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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Topic: Prominent grains and performance (Read 4668 times)