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This Custom Baseball Display is Surprisingly Easy to Make! See the Onefinity CNC in action. FREE FILES!
- 2 hours ago
- 7 min read
In this video, Christy shows you how to make a baseball gear display using the Onefinity CNC Gen2 Elite. If you're looking to learn about simple but useful designs, setup tips, tooling, or beginner-friendly CNC advice, this walkthrough will help you get started. We'll use @vectric V Carve Pro to get our job set-up and ready to carve a regulation size home plate gear display on the Gen 2 Elite Foreman. This product could be optimized for time and made in less than 30 minutes using plywood from the big box store. Customization would increase it's value and could be sold to people looking to gift something to senior baseball players, coaches, or be used for raffles.
She'll cover:
• Usefulness of double-sided tape for job hold-downs
• Benefit of measuring your work piece with calipers for snug-fitting parts
• How to use existing tools in Vectric to design something else
• Reminders for order of operations when it comes to pocket and profile cuts
• Potential ways to sell this product during baseball season
🔹 PRODUCTS & TOOLS USED IN THIS VIDEO
🛠Machine:
🌀 Bits & Tooling:
425-CR90 V Groove Bit – https://www.onefinitycnc.com/shop/category/cnc-endmills
"The Jenny" 1/4" Bit – https://www.onefinitycnc.com/product-page/the-jenny-bit-double-pack
80mm Spindle – https://www.onefinitycnc.com/product-page/onefinity-spindle-by-redline-cnc-80mm-1-5kw-air-cooled
🧠Design Software:
🪵 Materials:
3/4" x 2-ft x 4-ft Birch Sanded Plywood – https://shoplowes.me/4dQTNTn
A CNC Project Baseball Moms, Coaches, and Players Will Love
Baseball season brings a lot of things with it: long weekends at the field, team snacks, muddy cleats, tournament travel, and memories that families want to hang onto forever.
For baseball moms, coaches, grandparents, and players, a custom baseball display is more than just wall decor. It becomes a place to show off game balls, signed baseballs, bats, hats, school pride, and the story of a season.
In this Onefinity CNC project, Christy creates a wall-mounted baseball gear display featuring a school sports logo, a motivational quote, a shelf for baseballs, and slots for baseball bats. It is a great example of how a simple CNC router project can turn into a meaningful gift, a personalized team item, or even a product you can sell locally.
Whether you are a baseball mom looking for a unique senior night gift or a CNC owner looking for a profitable project idea, this one checks a lot of boxes.
Why This Baseball CNC Project Works So Well
This project combines three things people love:
Personalization, sports pride, and practical display space.
The finished design includes:
A home plate shaped wall display
V-carved lettering
A school or team logo
A shelf that holds three baseballs
Two spots for baseball bats
Room to add a peg or hook for a baseball hat
A motivational quote at the top
That makes it perfect for:
Baseball moms
Baseball dads
Coaches
Senior night gifts
End-of-season team gifts
Booster club raffles
School fundraisers
Sports banquet awards
Custom Etsy-style products
Local team merchandise
A project like this has emotional value, which is exactly what makes it a strong CNC product idea.
People are not just buying a piece of wood. They are buying a memory.
A Great CNC Project for Beginners and Experienced Makers
One of the best parts about this project is that it does not require you to be a professional designer.
In the video, Christy shows how the design was created using basic tools inside the design software. She used the polygon tool to create the home plate shape, node editing to adjust the design, guidelines for spacing and alignment, and bitmap tracing to bring in the school mascot logo.
That is an important lesson for new CNC users.
You do not have to know everything before you start. You just need to start experimenting.
CNC design software like Vectric gives you tools that are beginner-friendly once you spend time clicking around, testing ideas, and learning how each feature works. The more you play with the design tools, the more confident you become.
This is exactly the kind of project that helps new CNC users build real skills while also making something useful.
Tools and Bits Used for the Baseball Display
This is a simple two-bit CNC project.
The project uses:
A V-bit for the lettering and logo
A 1/4-inch Jenny bit for the shelf channel and profile cuts
Birch plywood for the prototype
Double-sided tape for workholding
Calipers to measure material thickness accurately
The V-bit handles the detailed carving, including the quote and logo. The 1/4-inch bit cuts the channel where the shelf fits into the main display and also cuts out the shelf itself.
The result is a clean, functional project that looks custom and professional without needing a complicated tool setup.
Why Measuring Your Plywood Matters
One of the biggest CNC tips from this project is simple but important:
Do not assume 3/4-inch plywood is actually 3/4 inch thick.
