Custom Bats Cricket Forum
Equipment => Bats => Topic started by: kal_m on April 21, 2017, 11:56:27 PM
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I tried searching on the forum for any correlation between these two but didn't find much. Can the experts weigh in?? Would the performance of the bat be any better if it has prominent grains?
Not sure this stuck in my head when looking at bats but I am leaning more towards bats that have prominent grains.
Cheers!!
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well oiled and knocked back should show prominent grains. I have seen bats with 6-7 grains and perform as belters. I think straight grains , even spaced is key
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In my experience, bats i have owned which had dark grains played better. I have no idea why, could just be a coincidence.
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Don't think it really matters, I personally prefer the look of a bat with 7-10 prominent grains. I've got bats without really prominent grains that play equally as well
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Prominent grains are due to the pressing.
The more prominent the grain in tne blade the better the pressing.
And as we all know the better the pressing the better the bats performance.
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Prominent grains are due to the pressing.
The more prominent the grain in tne blade the better the pressing.
And as we all know the better the pressing the better the bats performance.
BS
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well oiled and knocked back should show prominent grains. I have seen bats with 6-7 grains and perform as belters. I think straight grains , even spaced is key
Some bats have prominent grains even before oiling/knocking in, so would they be better? As for the straight evenly spaced grains, my view on that after joining the forum has changed and I think they are purely cosmetic, is it not?
Prominent grains are due to the pressing.
The more prominent the grain in tne blade the better the pressing.
And as we all know the better the pressing the better the bats performance.
I didn't know this. Have you personally experienced the difference in performance??
In my experience, bats i have owned which had dark grains played better. I have no idea why, could just be a coincidence.
It could be, but if happened consistently then it's not coincidence, is it?
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BS
It's easy to write BS without any supporting information or evidence.
What Been written came from one of the UKs top bat makers.
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Prominent grains are due to the pressing.
The more prominent the grain in tne blade the better the pressing.
And as we all know the better the pressing the better the bats performance.
That's interesting @Seniorplayer , what's the theory behind this? I thought the prominence in the grain was purely based on the willow itself, or any finishing techniques, and not the pressing. Do you mean that prominent grains tend to press better than others?
Personal experience, prominent or faint grains don't make a huge difference, but my L&W Reserve has ridiculously prominent grains, as do some TK bats I've had in the past. I do think that the performance was due to the batmakers skill more than the prominent grains though...
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Pressing of the willow makes the grains more prominent the more outstanding the grains the better the bat should play
But of course any bats performance is dependant on the skills of the batmaker.
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I'm sure Marcus from Affinity put a video up showing him finishing a bat in which he said it was the finish the made the grains look more prominent? I might be wrong though?
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It's easy to write BS without any supporting information or evidence.
What Been written came from one of the UKs top bat makers.
What science is there behind that?
And surely if it was the case you'd be able to tell a batmaker(or at least narrow it down) purely by looking at the grains, if someone can do that I've yet to see any evidence of it.
That would imply that prominent grains means performance, something else I've never seen any proff of.
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only thing that good promeinent grains will increase is the cost of the bat.
sorry but grains have very little to do with performance.
pressing of course does but unless it been pressed to last it warranty you should be fine.
Bats are not complicated as some people words make out.
Performance of bats is 90 per cent in the mind and in truth I suspect 90 per cent of all bats are equal.
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I bet there's plenty a good batsman who can make an ugly or poorly pressed bat talk.
My mate who is a good batsman scored 30 odd with a Slazenger SD plank on Saturday, which wasn't even knocked on in. Ball flew to the boundary.
Sometimes it's the wizard, not the wand!
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You always go against the grain @FattusCattus
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Arf arf!! What can I say? I'm a fugly stick fan!
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I've seen a team mate smash a 55 ball 100 with a £20 Kashmir Willow Adidas bat, unless you looked very hard you wouldn't have been able to make any grains out on it at all
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I bet there's plenty a good batsman who can make an ugly or poorly pressed bat talk.
My mate who is a good batsman scored 30 odd with a Slazenger SD plank on Saturday, which wasn't even knocked on in. Ball flew to the boundary.
Sometimes it's the wizard, not the wand!
On the flip side of that I bet I could make any bat look like a plank! :-[
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I think you'll find that is my job!
You are a true all-rounder!
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On the flip side of that I bet I could make any bat look like a plank! :-[
I'm with this.
Only time I ping anything is with the mallet.
Sometimes I even miss with that.
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Close grained bats invariably play quicker and break/delaminate quicker. Trade-off due to old tree, less sap..blah..blah... :)
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As all of you know, English willow bats are made of White willow a species of Salix Alba tree. Having said that, the grains in the bat correspond to annual rings formed in the tree every year. When a tree is young, the rings forms faster and as it starts growing old, one ring forms a year. In white willow, the ring width is 6.6 to 8.6 mm. If the tree has been growing slowly due to weather condition, topological conditions, and conditioning of the tree by people, the rings grow slowly meaning its circumference has not increased quickly. On the other hand, if a tree has grown quicker (again due to various environmental or man-made conditions) then grains are wide apart. Thus, in some bats the grains are closer than others.
So the bottom line is grains corresponds to the willow itself and from which part of the tree or the tree the cleft of your bat was made. The drying of the wood, pressing etc. has a role to play in making it prominent and all, but in a new bat the grains are due to how nature (or man-made conditions) made the tree grow. Regarding to what improves ping of the bat, I haven't seen any research/evidence relating it to number of grains.
A bat maker can vary the manufacturing process like drying of the willow and pressing etc to improve ping, but whether it relates to how many grains a willow has is not clear. I think, a bat maker should be able to make any willow ping better if the manufacturing process and pressing is consistent. And the price we pay for expensive bats are more related to how it looks.
These are my thoughts after reading a research article on Salix Alba tree. The grain and its no relation to performance concept is my extrapolation after reading the article.
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Excellent explanation. Thanks