Theory on hardness of outer ply impacting sponge penetration

I got the feeling that the sponge does not engage. It got a lot softer since I put it on, it's definitely broken in but if I am not doing the perfect loop it drops sometimes into the net.

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I think that is just a price you pay to play with a very hard rubber (39 is still hard) like H3. If you swing hard, you are fine, otherwise game over.

No, this is nothing to do with out ply.
Zhang jike, FZD and other Chinese players use viscaria which is a koto outer ply, outer fibre alc blade. Koto is hard top and it works well. Xu Xin used to use Stiga Xuxin which is hard walnut top and skyline works well.

Ma Long use w968 which is a inner fibre and soft limba out ply blade. And hurricane works fine on that as well.


So what's the problem? Ball drops into the net when you do softer loop?

It's because your rubber need boosting now!


When the hurricane 3 neo is new, it has factory boosting effect. The sponge is soft. So when you hit it with soft loop, the ball can penetration the sponge (or sucked into the sponge, whatever you call it). Thus it generate longer contact time, and you put more spin and power to the ball, you lift the ball over the net.

After some time (normally 1-2month), the factory boosting is gone. The sponge become hard. What happens when you do soft loop? Your ball can't penetrate as deep now if you hit soft. The contact time become smaller, the ball just bonce away when you soft loop even before you finish your full stroke. Thus you can't put enough spin and power to the ball. (because the ball doesn't contact the blade as long as before, because the sponge is harder and the ball doesn't penetrate as deep as before)

Why it works when you do strong shot? because if you hit it hard, you can penetrate the sponge deep now, even when it becomes hard.

I hope you understand the explanation.

Try to boost it with seamoon or falco or whatever you can find.
Even the Johnson's Baby Oil works! (Yes somebody put baby oil on hurricane 3 and it can soften the sponge. not as good as seamoon but still better than nothing)

Tt will soften the sponge, expand it a bit. make it more elastic. Then you will find it good again!

I fully agree with G_ZHANG, you need a single layer of booster and your problems will be solved

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I think I know what you mean. Used to play with a TB ALC, currently playing with an Innerforce AL.

Thinking back, I had it easier with the TB ALC when it comes to opening on quality balls just off the edge (with my FH, with H3N). I don't know enough about equipment to say anything with certainty, but I do feel it has to do with the overall rigidity of the TB ALC (compared to IF AL) and the reactivity from the carbon layer.

Going from memory, I also had a slightly easier time blocking and countering. In the same vein, the blade was more forgiving when it comes to playing with pace (as in, I could mistime, be a bit passive or not engage the body and get away with a relatively good quality ball).

Here is what I think though. That sounds a bit too much like holding my hand / cycling with the baby wheels if I can get away with poorer technique. It would be fine if my technique were mature, but it's not. So I've traded some comfort and forgiveness for the chance to develop the all-round game I want to have.

On the bright side, I've got more feedback when I do a good quality shot now (even just from the sound of the contact, crisp or mellow). It's been helping me improve my backhand in the active play (not just block/punch), such as loops or when the opponent doesn't give a lot of pace. It's also raised my awareness on my footwork: I have incentive to always move now, rather than adjust with the arm when slightly off position, because poorer positioning means a poorer shot at best, a frustrating mistake otherwise. It's also helping me develop my sense of timing, for the same reason.

Also, it is much easier to control the pace (specifically, to take pace off the ball) with the IF AL, and to use the dwell time on softer or passive shots to open angles with side-spin. Taking the pace off and manipulating the spin and placement, even just deadening the ball on purpose, can be a very effective option at times (as by contrast, the blade/rubber setup itself can generate a lot of spin).

Hurricane is fine on slow and fast loops. It is te way you brush the ball.

yogi_bear said:

Hurricane is fine on slow and fast loops. It is te way you brush the ball.

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Yes!!!
It is all about energy folks. If you hit through the ball you get speed and little spin by accident. When you brush more energy goes into spin and not speed depending on how thin the brush stroke is. The trick part is attempting to brush the ball and still hit the ball since the effective area of the paddle is reduced. This requires precise timing in loop vs loop exchanges. I don't know how many times I have got into a loop vs loop battle and the opponents ball drops due to its extreme top spin and goes under by blade. Arghh! Off course I try to do the same back to the opponent but usually when we are slugging it out I need speed as well as spin so my blade isn't brushing that much.

There is too much emphasis on equipment. This thread is not thinking about what happens when brushing. When brushing most of the impact force is trying to stretch the top sheet and sponge below across the face of the paddle. The normal force that compresses the sponge and MAY deform the outer ply of wood is minimized.

