# Wood Bat Finishing/Painting



## cktuck6 (Dec 27, 2017)

Hey there

I make custom wood baseball bats and I am looking for some suggestions on a rock hard lacquer that can take the abuse a baseball bat takes. I want to know what the best stuff on the market is for this kind of finish, or if there is a mixture of ingredients I can combine to make a stronger/harder lacquer. 

Currently, I use an outdoor finish you can buy online, and dip my bats into it and hang dry it. I thin the lacquer with water in order for it to flow off the end of the bat as it dries. 

Also would love to eventually use the same technique with paint, so if anyone has a suggestion on a good paint that would go with this as well that would be great. Right now, I use good ole Rustoleum 2x spray paint, but I would like to eventually dip the bat into the paint the same way and allow to hang dry. 

Any suggestions or direction would be great!

Thanks!


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## Steve Neul (Sep 2, 2011)

I don't think you want to go with a hard finish. There is a lot going on when the bat hits the ball. It bends and flexes from the impact. The impact from the ball is negligible compared to the flexing the wood is doning. After a while it would cause a hard finish to crack and flake off. I think you would be better off with an old fashion oil based varnish or maybe a marine grade spar varnish. The marine varnish was developed for the masts of sailing ships because the bending the mast does causes the finish to fail.


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## cktuck6 (Dec 27, 2017)

Steve Neul said:


> I don't think you want to go with a hard finish. There is a lot going on when the bat hits the ball. It bends and flexes from the impact. The impact from the ball is negligible compared to the flexing the wood is doning. After a while it would cause a hard finish to crack and flake off. I think you would be better off with an old fashion oil based varnish or maybe a marine grade spar varnish. The marine varnish was developed for the masts of sailing ships because the bending the mast does causes the finish to fail.


Wow I never thought about it that way. From what I’ve gathered companies like to say they have the “hardest lacquer,” which in turn, lead to better performance because the bat was harder so the ball would travel faster off the barrel. That’s where my thinking has led me.

I never thought about the flex and movement of the bat through the swing influencing the lacquer in a negative way. Is there a water based lacquer that acts the same way?


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## allpurpose (Mar 24, 2016)

Ol Pete Rose used to sand the hitting surface of his bats.. of course the same season he broke Ty Cobb's record it was learned he was sanding a fairly flat surface on his bats..
Hmmm..


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## Steve Neul (Sep 2, 2011)

cktuck6 said:


> Wow I never thought about it that way. From what I’ve gathered companies like to say they have the “hardest lacquer,” which in turn, lead to better performance because the bat was harder so the ball would travel faster off the barrel. That’s where my thinking has led me.
> 
> I never thought about the flex and movement of the bat through the swing influencing the lacquer in a negative way. Is there a water based lacquer that acts the same way?


All water based finishes are made with plastic resins. You're just not going to get the same flexibility with a plastic coating as you would a varnish.


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## cktuck6 (Dec 27, 2017)

So do you think a lacquer has any impact on the performance of the bat? Would the flexibility in the lacquer lead to better performance other than just aesthetically?


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## Steve Neul (Sep 2, 2011)

I don't think any finish would make any difference in the performance one way or the other. The wood is what would determine that, a coating about 3 mils thick is nothing. Ash is most commonly used for bats and you can have some ash as soft as pine or as hard as hickory. I would think choosing the hickory hard ash would make for better performance.


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## Tool Agnostic (Aug 13, 2017)

This thread intrigued me, so I did a little research on my own. My original thinking while reading this thread was that baseball bats should be treated as an integrated system by design, where the wood type, shape, grip, finish, etc. work together as a whole to optimize how the bat performs. The various parts should be carefully chosen so that they cover for each other's deficiencies and enhance the contributions that each component makes toward a successful hit. 

I also read various research papers on the science behind hitting, and why aluminum bats hit better than wood bats. I read about the longevity of wooden bats (not long in the Majors!) vs. aluminum bats. It was an interesting evening.

Before embarking on a bat-making career, I would do some careful research first. I suspect that the major bat manufacturers have R&D departments, with PhD physicists, chemists, and wood experts working full-time to improve the performance of their bats. You would have to blaze a new trail to compete with them.


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