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[Bats_Galore]

I wonder if anyone has tried to either slim a handle, or  turn a round handle into an oval one at home. If so any advice would be welcome. If not I should be grateful for suggestions of companies that might offer this service.

[RF]

Try cutting an old grip up and then tape it to the handle.  Then put your normal grip back over the top.

[uknsaunders]

Use strips of insulating tape around the top and bottom of the handle to "mould" an oval handle. If you use the search function you should a couple of similar topics.

[Buzz]

Play around with what works for you, but cloth tape and old grip can be used.
If you look at the Grey Nichols workshop twitter feed, a while back they showed a few pics of a handle they did for either trescothic or Nick Compton.

there are a few threads on here showing how to do it too.

[Seniorplayer]

There's plenty of advice on here re how to do both you could also ask the batmakers on here  to do the work
or any batmaker. Tend to find its best to do the work yourself  though as you can keep trying and adjusting the handle until it  feels right
If you want to have a go  both are not  to difficult to do
To reduce the size of the handle an easy option would be to remove  and disregard the handle binding  smooth the handle with sandpaper then retape tight using thin  narrow bat repair tape.
Rather than remove all the binding you could leave the binding around the ears  bottom  and top  of the bat and just take it from where you hands grip the handle

[brokenbat]

I wonder if anyone has tried to either slim a handle, or  turn a round handle into an oval one at home. If so any advice would be welcome. If not I should be grateful for suggestions of companies that might offer this service.

Its relatively easy. A combination of the following will do the job.

1. Add tape on top and bottom, of the bottom part of the handle (to increase the "height" of the desired oval)
2. Shave the sides, of the bottom part of the handle (to decrease the "width" of the desired oval - i.e. to make it more of an oval as opposed to a  circular shape).
3... This is a shortcut to 2 - just gently cut away the bind from the sides of the bottom part of the handle. This may negate the need to do any shaving of the handle.

[brokenbat]

Here are a few pictures to illustrate steps 1 and 3. I added the tape first, and then used a knife to cut away the bind from the sides. This effectively squishes the circle shape, into a more oval shape.

[Gurujames]

I suggest you undo to binding and wrap it around a broom handle or similar. Then use a rasp to achieve the shape you want. Sand the handle to remove the fibrous bits then reapply the binding.

[Bats_Galore]

Many thanks to all for the suggestions. I prefer slimmer handles than are generally made. I have a Warner replica from Meuleman's it has a really slim handle using surgical tape in place of binding, which I find to be great. So I suspect I will try the rasping methodology, but replace the binding with tape, and build up with further tape if I cannot get enough of an oval through rasping. Again many thanks for the feedback, very helpful.

[sanredrose]

I got a used bat from Chad. This is a spartan with round handle. Previous owner has applied self amalgamating tape at the point where you hold the bottom hand. It gives a nice oval handle feeling for bottom hand while the top hand remains regular round handle.