Vintage Wooden Baseball Stitching Clamp

This is a vintage Wooden baseball stitching clamp. In the past Baseball Stitching clamps like this were used to secure the baseball during the process of sewing on the cover by hand. In the early days the wooden clamps were made by locale woodworkers or carpenters. The baseballs were both sewn at the factories or at home, the work done mostly by women. This clamp being used at the factory was bolted to a working table.

Two pieces of figure-eight-shaped cowhide is dampened to permit pliability and placed around a string wound core, then placed in the stitching clamp. Pilot holes were pre punched into the covers to help guide the stitching, and stapled together to hold in place for stitching. The baseball is then hand-stitched together with 216 raised stitches. It takes about 13-14 minutes to hand sew a baseball.

This Baseball Stitching Clamp features the D&M "Lucky Dog" logo, and was used at the Draper-Maynard factory located in New Hampshire. The Draper-Maynard Sporting Goods company was most famous for their baseball gloves. The Red Sox team visited the factory in 1916, which was memorialized by a now-classic photo of Babe Ruth sewing a cover on a baseball. Ruth endorsed and used D&M equipment throughout his career. Baseballs were one of the largest products of this factory. The company went out of business in 1937.

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