New Butterfly Hadraw 5

[Radek 30]

Bardzo ciekawe ostrze (też świetnie wygląda) - chętnie zobaczę, jak gra w porównaniu z Falcimą, która również jest 5-warstwowa z zewnętrzną powłoką Koto i dość szybka. Mam takiego w drodze i jestem ciekaw jak to gra..

falcima jest wolniejsza, bardziej czujesz drewno, a ostrze jest słabsze.

 

[Wakkibatty]

It's a nice looking design, no question. Personally however, whenever I see heavily dyed wood in the handle, I immediately think "cheap wood".

I have no idea what type of wood they are using in their handles -- maybe it's some species of high-quality white wood that takes dye well... but at that price point I somehow doubt it.

The best quality hardwoods (and softwoods) typically don't absorb dye readily, if at all.(There are a few exceptions, but not many). Normally the extractive levels in these woods are too high, and the lignin layers surrounding the tree's cells are too thick and largely impervious to mineral dyes.

To dye high quality, extractive rich hardwoods (like jarrah for example) in those sorts of colours, you'd need to chemically bleach the wood for days first in a highly caustic solution at very high temperatures in order to partially de-lignate the wood (and it would still look pretty awful and be far weaker wood afterwards regardless).

For those new to wood biology, extractives make up only about 3-5% of a wood's volume, but they are the parts of the wood that provide most of the wood's natural colour and figuring - these extractives also contribute to the wood's unique mechanical properties. The other 95% is largely a cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin cellular matrix in a variety of different physical arrangements).

This is why you never see hardwood flooring, quality wooden furniture, or hand-made personal wooden items or artworks in those sorts of colours. Any wood strong enough to do any of those jobs properly is largely impervious to wood dye, while the woods that DO take up dye readily are usually far too weak and soft to fulfill any of these sorts of roles properly.

The handles are therefore probably heavily treated fineline (a manufactured timber product made from veneer off-cuts). Fineline is good stuff in that it reduces wastage and the resource pressure on our forrests, but when you dye the wood that colour, a lot of the environmental benefits fineline delivers are largely lost via the chemical dying process.

 

[P1ngP0ng3r]

falcima jest wolniejsza, bardziej czujesz drewno, a ostrze jest słabsze.

Hmmm...could it be your subjective opinion and pending of the weight of both blades?
These are the specs from BTY:
Falcima Reaction 10.9 , Vribration 9.7
Hadraw5 Reaction 10.7 , Vibration 9.3

 

[H3R0]

Hmmm...could it be your subjective opinion and pending of the weight of both blades?
These are the specs from BTY:
Falcima Reaction 10.9 , Vribration 9.7
Hadraw5 Reaction 10.7 , Vibration 9.3

View attachment 29393

Very interesting graph. New all wood blades are much faster and have more vibration, just like some innerforce blades, and they are just below popular viscaria types.
I think Butterfly wants to fill in the gap of blades that are almost viscaria but are not carbon.

 

[lodro]

whenever I see heavily dyed wood in the handle, I immediately think "cheap wood".

which brings me to the question : What would be the use of a hard expensive wood in a handle ?

 

[turbozed]

Based on the handle insert, the actual name of the blade should be two words: "Had Raw"

So any guesses as to what completes the phrase? Coming from Japan, it may be safe to assume that the answer is "Had Raw Fish"

But I'm gonna go with the x-rated version personally.

 

[enoxzr]

Would be interesting to see a comparison between this blade and the Stiga Cybershape Wood. I reckon they might be very close in many aspects.

 

[Wakkibatty]

which brings me to the question : What would be the use of a hard expensive wood in a handle ?

Vibration management, flex control, superior aesthetics, blade balance and product longevity are the main reasons. There are many other reasons besides 🙂

• Vibrations typically don't travel across large density shifts in wood very easily. If the ply sandwich in a blade's playing surface has an unfortunate natural resonance frequency and vibrates more than you'd ideally like, using some dense wood handle scales in the handle both dampens some of these vibrations and resists them being transferred to your hand. (It's staggering the difference a set of good quality handle scales can make here)

• The handle scales on a blade form part of the fulcrum against which your blade flexes. If you use harder wood in the handle, then impact forces have a comparitively firmer fulcrum to leverage against, and the blade is more prone to flexing the way you want.

• Quality hardwoods are denser, harder, and therefore last longer than softer woods do, especially on a handle where they are constantly exposed to sweat and abrasion from callouses on your hands (and if your hands aren't calloused then clearly you ain't doing enough multiball practice 🤣🤣).

• High quality hardwoods can be very heavy (or at least a lot of Australian Native species certainly are!) and including them in a handle makes for a brilliant counterweight to balance the blade if your playing surface's ply sandwich is on the heavy side.

• Good quality hardwoods are just stunning to look at -- not only are they hard to dye, but they really don't need it in my view:

The chocolate wood is Black Walnut: Average density circa 620 kg/M3

The tiger-striped wood is Karri-oak from my parent's property in rural WA. Average Density: 890 kg / M3

Black Walnut again, teamed with either Coach wood or Jarrah (I forget which). The striped wood on the playing surface is Tasmanian Blackheart Sassafras.

