Composite baseball bat with cavitied core

Abstract

A baseball bat or the like comprises a tube formed with an outer layer of cellulose material covering a layer of fiber reinforced resin, with the tube layers being impregnated with and bonded to one another with a cured resin. The outer layer of the bat consists of one or more strips or sheets of cellulose material such as paper or wood. Cellulose fibers tend to stretch when deformed by the ball impact so as to spread the impact over a number of fibers and exhibit a high compressive strength. Therefore, they may be effectively utilized as the outer layer of the bat. The tube preferably has a foam core including a central cavity lined with a layer of fiber reinforced resin, said core having sufficient resiliency to allow the tube to resiliently deform during impact with a baseball. Bat performance may further be improved by adding an internal layer of fiber reinforced resin to the interior of the foamed core. The product is formed by molding over a form which may constitute the cavitied foam core or, alternatively, a forming mandrel which is removed after the resin is cured. The cavity may be filled with a material which is less dense than the core.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.