trying to find what type of wood to use as a bat. I thought I knew what types of wood I wanted to make that bat out of (ash and maple) until I found birch. When I started researching birch, I found that birch had more flex than maple and didn’t flake like ash does. The introduction of birch into the process of picking wood made it a lot harder to choose. Right now, the frontrunners in my choice are birch and ash.

4. http://www.spiderbats/wood.htm This picture represents how ash bats flake easily because of the harder and softer layers, how maple bats don’t flake but have no flex to them, and how birch is a happy medium. It flexes but doesn’t flake as easy.

5. This coming month, I plan to finalize my choice on what types of wood to use. In order to do that, I will need to do some more research. Also, I plan to order or buy the wood that I need. I will need to find a reliable place that has the type of wood I need. I also have to make sure the wood is quality and without any warps. You need a near perfect piece of wood to make a baseball bat out of.