How are wooden baseball bats made?
Raw Materials The best kind of ash trees for making wooden baseball bats are those that grow in dense clusters, because they are protected from the winds and are forced to grow straight up. The ash tree has to mature 40 to 50 years to get a preferred trunk diameter of 14 to 16 inches. Once the ash tree develops into the desired height and weight, it is ready for logging, loading and transporting to the mill where it is inspected, cut up and rolled to a hydraulic wedge, ultimately cutting the wood into 40-inch splits. Forming the Billets In the mill, the splits are then placed onto a lathe machine that shaves off the edges of the wood to smooth it out and form it into a billet. The billet’s grain is then inspected for straightness, and if it passes quality control, the billets are stacked and strapped into bundles with six sides. To keep the wood from rotting and fraying, the ends of the bundle are coated with a protective paint and are then ready for delivery to the lumberyard or baseb