In the video, Christy measures the plywood and finds that it is actually about 0.72 inches thick, not 0.75 inches. That small difference matters a lot when you are cutting a channel for a shelf to fit into.
If the channel is too loose, the shelf may wobble or fit poorly. If the channel is too tight, you may need to sand the shelf slightly until it fits.
This is why calipers are so useful in the shop. Before designing pockets, dados, channels, or any part that needs to fit together, measure the actual material thickness.
Also remember that sanding removes material, while finish can add a small amount of thickness back. For a project like this, testing with plywood before cutting into walnut, maple, or another premium hardwood is a smart move.
Prototype First, Upgrade Later
This project was cut from plywood as a proof of concept.
That is a great approach.
Plywood is affordable, easy to find, and perfect for testing your design before committing to more expensive material. Once you know the shelf fits, the baseball pockets are the right size, the bat holders are positioned correctly, and the wall display looks good, you can make a premium version from nicer wood.
Possible upgraded materials include:
Walnut
Maple
Cherry
Baltic birch plywood
Painted MDF
Stained hardwood panels
For baseball moms or gift buyers, a stained hardwood version with a school logo, player name, jersey number, and graduation year could easily become a high-value custom keepsake.
CNC Lesson: Cut Inside Features Before Profile Cuts
One helpful mistake from the video is the toolpath order.
The shelf started cutting the outside profile before cutting the inside pockets where the baseballs rest. Ideally, you want to cut all inside features first, then cut the outside profile last.
That means pockets, holes, engraving, and interior details should happen while the workpiece is still fully attached to the larger board.
Then the final profile cut releases the part.
The double-sided tape held strong in this project, but as a general CNC rule, it is better to keep the part secure for as long as possible. Good toolpath order helps avoid movement, chatter, poor cut quality, or ruined parts.
Can You Sell This CNC Baseball Project?
Absolutely.
This is the kind of CNC project that has real selling potential, especially at the local level.
If you were making these to sell, you could customize them for:
Player names
Jersey numbers
School logos
Team names
Senior year
Coach names
Championship seasons
Tournament teams
Travel ball organizations
Christy also points out that if she were selling these, she would likely simplify the customization and reduce the V-carving time. The prototype took just under 30 minutes for the home plate portion and just over 7 minutes for the shelf. Since the V-bit carving takes the most time, simplifying the quote or offering a few standard design options could help reduce machine time and increase profit.
That is a great CNC business lesson.
A beautiful custom project is great, but if you want to sell it, you also need to think about production time, repeatability, and pricing.
Baseball Gift Ideas You Can Make with a CNC
This baseball gear display could be sold or gifted as:
A baseball mom gift
A senior night gift
A coach appreciation gift
A team banquet award
A raffle prize
A fundraiser product
A Little League keepsake
A travel baseball display
A personalized sports room sign
A school spirit wall display
For local makers, youth sports are a great market. Every season has teams, coaches, parents, seniors, tournaments, and banquets. That creates repeat opportunities year after year.
Instead of making random one-off projects, you can build a product around a specific niche. Baseball displays, softball displays, basketball signs, football helmet shelves, and cheer award displays are all examples of sports-themed CNC products that can be customized and sold locally.
Why Onefinity CNC Owners Will Love This Project
The Onefinity CNC makes projects like this approachable because it gives users the accuracy, rigidity, and repeatability needed for detailed carving and clean profile cuts.
This project includes V-carving, pocketing, profile cutting, part fitment, and basic assembly, which makes it a great skill-building project for CNC beginners. At the same time, it is useful enough that experienced makers can turn it into a repeatable product.
With a Onefinity CNC, you can go from digital design to finished project right in your shop, garage, or small business workspace.
That is the real power of CNC.
You are not limited to what stores sell. You can design something personal, cut it yourself, customize it for your community, and create something people actually want.
Final Thoughts
This custom baseball gear display is a great example of what makes CNC so fun.
It is creative, personal, useful, and sellable.
For baseball moms, it is a meaningful way to display memories from the season. For coaches and players, it is a custom keepsake. For CNC owners, it is a project that can help build design skills and potentially turn into a profitable local product.
So whether you are making one for your own family, creating a gift for a coach, or looking for your next CNC product to sell, this baseball display is a home run.
And if you have not already, check out the full Onefinity video to see the carve, the design process, the mistakes, the fixes, and the final result.
Now the only question is:
What is the greatest baseball movie of all time?
FREE FILES:
