Charlotte Bat Company

Made in the U.S.A.

Remember that Ash has a ring-porous cell structure. If you would take a handful of drinking straws and shaped them into a cylinder; wrap a piece of tape around both ends, and one in the middle, you would have an enlarged model of ring-porous wood fiber. If you were to squeeze this model, while looking at the ends, you would see that upon pressure the straws collapse and their shape will deform. Upon releasing the pressure the straws will rebound back to their original shape. When the straws are under pressure you will too observe a slight deformation of the inner straws. This shows us that the external force will cause stresses beyond the surface of the bat (a key point to remember when you think of maple).  Now if you were to try and simulate a proportional force like that of a baseball and bat ( 2,000 lbf)  at impact, it may take hours of squeezing the straws before you would notice the fatigue we need to concern ourselves about.

I have added a short video to give you a rudimentary look at what happens to the fibers in the barrel at impact and at rebound. Obviously the fibers are much smaller than I have drawn, so let’s say that every circle represents hundreds of fibers. I hope this illustration will give you an idea of the compression and expansion the fibers go through. After the fibers experience this change several times, fatigue sets in. Typically this expansion and contraction will cause the fibers to expand in size.

At the end of the video I show the effectiveness of surface “boning” your bat. By “boning” the surface you are putting the fibers back in place and making the surface fibers denser (compacted). You will want to make sure your bat is clean before you “bone” the surface.

Note: Deformation of the baseball  at impact has been omitted for clarity.