A Pen For A Great Boy

[Whaler]

My wifes grandson, Max, is turning 12 and she wanted something special for a gift. He is an avid Little Leaguer and lives and breaths baseball, his dad is giving him a new $300.00 aluminum bat and I knew that I couldn't beat that.
I am sure that he has never hit one over the fence with a real hickory bat and that inspired me to give him a piece of history.
I was able to find a replacement hickory hammer handle at a local old time hardware store and proceeded to cut a pen blank from it. The grain is nothing special but it did work easily and take a nice finish.
Here is the result, we will give it to him at dinner on Thursday.

[bfrikken]

that is cool. complete with story, this makes for a real nice gift.

[gad5264]

Nice job Dick, I hope he will cherish it for a long time to come.

[RAFlorida]

That's a neat looking pen Dick. It has some well thoughtout

design to it. It'll last a long time. BTW, what's the caliber of that cartridge so I can get a general idea of the size of your pen?

[TB Roye]

Dick

Nice pen and I am sure he will like it especialy with the story behind it. Those Atlas Kits are fun to do being only one blank. You should try and get a broken bat for the Mariners or the Rainiers and make blanks out of them. I am going to try and get a broken bat from the River Cats for the same purpose. Now where is Babe Ruth bat? Or Mickey's ?



Tom

[Uncle Cracker]

Nice piece, Dick!. Not available for the fat kits, but CSUSA has some neat clips in the shape of a baseball bat for the slims and a couple of others. I got a broken bat from Chipper Jones at spring training a couple of years ago, and made some neat pens for my grandsons from the remnants.

[DonHo]

It's a great looking pen and very thoughtful of you. I always thought baseball bats were made of ash though. Of course I've been wrong before

DonHo

[Uncle Cracker]

I always thought baseball bats were made of ash though.

Most are. Hickory is still in use, but the big alternative lately to ash has been hard maple (and the subject of much controversy at the moment).

[Whaler]

Hickory was widely used for bats in the early days, Babe Ruth swung a 47oz hickory bat. Hickory gave way to ash as the hickory was so much heavier than ash.

The cartridge supporting the pen is a .357 mag.