Everything about the completely revamped Louisville Slugger Prime wood bat line, which launched April 17, focuses on making the bat harder. To get there, it required the team to reimagine the manufacturing process, borrow finishing concepts from the guitar industry and dip back into a 1902 patent from one of the brand’s founders.
There’s a lot new in the fresh iteration of the Louisville Slugger Prime line to get the bats 30% harder and allow the 140-year-old brand to more than double the warranty from 30 days to an industry-leading 75 days. It all starts with a trip back into company history.
Bobby Hillerich, fifth-generation bat maker and vice president of manufacturing and product development, is a great-grandson of Bud Hillerich, who created the first-ever Slugger bat for professional Louisville Eclipse player Pete Browning in his father’s woodworking shop. Bobby Hillerich was researching published studies on wood surface hardening techniques when he saw a Penn State University study reference a 1902 patent from his great-grandfather regarding hickory wood spun on a lathe.
“There is a combination of pressure and heat that is getting us the surface tension that we want,” Bobby Hillerich said. “We’ve updated it with new techniques and pressures.”
The entire Louisville Slugger manufacturing process received an update. For the new Prime line, made with both maple and birch, the hardening is more than just the pressure and heat. It also comes from optimizing the brand’s vacuum-drying system.
Previously, wood could sit up to three weeks before going from green to vacuum driers at the Pennsylvania factory, but the cells started hardening while air-drying, not allowing the vacuum to compress them. Louisville Slugger now vacuum dries the wood the same week it is processed from the log, all while keeping it stored at 70 degrees to increase stability.
Once the billets get shipped to Louisville and turned and shaped into a bat, they receive a completely new finish. In search for a finish that wouldn’t take four days to cure, Bobby Hillerich and his team flew to San Diego to check out a process Taylor Guitars was using on their instruments. “We sprayed it on a bat and went and hit it on a steel post,” Hillerich said. “It was fantastic.”
From there, Slugger met with Taylor Guitars’ engineer and the finish supplier, and the result was a finish developed for bats that can cure in a UV line in 13 seconds. “If we are rushing a bat out for a player,” Bobby Hillerich said, “13 seconds in the UV line and it’s done.”
The combination of selecting...
There’s a lot new in the fresh iteration of the Louisville Slugger Prime line to get the bats 30% harder and allow the 140-year-old brand to more than double the warranty from 30 days to an industry-leading 75 days. It all starts with a trip back into company history.
Bobby Hillerich, fifth-generation bat maker and vice president of manufacturing and product development, is a great-grandson of Bud Hillerich, who created the first-ever Slugger bat for professional Louisville Eclipse player Pete Browning in his father’s woodworking shop. Bobby Hillerich was researching published studies on wood surface hardening techniques when he saw a Penn State University study reference a 1902 patent from his great-grandfather regarding hickory wood spun on a lathe.
“There is a combination of pressure and heat that is getting us the surface tension that we want,” Bobby Hillerich said. “We’ve updated it with new techniques and pressures.”
The entire Louisville Slugger manufacturing process received an update. For the new Prime line, made with both maple and birch, the hardening is more than just the pressure and heat. It also comes from optimizing the brand’s vacuum-drying system.
Previously, wood could sit up to three weeks before going from green to vacuum driers at the Pennsylvania factory, but the cells started hardening while air-drying, not allowing the vacuum to compress them. Louisville Slugger now vacuum dries the wood the same week it is processed from the log, all while keeping it stored at 70 degrees to increase stability.
Once the billets get shipped to Louisville and turned and shaped into a bat, they receive a completely new finish. In search for a finish that wouldn’t take four days to cure, Bobby Hillerich and his team flew to San Diego to check out a process Taylor Guitars was using on their instruments. “We sprayed it on a bat and went and hit it on a steel post,” Hillerich said. “It was fantastic.”
From there, Slugger met with Taylor Guitars’ engineer and the finish supplier, and the result was a finish developed for bats that can cure in a UV line in 13 seconds. “If we are rushing a bat out for a player,” Bobby Hillerich said, “13 seconds in the UV line and it’s done.”
The combination of selecting...
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Baseball America (Digital) - 1 Issue, May 2024