The word  “custom” covers a lot of territory at R.G. Johnson.  Logan has in his workshop a veritable museum of baseball bats, about 300 in all.  If you want a bat just like the one Jackie Robinson or Mel Ott or Yogi Berra used, Logan can make it for you or he’ll turn a bat to any specifications you give him.  You can have your name lettered into the wood, a feature that most custom clients request.  

    The making of a fine baseball bat starts in the woods with high-grade white ash and maple.  Logan personally selects most of the trees he uses, and finding good wood is the major problem he faces.  Pro players are particularly demanding about wood, and the quality of the ash in Johnson bats has drawn orders from a number of major-league players.

    “The pros will take a bat and drop the barrel onto the locker-room floor,” Logan explains, “and if the wood doesn’t have just the right ring, they’ll discard it.”

    The trees are sawn into blocks measuring 40"by 3" and air dried for one year.  Logan then turns the blocks into round billets and grades them, selecting the clearest-grain wood for his finest custom bats.  After one more year of air drying, the billets are ready to go through the production line.

    First Logan turns the bat to its finished form on the lathe.  Nest the bats are branded with the R.G. Johnson label and  if requested, the customer’s name.  After being sanded with coarse and fine flexible belts, some of the bats are flame treated, a process that brings up the grain and hardens the surface of the wood, or are stained with pine tar stripe.  Logan then saws off the ends left from the lathe and sands them smooth.  The length of the bat is stamped on the knob, and two dip coats of polyurethane varnish add the final finish.

    The consistently high quality of Johnson bats has won the company a broad and loyal following.  “Our bats have become a tradition handed down from one generation to the next. Logan says, “Guys who had Johnson bats as kids want to buy them for their kids now.  One man came from as far away as Oklahoma and spent half his vacation chasing all over New England asking for us.  When people like that find us and see we’re still in business, they go nuts with joy.”