Breaking in a new composite bat?

[NVfishing]

Got the new bat tonight. Went to the fields and hit two buckets. It's the first high end bat I've ever purchased. It makes a difference. The crisp hit balls seemed a lot faster. It also seemed like they were hit further.

 

[JAD]

Any tips on getting it broken in? Bought a new CF5. Went with a longer bat 31/20 because my DD is growing about a 1/2 inch per month. She was 4-8 in March now she's 4-10. Think she will be around 5-1 in the spring.

Open box, remove wrapper and wholla! Your bat is ready to use and will not get significantly hotter with additional use.....

 

[RubberBiscuit]

Open box, remove wrapper and wholla! Your bat is ready to use and will not get significantly hotter with additional use.....

If this were true then why would they test bats? Just to catch cases of shaving & rolling? Also why then is rolling bats a known "betterment" to the pop of a bat?

For our experience with CF4-CF6 => each one is "fine" out of the wrapper but at 3/4 of a year (roughly) the bat gets noticed as "hot". Then at roughly 1 year old it slowly rolls off on performance until at roughly 1.5 years it explodes.

 

[CoreSoftball20]

If this were true then why would they test bats? Just to catch cases of shaving & rolling? Also why then is rolling bats a known "betterment" to the pop of a bat?

For our experience with CF4-CF6 => each one is "fine" out of the wrapper but at 3/4 of a year (roughly) the bat gets noticed as "hot". Then at roughly 1 year old it slowly rolls off on performance until at roughly 1.5 years it explodes.

I dont know what testing your asking about...tourney or ASA standards testing. ASA tests bats to make sure the bats are able to stay legal thru complete use. Thats all they care about.

Tourneys test because:

1) Yes, you have to test bats to stop shaving
2) The older ASA bats are still legal, which means you HAVE to test because some of them can get insane with more and more hits. They can be well under the given compression level.

I am on the side that todays bats do get better with swings. I dont argue this anymore because there is no point.
They dont get crazy like the old bats used to get, but they do improve. Which is why ASA tests thru the "life" of a bat and not just out of wrapper.
I always tell people to take a nice decent BP session or 2 with a new bat, thats it. No need for the mega hits on a bat anymore. The bats do come thru way better out of the wrapper than they used to.

 

[JAD]

CoreSoftball20 - do you have access to an ASA compression tester? Would LOVE for you to compression test a bat right out of the wrapper, then roll it, retest it, then hit with it for a couple of weeks, retest and publish the results. In the older composite bats there was a significant performance improvement after break in, but I think with today's composite bats the performance improvement will be minimal.

Also - as I like to remind my DD, it does not matter how "hot" the bat is if you do not hit the ball in the "sweet spot"!

 

[quincy]

Got the new bat tonight. Went to the fields and hit two buckets. It's the first high end bat I've ever purchased. It makes a difference. The crisp hit balls seemed a lot faster. It also seemed like they were hit further.

A lot of fun, you wonder why you waited so long.

Wish her good luck with her new bat! It just helps her, she is the one that still needs to swing the dang thing.

 

[JAD]

Got the new bat tonight. Went to the fields and hit two buckets. It's the first high end bat I've ever purchased. It makes a difference. The crisp hit balls seemed a lot faster. It also seemed like they were hit further.

Has anyone used a pocket radar to measure ball exit speed off a bat? Would be interesting to a quantitative measurement between different bats.

 

[NVfishing]

A lot of fun, you wonder why you waited so long.

Wish her good luck with her new bat! It just helps her, she is the one that still needs to swing the dang thing.

She consistently got 20-30' further on her hits. Doesn't seem like much but there were a lot more well hit balls. Fewer dinkers.

 

[CoreSoftball20]

CoreSoftball20 - do you have access to an ASA compression tester? Would LOVE for you to compression test a bat right out of the wrapper, then roll it, retest it, then hit with it for a couple of weeks, retest and publish the results. In the older composite bats there was a significant performance improvement after break in, but I think with today's composite bats the performance improvement will be minimal.

Also - as I like to remind my DD, it does not matter how "hot" the bat is if you do not hit the ball in the "sweet spot"!

I have access to a usssa compression tester which is the same machine basically. Unfortunately I cant rip a Xeno off the shelf and basically destroy it for info purposes.

You are correct, the older models could get WAYYYY better. And it did matter because the hits off the sweet spot were even so much better once broken in, not to mention the gain in sweetspot size.
As I said, I dont think the gain in performance is much anymore, but they do get a little better.

Composites break in, plain and simple...which is why they have to design bats to govern that to keep at a legal limit per ASA.

Lets remember also, part of a multi-piece bat's break in is the connection.

 

[NVfishing]

The bat and DD did what I wanted. First or second at bat today and she hit a stand up double deep in the gap. Furthest she's ever hit the ball. Thank you Dmarini!