Blimey you kids nowadays....
When a bat is pressed it creates a stiff surface layer on the face of the bat. If you press it to hard the willow fibre’s combine together to deeply into the wood and the blade has no real rebound [ping] If it is to soft then lots and lots gentle knocking is required to stiffen up the blade and then more rigourous knocking. At the end of the day we all hope that we don’t get an over pressed bat and then the basic idea is stiffen the surface
Knocking InOn the left side is surface stiffness along the bottom is hours spent knocking in.
Look at the dot shape and 0hrs of knocking in and then at 4 hours. The surface stiffness has doubled!!!!
So what has happened - The core of the bat is left unhardened resulting in a more elastic response of the bat.