Jimmie Foxx Hanna Batrite Baseball Bat Circ 1930

[steve B]

Originally Posted by vintagesportscollector

this may be a dumb question and showing my ignorance, but isn't every bat made turned on a lathe? how is a bat made if not on a lathe?

They would all be made on lathes, at least any produced in any quantity.

What's different is how they're handled on the lathe, and/or what sort of lathe would be used.
Most produced in large quantity are done on automatic lathes, from blanks that are about the right length, so the raw bat has projections on either end that need to be removed.
That can be done with manual turning, but it's also possible to cut the blank the exact length wanted and then turn it leaving no extra bits that need to be removed later.

I'd think that the hand turned kids bat was either from cutting costs by using blanks that were cut to a length then turned, eliminating an extra step in production maybe reducing cost.
Or done before they had a copy lathe or when it wasn't available, like during repair or a pre-season rush in production.

It may also be possible it was turned from a cut down pro bat that had something wrong with it. If the turning tool catches in a bad bit of wood it can take a chunk out of the piece you're turning. If it happened near the end of the barrel cutting it down and making a smaller bat might have been done during a slow period.
That makes a lot more sense during the early 30's than it would now.

Steve B