Black Walnut: 620 kg/M3
Aust. Coachwood: 610 kg/m3
Jarrah: 790 kg/m3
Blackheart Sassafras: 610kg/M3

(NB: Despite the abundance of high density woods in this blade, by adding balsa into the mix, the total weight of this blade is just 65grams. This particular blade now belongs to Geoff Salter in Scotland -- just won his first national title with it. 😎😎)

For comparison purposes:

Balsa: 65 - 240 kg/M3
Kiri: 220-280 kg/M3
Ayous / WRC ≈ 350 kg/M3

All these are low density woods

Medium density woods:
Hinoki: ≈ 420 kg/M3
Limba: 550 kg /M3
Koto: 595 kg / M3

Once you get over the 600kg /M3 Mark, that's when you're into the mid-high to high density range.

 

[Radek 30]

However, when someone writes through the spruce, you can feel the elasticity and some strange catapult that does not hold the ball, which translates into control in the game, but overall it is a good blade.

 

[turbozed]

I just had a few hits with one today. This thing is faaaast for a 5 ply blade. It's felt faster than any of my blades including my inner carbon blades (1440 hz). Could be just the rubbers that were on it (Rakza Z and G1). Felt pretty good and easy spin generation on low impact.

Think it's a very good option for intermediate loopers looking for fast all-wood feeling blade. For $55 or so here in Japan I think it's pretty good value. I'm really curious as to how it'd feel with tacky Chinese rubbers.

 

[Mods]

Now I’m playing about two weeks with this Hadraw 5 and actually really fast blade. Before I said that speed about the same with Korbel Japan, but after few weeks I think Hadraw 5 is faster. Topspin from FH with Tenergy 05 are spin “monster” and really powerful. The same opponents now really confuse when they get my topspin. Actually I was thinking about ALC blade when I played with Korbel, but now I think this 5-ply all wood game changer and I really prefer all wood, so now I keep playing with Hadraw 5.

p.s. now I’m curious how it works with Dignics 05 or something similar rubbers.

 

[JediJesseS]

I played with Hadraw 5 for three weeks, I'm strongly impressed. Paired with the new Vega Pro H on FH and Tenergy 19 on BH. I thought it may be slow, but it is solidly fast with something in between the feel of all wood and carbon. It does not vibrate shakily much but rather you get a clear touch through to your hand, less "sharp" than ALC. Compared to FZD ALC it feels I lost only a small bit of speed but gained significant spin in return.

The standout message on this blade I would say is "confidence". I can swing more aggressively and not be as concerned about the ball going long, and play short game with increased consistency. The downsides I have felt are less ability to absorb and redirect very fast balls from the opponent, the loss of some easily accessed speed may be more important for some player's games than mine, and the price point in USD feels slightly high.

I think it's a standout that sits in a great spot for many players, and also brings a little extra something special that I wasn't expecting. Fantastic buy.

 

[Wrighty67]

I played with Hadraw 5 for three weeks, I'm strongly impressed. Paired with the new Vega Pro H on FH and Tenergy 19 on BH. I thought it may be slow, but it is solidly fast with something in between the feel of all wood and carbon. It does not vibrate shakily much but rather you get a clear touch through to your hand, less "sharp" than ALC. Compared to FZD ALC it feels I lost only a small bit of speed but gained significant spin in return.

The standout message on this blade I would say is "confidence". I can swing more aggressively and not be as concerned about the ball going long, and play short game with increased consistency. The downsides I have felt are less ability to absorb and redirect very fast balls from the opponent, the loss of some easily accessed speed may be more important for some player's games than mine, and the price point in USD feels slightly high.

I think it's a standout that sits in a great spot for many players, and also brings a little extra something special that I wasn't expecting. Fantastic buy.

Sounds very promising- I’m looking forward to trying mine

 

[lodro]

(and if your hands aren't calloused then clearly you ain't doing enough multiball practice 🤣🤣).

Ohhh, you know me so well. 😁
Thank you for this great write up but I now have a question:
This blade is hardly used because it vibrates so much I am always scared that it might vibrate all the fillings out of my teeth. Would a nice hard wood handle fix this ?

 

[Wakkibatty]

Ohhh, you know me so well. 😁
Thank you for this great write up but I now have a question:
This blade is hardly used because it vibrates so much I am always scared that it might vibrate all the fillings out of my teeth. Would a nice hard wood handle fix this ?

View attachment 29486

Potentially yes -- though it depends on just how dense the combined wood & composites in your blade really are, where they are located, and what frequency range they're vibrating at.

To clarify -- To control vibration, what you actually want is a big difference in average density between the handle scales, and the rest of the blade's wood sandwich on the whole.

Dense handle scales are a great way to achieve a big density difference, but it only works when the average density of the rest of the blade itself is comparatively low (and most of the time, it is).

If however you happen to have a particularly heavy and/or dense blade sandwich, that's when you typically want light and low density handle scales instead (...or else a truly SUPER hard and dense handle wood like Ipe, Mulga, or Gidgee.... but that will also make your blade weigh a proverbial ton!)

