Provided by: FlamingBaseball.com SuperStore
Actually, about three grades of wood are produced: Pro, Select and Standard -- you rarely ever see this talked about outside of the pros and certainly not by the manufacturers.
Note: rarely can an average player find "Pro" wood to buy.
Tip: if you’ve got to have it, get it thru your pro hitting coach or a pro player. Also, price is an indicator of quality here; your $40 ash bat is not Pro quality wood.
Because of the huge demand/mass production volumes which are used, the finished ash bats are graded by "grains" and other defects and sent to the appropriate outlets by the major manufacturers:
Definition: A dark/light stripe pair in the wood=1 grain; just count the light stripe to avoid confusion)
Grades:
Pro: 10-13 grains-MLB Wood, $50-$80 per bat. Select: 13-18 grains-Minors(some teams), and a few high end retail stores, $40-$60
Standard: 18+ grains-most Sporting Goods Stores and K-Mart, $20-$40
Theory: For ash wood: small dark grain and large white grain make the best combination of strength and durability of the winter/summer growth wood; so the less grains the better for less breakage and better/stronger hitting.
Flame Tempering: This was a manufacturing technique developed by Louisville (I think) in an attempt to seal the porous ash and used as a marketing tool about 10-20 years ago -- lots of advertising -- even burned onto the bats - I used several you are talking to an old timer about this!!
Ash dark grains have an open/porous structure that leads to stress cracking and fraying of the wood bat with use -- this is why they break down and splinter fairly easily.
Wood is kiln dried to reduce the moisture content to acceptable levels for weight to length ratio. Older methods used one step open air or gas fired kilns to dry the wood blanks to 6-8% moisture.
Experimentation showed that a second kiln drying step after lathing the bat helped dry and strengthen the wood.
Flame Tempering was the technique using an open flame to harden the outer wood surface after lathing and help "seal" the dark wood pores so the bat would take the clear coat lacquer better and be "stronger". --- Open to opinion here... a test: check to see if the ash bat has "pin-holes" in the lacquer coating along the dark grain -- no flame tempering/lesser quality wood/workmanship.
The Wood: Maple
Barry Bonds has made the wood famous for homeruns; these bats overall hit better/longer and more importantly don’t break as easily, making them a more economical overall – Better Value/Better Hitting!!.
Modern manufacturing techniques (vacuum kiln drying and computer lathing and modern stains/clear coats) have made it the wood of choice.
But, careful here too. Maple wood comes in many grades and both soft and hard variety. – big difference. Hard Maple Wood is what you want – but it’s less of a supply and expensive.
TBX Pro Maple Bats are made from one grade of wood only –Pro Quality:(from our many pros to our little league bats) - all sap wood, straight grain, clear maple wood. Custom built for you to be “Harder, Longer, Stronger”. Hard maple wood has a denser and much tighter grain than ash (no grain counts here!!). Early attempts to use this wood for bats found it too heavy and unevenly dried. Now with computer controlled vacuum kiln drying, the blanks are much more consistently controlled for moisture content and thus consistent weights.
Next, with computer lathing, the weight distribution /shapes/feel of the bat is more exactly the shapes of the traditional Louisville/Rawlings models.
Check out the shapes and weight distributions of these Pro Models – most likely you traditional bat is already there in maple wood. GetThere!Now! (TuffBats.com)
We use all these improved manufacturing techniques along with the very best wood out of New England and Pennsylvania. Contrary to some marketing hype over the last few years, those small Canadian manufacturers actually get most of their wood from the northeastern USA!
"Grain" count is not at all used with maple. The maple wood itself is much denser and tight grained -- does not fray or stress crack. Thus the wood holds up to much longer use and abuse as a baseball bat.
Our pro players are telling us routinely that their bats are lasting 3-4 times as long as their ash counterparts (this is a hitter's advantage and economics [price/value] also).
So.... --it's rare to get players/coaches into the technical side of baseball bats --- and it still comes down to personal preference and "feel" -- you just know when it's right -- hitting confidence comes from longevity of the bat too -- a competitive advantage.
But if you haven’t tried our TBX Pro Maple Wood Bats, you are behind the curve – just the best of the best in the hottest maple wood out there now!!
Come see us at Flamingbaseball.com! Elite Pro Quality Baseball Equipment for Serious Players. Maple Wood Bats, Custom Handcrafted Gloves, New Era Fitted/FlexFitted Caps, Training Tools, Instant Free Competitive Tips by E-mail. You Nominate our Featured Players. Gift Certificates for your MVP. Free Monthly Newsletter.
Acknowledgement: We wish to thank our guest editor, Jack Kasarjian, baseball scout, parent and co-owner of TuffBats.com, the best pro maple wood bat made.