Did you know that baseball bats producers must respect strict standards dictated by the American BBCOR Bat Certification? That is why the market is so competitive today. Among the great number of wood makers, it can be difficult to find one that can create high-quality bats. Read the article to discover how to choose the right wood manufacturer.
How can a wooden baseball bat support players’ performance?
Baseball players at all levels are always looking for ways to improve their offensive game. A masterfully crafted wooden baseball bat can transform their performance drastically, making it better as well as developing their confidence at the plate.
Only an expert manufacturer can create top-quality wooden bats that can help players reach their desired performance goals.
Look at this video to understand what we mean:
Here are the topics we will discuss in this article. You can click the link to read the desired paragraph:
- The characteristics of an expert wood manufacturer
- The best wood for a high-performance baseball bat
- Why you should chose The Minelli Group
The characteristics of an expert wood manufacturer
Let’s consider the following points:
- You must be sure that the manufacturer knows the raw material very well and is able to manage it the right way. Wood is a “tricky” raw material to handle with the right expertise, as it is alive and moves constantly.
- The wood maker must also be experienced enough to select the right logs. The quality of the logs determines the excellence of the final product, which must be solid and flexible at the same time. You must ensure that your supplier ensures strict quality control over the raw material. It is crucial for your manufacturer to check each piece manually and individually: even if the external layers may appear perfect, going deeper the quality could be different. Those pieces that conceal imperfections and defects cannot be used. A sustainable company may reuse scrap to create other products or produce energy to fuel heating systems. As sustainability is a major concern today, these details should also make the difference when selecting your ideal supplier.
Once the logs have been selected, the manufacturer must expose them to the air for two or three months to follow the natural drying process of timber. This step is crucial to preserve wood density and prevent possible damage. A competent manufacturer has also special drying chambers that guarantee the correct degree of dryness of the raw material before moving to production. If the wood has a high percentage of humidity, the bat can’t stay perfectly straight on the axis and volume may warp over time, causing functionality problems. Thanks to a correct drying process, the ratio between volume and weight can be stable, which is crucial to avoid discrepancies and breakage.- The company you select must be able to guarantee the same quality for a single product and for one million pieces. Check to determine if they work with both multinational corporations and small “sartorial” brands. Being able to produce goods in small lots and only when clients request them is also a great advantage, as this leads to greater efficiency and remarkable savings. The supplier must guarantee top-quality products, but cost optimization is crucial too.
You must ensure that the manufacturer you selected follows all the steps we discussed above, as The Minelli Group does. Thanks to our decades of experience, we can ensure perfection in quality and design of each product, always following rigorous processes and environment sustainability.
Now, let’s discuss another important issue.
What type of wood should you prefer to create a high-performance baseball bat?
A competent wood manufacturer can offer a wide range of essences and can advise you about the best one. Not all types of wood are ideal to create a bat. Let’s discuss the pros and cons of the most widely used.
FSC CERTIFIED ASH
Ash is a popular choice thanks to its large sweet spot, which means it delivers solid contact in a larger section of the bat than other types of wood. Ash wood is very flexible, excellent characteristic for the bats. Unfortunately, ash timber availability is limited and becomes less every year.
FSC CERTIFIED MAPLE
Maple is a very hard and dense type of wood, so it delivers more power than ash bats when struck properly. It has low flexibility and doesn’t flake, so it lasts a long time, but maple timber costs are rising steadily.
FSC CERTIFIED EUROPEAN BEECH
European beech bats have the flexibility of ash and the density and durability of maple. The density of a wooden bat is important, as it determines how far a ball will travel after contact. The elastic memory of this type of wood produces a profound trampoline effect, creating better exit speed and increased distance. European beech is also more durable than other types of wood and it is abundant too. Therefore, it has the perfect combination of flex and hardness to improve performance, and it is more cost-effective.
It is fundamental to choose only FSC certified woods, which guarantees that the raw material comes from responsibly managed forests and provides environmental, social, and economic benefits to local communities. Using wooden products derived from well-managed forests can save them while improving our shared quality of life. Read our dedicated article to learn more about this topic.
Our experience is at your disposal
If you are looking for a specialized wood maker that can provide top-quality wooden bats following all the steps we described above and with a great focus on sustainability, the Minelli Group is the right choice.
Thanks to our considerable investment in qualified experts and innovative machinery, we have been able to maintain our production in Italy, reducing expenses and guaranteeing maximum cost-effectiveness for our products. Moreover, we can take advantage of the well-known Italian craftsmanship, that we translate also in our American production plant, where we can produce the same top-quality wooden bats.
We offer a wide range of finishing options to let you offer a wider product catalogue, from traditional paints to the most innovative soft-touch finishes and polymer coatings. We also use organic water-based lacquers created with ingredients derived from recycled materials and renewable sources. Our powerful laser technologies let us create prestigious and elegant decorations, writings, and designs.
Our company is especially focused on sustainability. We use only FSC-certified woods, which means they are gathered following strict parameters and standards of environmental and forestry protection. Moreover, we try to make our logistics more sustainable, shortening the process that raw materials go through to reach production in order to reduce our carbon footprint. We also adopt a circular economy model, using scrap to fuel our heating systems, heat drying chambers, and create smaller objects (e.g., cosmetics, spirits caps, and toothbrushes, which represent 90% of our total production).
Thanks to our 5 production plants in three countries, we can produce and deliver both big and small lots of products all over the world. We export to 20 different counties, even to Japan.
If you are looking for exclusive wooden baseball bats that meet the American BBCOR Bat Certification, do not hesitate to contact us. Click here for more information!
