Boning a wood bat

The only wood bat you should bone, is an unfinished ash bat. No need to bone a maple bat, and never bone a bat with finish on it or all you will do is crack the finish. A round smooth steel bar can be used, and is IMO better than a big old bone. Get two chairs, and sit on the handle of the bat and rest the barrel on the other chair. Rub back and forth on the barrel, going with the grain.
I could teach you how to cheat , but boning the bat this way will help to keep it from flaking and will make the barrel a little harder. Have fun, and remember, only bone an unfinished ash bat.

"only bone an unfinished ash bat" There's a phrase that would be completely unintelligible to anyone outside hardcore baseball folk!

quote:

Originally posted by Orlando:
"only bone an unfinished ash bat" There's a phrase that would be completely unintelligible to anyone outside hardcore baseball folk!

lol

Rather than hardcore baseball, it leans more towards several (at least 3) generations gaps! As in
- WWI-WWII-Korea-Vietnam vets vs
- Desert Storm-Iran-Iraq heros!

Rawhide = the material that the ball is made of.

Ash = the type of material wood bats were and continue to be made of.

Bone: Typically a large one, as in ham bone.

The purpose of the procedures are to tighten
the grain on the bat barrel, so that the wood bat becomes less susceptable to moisture, thus does not split. Once moisture gets into a wood bat, it makes a great bp stick!

Another old'timer approach (and would be used to "tighten and lighten" a wood bat) is to scape the barrel and handle of the bat with a bottle cap!

Another approach to lightening a wood bat, and more current, is to remove a piece at the end of the barrel, by boring it out. Of course, if the ball is struck at the end of the wood bat, the barrel will easily splinter. Thus making it unusable.

Another approach to lightening a wood bat, is to remove the knob on the handle.

With a typical 33 inch - 33 oz bat, moisture could add up to an ounce (or more!).

Removing the barrel end ~ 33 inch ~ 32 oz
Removing the knob ~ 32 1/2 inch ~ 31 1/2 oz
Boning/Scaping 33 inch ~ 32.5 oz.

A few HS kids can swing a 35 inch, 35 oz wood bat (very few)!

A few more HS kids can swing a 34 inch, 34 oz wood bat!

Many more HS kids become comfortble with
a 33 inch, 31 oz /30.5 oz wood bat. Yet obtaining one off the shelf, is nearly impossible. So the serious hitter seeks methods to reduce bat weight!

With metal specs at -3 (length to weight), the 1.5 oz to 0.5 oz "extra weight" with the wood bats, becomes the first challenge vs the challenge with the smaller sweet spot!

Typically if a HS kid can swing the lumber, he can swing (and hit) with the metal bat. (Surely, the HS player is beginning to see the opposite (ie swings the metal bat, struggles with wood bat) has some truth.

Regards
Bear

Interesting post...thanks!

Very interesting Bear

Now just teach us how to cork a wood bat and we will be set. Of course it would only be my BP bat.

Doesn't boning the bat make it more fragile or more prone to break? Unless I am mistaken, wooden bats are kinda expensive to be messing with. They run 50 to 100 bucks a pop at the local store in town.

AK,
When a wooden bat is turned on a lathe, the wood is cut, or sheared off the bat against the grain. This leaves microscopic tears in the grain of the wood. Boning the bat compresses the cells of the wood, lays down the rough edges, and smooths the exterior surface of the bat. A properly boned unfinished bat will look as if it has been finished with a semigloss sealer. This process will prolong the life of the bat by getting rid of the minute scratches and tears that develope into cracks.

Thanks for the clarification RHSfan. I was thinking of something else.

Just finished boning a new unfinished ash bat for Junior - I actually used a 2 ft piece of pipe from an old L screen - I think the extra heaviness of that pipe helped compress the fibers a little more. It does indeed look like it now has a finish on it