If you are not an experienced looper find a robot. Hit the ball with your FH and listen to the impact. You can hear the impact of the ball change as you close the paddle or brush ball. When brushing thinly you just hear the impact of the ball and rubber and not the wood below. Do this close to the table and then step back slowly. When close to the table the brush strokes will be very flat because the ball is traveling horizontally. The stroke will start from about waist level. As you step back the ball will drop more and your brush stroke will need to be more vertical. The stroke will need to start lower like behind the knee.

Now about the difference between outer layers. My Firewall Plus has a harder layer that covers almost 9mm of balsa wood. I would bet the balsa woods underneath compresses more than the outer layer. The hard outer layer just protects the inner core.

It would be interesting to measure how much the paddle compresses when a force of 100 N to 200 N is applied to 10mm^2 area of the paddle. I doubt the wood compresses that much. I bet it compresses less than 0.1mm and it is mostly the softer inner core that compresses. It would be hard to tell what layer compresses the most without destroying the paddle and departing the layers to test each layer individually. This would be an interesting experiment otherwise people will be asking the same questions 10 years from now.

Finally, it is force that moves and spins the ball. The ball doesn't care how this force is applied. What force can one top layer of wood deliver that another can't?

I think it is really about feel but I wonder if players can actually feel the difference between different top layers of wood. This kind of reminds me of a childhood story about the princess and the pea.
http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/PriPea.shtml

In my experience, regardless the stiffness of the blade or the hardness of the outer ply, hard sponge rubbers are not good / easy to use.
I tried some hard rubbers like XIOM Omega Asia, 729-08, DHS H3 on both a very flexible wood blade, and a Timo Boll ALC.
For me it was always unplayable. No control, flat trajectory, less dwell time etc.

With soft or medium hard sponge rubbers the story is totally different.
Plenty of control, safe trajectory, decent spin, I can feel the ball digging into the sponge. And the lack of speed is compensated by the carbon layer when hitting hard.

One more thing about blades flexibility : the all wood blade which I used in these months, is really flexible. It means it can give an extra kick when pushing hard. But often it's an unpredictable effect, not easy to calibrate. Adding an hard rubber (loosing control), could make the game even worse.
A stiff blade is more reliable in terms of consistency. It flexes less, and it is always predictable. With a medium or soft rubber (which will provide control) you will be unstoppable

My 2 cents.

Fabian said:

Well I read a lot more about the topic and maybe it is the stiffness of the Clipper CR which is not really forgiving. It does not flex on slower shots and so I don't have a lot of dwell time and less catapult.

Just that you know: I got a decent playing level, of course my technique could be even better but it's not bad at all, I know how to do opening loops and so on. It's just that it feels a lot harder than the regular loop for me with this setup, I make more mistakes when I'm not doing it perfectly.

Stiff blade + hard Chinese rubber maybe lacks a bit of catapult which makes it easier to do the opening loops. I will try a more flexible blade soon.

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I think you will enjoy it more.

Fabian said:

Well I read a lot more about the topic and maybe it is the stiffness of the Clipper CR which is not really forgiving. It does not flex on slower shots and so I don't have a lot of dwell time and less catapult.

Just that you know: I got a decent playing level, of course my technique could be even better but it's not bad at all, I know how to do opening loops and so on. It's just that it feels a lot harder than the regular loop for me with this setup, I make more mistakes when I'm not doing it perfectly.

Stiff blade + hard Chinese rubber maybe lacks a bit of catapult which makes it easier to do the opening loops. I will try a more flexible blade soon.

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A short while ago I tried to play with a boosted h3 on my forehand on a Mazunov. This is a really hard blade and also quite stiff. I usually like rubbers with a harder sponge, but this was a little bit too much. I couldn't loop well and flat hitting was extremely difficult.
So I think you are right about that. What about a regular Clipper? It's the classic blade for Chinese rubbers in Asia

Fabian said:

Well soft rubbers are not consistent enough regarding ball placement and they offer less control in short game

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Depends on what you call soft, and (especially) depends on the rubber. Coming from TG3 and H3 you'd probably find Karis M soft (although it's "medium" hardness by euro/jap standards). But once used to it I'd be surprised if you had these concerns about it.

But we are getting sidetracked, I find the question of the various implications of top ply hardness very interesting. And I'd also be glad to hear more thoughts about whether it might have an effect of the kind you suggested initially.

I'm not sure whether the effects of top veneer hardness are only to do with feel, as some replies suggest. That said, I do wonder whether that is the case as far as the short game is concerned. (Thought being (not sure): at low impact forces (short game), it seems less likely that the top veneer's hardness affects the ball trajectory than at higher forces).