How wooden baseball bats are made

Major league rules say a bat must be one piece of solid wood, so the stick is turned down from a single chunk.

stations: 5
things upstream: 21
raw sources: 9
steps from the ground: 6

The short version

A wooden baseball bat is turned from one solid piece of ash, maple, hickory or bamboo. A lathe copies a fixed metal template, so each bat has the same profile. The maker brands the label on the side opposite the best grain, shapes the end of the barrel and finishes the bat with a stain.

Select the billet

A straight-grained log is cut into square blanks called billets. Most wooden bats are made of ash, and maple is now the most popular new material. The rules require one piece of solid wood.

Goes in
Timber
Turn on a lathe

The billet spins while a cutter follows a fixed metal template and shaves it into a handle, a barrel and a knob. Bats used to be hand-turned from a template with calibration points, and the profile of Babe Ruth's bat is still used as a template today.
Shape the end

Most bats are given a rounded head. About 30 percent of players prefer a cup-balanced head, with a cup-shaped recess cut into the end of the barrel to move the balance toward the handle.
Brand the label

The maker's name, a serial number and often a player's signature are branded into the wood. The label goes on the mechanically weaker side, opposite the best face of the grain, so that the ball meets the stronger wood.
Stain and finish

The finished bat is stained in a standard color such as natural, red, black or two-tone blue and white, then given a clear protective finish.

Goes in
Lacquer

End of the lineBaseball bat

Worth repeating

Babe Ruth used a 40-inch, 54-ounce ash bat in 1920 and later had an ounce trimmed off each new set.
The emerald ash borer has killed more than 50 million white ash trees in the eastern United States.