no still searching for a single Ply Kiso Hinoki with anatomic handle.
I play the old Kiso Hinoki 5 at the moment,but of course i never played a blade with a Sköllarwood veneer or even a single ply Blade ever.
I am still on the search,when the season starts i have some options,
Buy a single with ST handle from any big Brand and let a blademaker make me a new handle in anatomic,Tibhar H1-9 or try trough second hand market to get a used single ply already in an handle (SEnkoh serires,etc)
Or I try a single ply from
@Wakkibatty or a custom
@hipnotic with hinoki veneer,etc...
But from what i read online it will not be easy or cheap cause the Kiso Hinoki Plies will get rarer and rarer.
You're not wrong about the rarity of genuine Hinoki nowadays, and Kiso Hinoki in particular. Unfortunately this not some short term Hinoki supply issue this time round. Going forwards, this will be the new normal for all slow-growing timber species worldwide, for most of the next millenium.
You've actually touched on a few subjects here with your post Haraold that actually matter enormously to me, so I hope you'll permit me a brief (but relevant) diversion from your OP, as I'd like to weigh in publically on which type of wood you eventually end up choosing for your blade.
Off the top of my head, I can't think of a single large manufacturer out there who's still selling **genuine*" Hinoki one-ply blades with shakehand grip. There's still a few J-pen models out there made from the genuine article, but even those are extremely rare and expensive, simply because Hinoki is now an endangered species, and extremely hard and expensive stuff to source.
For the most part, all the majors have switched to using other species of cypress instead of Hinoki. Genuine Hinoki is just a regional Japanese varietal of Cypress after all, so switching to other types of cypress makes sense -- their common underlying genetics mean there are huge similarities in their general playing feel.
Unfortunately, switching to different types of cypress is an interim measure, and IMO is a frankly misguided attempt to delay the inevitable.
Unless I'm mistaken, virtually every sub-species and varietal of cypress on Earth is slow growing... or at least the ones I know of all are. I note the grain pattern on all these cypress one-ply blades are identical to Hinoki. They all have tightly-packed, parallel growth rings, with just a few millimetres of space between early wood and late wood (ie: its summer and winter growth).
This means the majors are still cutting down and/or sourcing old-growth centurion trees, that date back to centuries before the industrial revolution (if not the Enlightenment), to source the wood for their blades.
The world simply can't keep cutting down its ancient trees, regardless of the species, or the reason. Apart from the fact supply of old wood is dwindling and fewer old-growth trees are left standing every year, these trees have both integral value of their own, and instrumental value as a source of genetic diversity. They are a cornerstone of the earth's entire arboreal gene pool. If we are to sustain the earth's biodiversity going forwards (as well as our own survival) we will need these ancient trees and their millenia of genetic diversity as basic raw material to breed trees better suited to surviving climate change.
Individual trees can frequently be just as genetically unique as human beings are. Any differences you see in size, health, and longevity typically has more to do with their genetics than their environment. Old growth trees have needed to survive numerous bouts of severe prolonged climatic extremes to reach their current age (be they natural extremes or man-made). Going forwards, we desperately need MORE tough, hardy, I-can-survive-anything trees like this in the world, not less. Cutting down old growth trees to make a TT blade nowadays is like cutting up your own grandmother to make soup.
This is actually all part of the reason I went looking for entirely different and novel species of timber in the first place. When I started developing my own one-ply blades, I learnt very early on I couldn't get any Hinoki here in Australia, but there were various pockets of macrocarpa (another type of cypress) growing around the country, so there was currently plenty of hinoki-like timber available to potentially use in a one-ply.
This macrocarpa timber however was still coming from old, slow-growing trees, planted over 150 years ago in Tasmania by early European settlers. It was therefore still a national heritage resource of sorts, with a very slow replenishment rate. What I really wanted was to see if there were any faster growing alternatives out there which could circumvent the whole problem of 'needing old-growth wood for a one-ply' entirely.
So I rejected this first obvious option, and kept on looking. It took me another 16 months to find one, but I did so eventually in Sköllawood. It may not be a plantation timber, but it's also not remotely endangered or under threat, and the stuff literally rockets out of the ground if given the right growing conditions. Best of all, it ticked my most important box, in that the wood played so similarly to Hinoki, that for (almost) the first time ever, the type and age of wood used in a one-ply blade was no longer a deciding issue.
Once I clear my current workload and have a little more time to spare, I'm going to be speaking with some government bodies and researchers (and potentially even a few venture capitalists if I have to), to hopefully raise some funds for research trials, to see if Sköllawood can potentially be grown in plantations.
I read somewhere a year or so back, that others have repeatedly tried to grow Sköllawood in plantations before, but they all spectacularly failed for a host of reasons (this is probably why Sköllawood is not available commercially, and is currently so hugely difficult stuff to find). However, for various reasons I can't currently discuss publically, I suspect there may potentially be ways around at least a few of these problems if it is possible to base a plantation somewhere here in Western Australia. My success in this endeavour is largely dependent on whether or not a sufficiently large enough market exists for both the wood, and it's end product... but this is something that is largely outside my control.
Long story short, while this post may read like a thinly-veiled attempt to shift your thinking towards buying my product, I assure you it is not.
You speak very passionately of having a Hinoki or cypress one-ply blade to have as a family heirloom, to be passed down to your children. I am genuinely moved by this sentiment. It's an idea I can really relate to and get behind -- I already know from our email conversations you love Hinoki timber, one-ply blades, and TT in general, just as much as I do... We are kindred spirits in that regard.
When deciding what blade you eventually buy however, as a life-long environmentalist, I also ask you to consider the heritage value of the tree the wood came from. Living, growing, healthy, majestic Hinoki and cypress trees have just as much sentimental value, and are just as much an intergenerational heirloom, as the blades we choose to make from them.
When we as TT players (all 100 million of us!) choose the species of wood we want in our blades, we are also choosing the ultimate future of the species of tree the wood came from. Demand leads to supply, and supply often leads to exploitation... Or at least it has in the past, because until now, we have not been able to source the wood we need for a one-ply from readily renewable sources. In its simplest terms, old growth wood has always been the order of the day for one-ply blades through sheer neecessity, and a lack of alternatives.
HOWEVER... If I, as a single individual small business owner, can track down a fast-growing, more sustainable alternative to Hinoki and cypress in just 18 months... then surely big firms like Butterfly, DHS and Stiga can do so as well.
The only reason they're NOT doing this, is because we as players keep asking for Hinoki and cypress.
And we keep asking for it, because as Table Tennis players, we collectively (and erroneously) genuinely believe that no other viable alternatives exist.
Whichever brand, make, model, style, and species of one-ply blade you eventually choose for you and your son, I implore you, and all other One-Ply fans just like you:
...to please ask the blade's maker, to tell you exactly what they are doing to find more sustainable species of timber to use in their one-plys than Hinoki or cypress.
Then also please ask them just how far they will go to ensure their products and methods are fully sustainable.
If I can freely volunteer and share such information with you without hesitation, as I have done today, then surely these larger more powerful firms can do so as well.
In my view, all of us need more old growth forests on this planet. Which means that all of us, as a collective, need to ask the businesses we deal with, to stop sourcing their raw materials from old-growth species... they are some of the most ancient, beautiful, valuable, vulnerable and irreplaceable heirlooms ALL of our children will ever have.
Thank you for listening 🙂🙂 The diversion is over, we now return you to your regularly scheduled TT thread.