Basically, the bigger the average density difference between handle scales and blade, the harder it is for vibrations to pass from the blade through the handle to your hand.

Probably best to send me a PM on TTD if you want to know more about what causes the issue in your blade, and how best to fix it... (don't want to derail the thread )

 

[davidsyd828]

Any website in Japan which will ship to Australia? Would like to try it.

 

[SFF_lib]

It's a nice looking design, no question. Personally however, whenever I see heavily dyed wood in the handle, I immediately think "cheap wood".

I have no idea what type of wood they are using in their handles -- maybe it's some species of high-quality white wood that takes dye well... but at that price point I somehow doubt it.

The best quality hardwoods (and softwoods) typically don't absorb dye readily, if at all.(There are a few exceptions, but not many). Normally the extractive levels in these woods are too high, and the lignin layers surrounding the tree's cells are too thick and largely impervious to mineral dyes.

To dye high quality, extractive rich hardwoods (like jarrah for example) in those sorts of colours, you'd need to chemically bleach the wood for days first in a highly caustic solution at very high temperatures in order to partially de-lignate the wood (and it would still look pretty awful and be far weaker wood afterwards regardless).

For those new to wood biology, extractives make up only about 3-5% of a wood's volume, but they are the parts of the wood that provide most of the wood's natural colour and figuring - these extractives also contribute to the wood's unique mechanical properties. The other 95% is largely a cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin cellular matrix in a variety of different physical arrangements).

This is why you never see hardwood flooring, quality wooden furniture, or hand-made personal wooden items or artworks in those sorts of colours. Any wood strong enough to do any of those jobs properly is largely impervious to wood dye, while the woods that DO take up dye readily are usually far too weak and soft to fulfill any of these sorts of roles properly.

The handles are therefore probably heavily treated fineline (a manufactured timber product made from veneer off-cuts). Fineline is good stuff in that it reduces wastage and the resource pressure on our forrests, but when you dye the wood that colour, a lot of the environmental benefits fineline delivers are largely lost via the chemical dying process.

Thank you for the insight. As someone with a science degree I appreciate your explanation which makes sense 👍👍

 

[Wakkibatty]

Any website in Japan which will ship to Australia? Would like to try it.

Yep. 🙂

Professional Japan Sports Equipment - Nishohi Australia

Perfect your skills with the finest sports equipment from Japan. Rhythmic Gymnastics, Table tennis, Judo, Karate. Made in Japan. Fast shipping to Australia.

www.nishohi.com

 

[lodro]

Potentially yes -- though it depends on just how dense the combined wood & composites in your blade really are, where they are located, and what frequency range they're vibrating at.

To clarify -- To control vibration, what you actually want is a big difference in average density between the handle scales, and the rest of the blade's wood sandwich on the whole.

Dense handle scales are a great way to achieve a big density difference, but it only works when the average density of the rest of the blade itself is comparatively low (and most of the time, it is).

If however you happen to have a particularly heavy and/or dense blade sandwich, that's when you typically want light and low density handle scales instead (...or else a truly SUPER hard and dense handle wood like Ipe, Mulga, or Gidgee.... but that will also make your blade weigh a proverbial ton!)

Basically, the bigger the average density difference between handle scales and blade, the harder it is for vibrations to pass from the blade through the handle to your hand.

Probably best to send me a PM on TTD if you want to know more about what causes the issue in your blade, and how best to fix it... (don't want to derail the thread )

This is what Sergio thinks :
"""The theory is correct, to stop vibrations from propagating you need to have a big difference in density between materials. The resonant frequency depends on mass, if you change the mass you change the natural frequency it vibrates at. In practice, this is more of a romantic idea... There are a lot of vibration modes occurring when you strike a ball, and how the blade vibrates is dictated by the construction, materials and shape. If the vibration you are feeling is for example at the tip of your index finger, changing the handle will do absolutely nothing about it. I've made blades with low density, hollowed wood, which had virtually no vibration, but I've also made blades with solid dense wood handles that had a lot of vibration. I've also swapped from one to another on the same blade without a perceivable change in feeling.

In the case of that specific blade, the biggest reason is that it has an extremely light Ayous core. Low weight is nice and all, but it has consequences on the feeling of the blade. An inner fiber blade with 83g and a balance of 2.4cm isn't common at all, but that low density core is also less stable. If the handle pieces were completely solid then I would say that there wasn't that could be done, BUT! they are indeed slightly hollowed. I still don't think it will make a big difference, but a dense handle might help to tame some of those vibration modes."""




www.sdcttblades.com / Insta: @sdc_tt_blades

 

[Loop Lob Smash]

Based on the handle insert, the actual name of the blade should be two words: "Had Raw"

So any guesses as to what completes the phrase? Coming from Japan, it may be safe to assume that the answer is "Had Raw Fish"

But I'm gonna go with the x-rated version personally.

I've had raw chicken in an exclusive restaurant in Japan (I was very nervous, but it was actually OK). I doubt 'Had Raw Chicken' is a name that would gain much traction in the market though