I did WHAT with a Game Used Bat?!?!?!

I'm not sure what it is with kids these days wanting to take pictures of them holding a lot of money and posting it on facebook/twitter/instagram.  I guess it is because it makes you look wealthy - you want to put to rest the whispers of friends, family and neighbors that you might *gasp* not have several one hundred dollar bills at your disposal to fill a bath tub and take a picture of.

Here is one of a kid that apparently stole the money, took a pic and posted it online #genius.



Apparently this is a rapper of some sort, and decided to post pictures with *fake* hundred dollar bills.



My personal favorite is this balla ...



Heck, I remember buying a car from some dude a few years back, and later found a picture of him fanning the money to cover half of his face for a then my space worthy picture.

I guess this is nothing new though.  I remember hearing my high school teacher telling me how guys at an ice cream parlor would walk around with their hands in their pockets, jingling their change to attract women who may want to share a soda.  (My teacher didn't have money, so he reportedly did this with a pocket full of washers ... wonder how that worked out for him!)

I know we've seen similar pictures on the forums, as well, so I figured I'd get in on all the hype.  Anyone can fan hundred dollar bills over their face ... what about 2 dollar bills?!?!



This pic was actually in response to a friend posting a $2 bill on facebook, and remembered I had several of these puppies in my closet.  There you go - now the entire world knows I'm CRAZY RICH!!!!

BWAHAHAHAH!!! FILTHY RIIIIIICHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Well, that is, until the storm.

Yeah, we had a hail storm so it will likely suck up all my $2 bills and then some :(

This pic is of several hail pieces that had been melting for a while.



But that is nothing.  Check this sucker out!!!



That is a single, solitary piece of hail.  Not several packed down - it was one piece that came down from the sky.  The ground was littered with them - and this was in the middle of april!



Our roof and car were pelted like crazy, so we get to deal with a bunch of insurance junk shortly.

Yay.

I will say this though - I have been in Texas for about 22 years now, and I have NEVER seen anything like it.  It was absolutely awesome to watch!

Thankfully, I was able to pick up something I have wanted for a long, long time ... a game used Jose Canseco baseball bat!



I grabbed it from a long-time Canseco bat hoarder/collector who, after selling it to me, wanted to buy it back.

Nope.  This beauty is mine!

You know me though - I don't do too well with whole game used pieces.  My mind immediately went to thinking how many bat cards I could make.

How cool would a bat knob card of Canseco be? How many slices of the knob can I get?



Or what about a few name plate cards?!?!



The possibilities are endless!  The question that has plagued me for a long, long time was - how do I cut this puppy without damaging the prime pieces?  I know NOTHING about cutting bats, and heck - the last thing I want to do is get only 2 cool pieces from a bat, break one of them and have a bunch of useless material.

If it were made of cheese, then yeah - I'd be the dude to slice it up, but since it is wood, I figured I'd need some help.

So, I went on a several month long trek of finding the right man for the job.  After researching on forums, asking questions, learning about various types of equipment, I definitely knew I did not want to do it myself.

I was able to find someone who was a wood worker the was on a job-site just down the road.  We spoke, and I felt comfortable with him.  He told me to meet him at his job with the bat, and he would update me with how it went.  (Talk about nerve-wrecking!)

I decided to bring him a little league wood bat to test on first.  Interestingly enough, there is like ... no one who has experience in cutting up a bat to the specifications I was wanting to make cards with.  Shocker, I know.

So, I met the heavily tattooed dude at this job site.  You may have seen him before...



Okay, so it was a different guy than that.

After waiting for about 20 minutes, he finally meets me at the base of the 40 billion story high rise building he was working at, and we talk for a few minutes.  He takes the bat, and tells me he will give me a call later that day to tell me how it went.

Well, long story short ...

HE STOLE MY FRIGGIN BAT!!!  Thank goodness it was just the little league bat.  I guess that was a VERY good $5 investment in knowing who NOT to trust my precious game used bat to.

A while later, I found another fellow, Albert Amantea of Almantea Fine Wood Works in Louisiana.  He seemed like a reputable, and while he too had zero experience with cutting up a bat to my specifications, his work is top notch.

He was there to answer all questions I had, and was comfortable with the several page word document that I had written.

This document was a specifications list, complete with pictures telling him what types of pieces I wanted the bat to yield, with thickness, length, width, etc.

I decided to trust him with my precious bat, and shipped it off to Louisiana.  It took quite a while to hear back, due to him being busy, but when he started going, I was able to get updates ...



Above, you can see slices of the handle and knob.  I was worried about the little pieces, and making sure they were thin enough.  I cannot tell you how much brain storming it took to figure out what exactly I wanted.



The bat yielded a good amount of workable material!



All in all, I think it took a good day and a half solid to get everything wrapped up.  There was a little bit of miscommunication at the beginning, but we overcame it and had a good end result:



So there you have it - a deconstructed baseball bat.  I don't think it'll be too terribly often you will see something like this.  Believe me, I spent forever trying to find out how the card companies do it, and simply could not find anything.

If I were to do it over again, I would probably make everything even thinner, because I know that the card companies probably make them paper thin, as they make TONS of these types of cards.  These pieces I have are thick and sturdy.

I've used the bat pieces for a few cards I have shown online already, such as ...



and ...



and even ...



I thought now would be a good time to do a few higher end pieces.  Initially, I set out to just do a quick mock of a card with a new design to see how things would sit.  I decided to use this picture.



These are by no means permanent (one of the MANY things I love about making my own game used cards ... if I get tired of it, I can just rip it apart and do something else!)  Since they looked decent, I figured I'd take a few pics and show how they turned out.

Here is a horizontally oriented nameplate pic:




...And the same type of card vertically aligned, with the bat knob ....



I think they turned out pretty good!  I'm not sure I'm in love with them enough to make either of these as keepers, though - I think I'd like to at the very least, work more on the design, and perhaps add some gold/silver/holofoil embellishments.

So, there you have it - the stories are true.  I'm not just some fan or collector.  I'm one of the few crazy people willing to cut up a game used piece to make some baseball cards out of...and I am very happy I did!