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Well ok, here it goes..

In every material there are "defects", voids, imperfections in its atomic matrix. There are several ways to refine the materials into better, stronger materials. Most of us have heard of cryo treating bats, that was one way to treat the metal to get it to perform better. Most of these ways include heat and pressure, annealing, quenching, tempering...the break in period we are talking about is usually called cold forming, strengthening a material without heat. Every material inherently has certain levels of plastic and elastic deformation. As long as you keep forces applied to the material in the elastic range, the material will bounce back, if too much is exerted it goes into the plastic range, changing the atomic structure of the material (denting). Cold forming (essentially pounding the crap out of it... as evenly as possible gives the best results, the pounding can potentially realign the voids into a tighter, stronger atomic matrix) any material will strengthen it to a point. The materials properties (the level of forces of plastic vs. eleastic deformation) will determine how much it can take before the curve changes from a possitive effect to a negative effect.

Hope that helps...

no forging....forming (although they seem to be being used interchangeably in some text)...it is the idea behind the whole ASA bat rolling testing (to break bats in - mostly composites) as well.

Here is a rough idea obviously this has nothing to do with bats but it is the same idea on a smaller scale.

Cold Forming

Yes, illegal for reason of handle and barrel made of different materials, aluminum and steel respectively.

Nah, have you seen Darth swing...especially in the Spring...."voooooooommmmm" is all ya hear....no contact made.....right Yok!?

And yes, Les and Andy have been playin' with their woodies for years!