Make Your Own Wood Baseball Bat
Before the logo, finish, or first swing, every wood bat begins with the billet. Leatherstocking has delivered more than 10 million billets to bat makers across the country, using a process built around straight grain, precision drying, and bat-specific grading.
Leatherstocking billets are used by most Major League Baseball bat makers. Now that proven foundation is available to independent bat makers, woodturners, schools, teams, and serious hobbyists who want to begin with exceptional bat wood.
The best bats start with the best raw materials.
Select any wood type below to return to the product options and choose an available grade. Current combinations include Prime, Choice, and Trophy grades.
Straight grain starts before a billet reaches the lathe. The way a billet is produced affects how its wood fibers run through the finished bat.
A saw determines the path of the cut and can cross the wood's natural grain, making grain runout harder to avoid.
The split follows the wood's natural grain, helping keep fibers aligned through the length of the billet before it is turned.
A controlled process prepares every billet for bat making.
Hardwood logs are selected specifically for baseball bat billet production.
The wood is split along its natural grain instead of being forced through a saw.
Material is inspected throughout production for bat-making suitability.
Our proprietary, industry-secret process uses steam under vacuum to dry each billet evenly and achieve the ideal target moisture content.
Finished billets are sorted by available species, grade, and application.
Billets leave New York for bat makers and customers across the country.
Each billet is prepared to give bat makers the size and controlled moisture needed to begin turning a full-size wood baseball bat.
Consistent billet diameter provides the material needed to shape a wide range of full-size bat profiles.
Generous overall length gives the bat maker room to turn the barrel, taper, handle, and knob.
Our proprietary steam-under-vacuum drying process targets an ideal moisture-content range for bat making.
Choose the species that best matches your target bat, feel, weight, and intended use.
Dense and hard with a firm feel. A widely used option for full-size wood baseball bats.
A classic baseball-bat wood known for comparatively lighter weight and flex.
A popular alternative to Maple and Ash with its own balance of density and feel.
Lighter and less dense than Hard Maple; best suited to fungos and lighter youth projects.
Orders of more than 40 billets must be placed directly through Leatherstocking. Bat manufacturers, commercial turning shops, and volume buyers can also contact us about ongoing supply and specific billet requirements.
Contact LeatherstockingChoose your species and grade in the purchase area above, then add your Leatherstocking hand-split billet to the cart.
Select Your Billet ↑
Most bat billets are sawn — and that's the problem. Sawing cuts through a log regardless of where the grain runs, creating hidden weak spots. Hand-splitting follows the wood's natural grain all the way through, ensuring straight tangential grain, keeping fibers perfectly aligned. The difference is massive: a bat with just a 10-degree grain angle has only 30% of the strength of a straight-grained one. Leatherstocking has hand-split every billet since 1994. The old way. Turns out it's still the best way.
Want to know more? Read the full breakdown →
Over 10 million billets delivered to bat makers across the country. When you buy a Leatherstocking Hand-Split Billet, you're starting with the same raw material trusted by the pros — straight grain, vacuum-kiln dried and made right here in New York since 1994.
All of the billets sold by The Wood Bat Factory are made by Leatherstocking Timber Products, who revolutionized the billet world, and the wood baseball bat market in the process. Often imitated, never duplicated.
