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If you can source one for me I'm happy to give it a go and see what we find out 🤣🤣 (if we can do a little destructive testing on the thing all the better 😂😂) Hands-on experimentation is always so much better than looking stuff up online anyway -- so much of stuff published about blades online...

Thanks for the tip :) Never actually seen a W968 up close in the flesh, but heard plenty about the playing feel. What's the ply sandwich composition on those do you know? It might be fun to try and re-create it. I also agree with you about the longevity & quality of Butterfly blades. While some...

If you seal a blade too thoroughly, you change its playing feel. The more sealant there is on a blade, the faster it gets. This means that the sealant on tem is always very thin, and easily compromised For this reason, if your hand's sweat a lot then the blade isn't going to last very long. The...

The reaction differs from species to species, and will vary depending on how much and how well it's sealed. Laminated blades move less, but it depends on their composition... If there's a lot of low density woods in there, it's much harder to keep them straight. Kiri in particular can move like...

@ 12.36: They're using a thin film of plastic to check for gaps in between the playing surface and the handle scales. If you don't sand the bottom of your handle scale's perfectly flat every time, you can get slightly high corners. Ditto if you don't use enough glue or use the wrong amount of...

My exact thought! Thanks souch for posting this, I found it absolutely fascinating 😍😍 The obvious omission of the gluing and pressing processes was a disappointment. I've seen other videos like this from various manufacturers which show some of the presses at work, and a couple which show the...

You're actually asking an excellent question here, in trying to figure out exactly what a high-quality blade is in the first place. Very few large manufacturers actually bother to define it properly in their marketing materials (for entirely selfish reasons IMO), possibly because they don't...

To my mind, the best blade for somebody is the one that: - they can afford to buy, use and replace if necessary, - which is made to the highest possible standards, and of the best available materials at its price point, - that feels the most comfortable for that person to use, and - that...

My take -- for what it's worth: There's three factors in play here with to the OP's dilemma -- they break down to in-game factors, after-game factors, and peace of mind factors In-game, in a tournament, you are there to win. Your opponent knows this, and is there for the same reason. Playing...

Myself I just use a spray of water and a soft chamois. (Some of the synthetic chamois sponges you can get are actually pretty abrasive, so getting a good quality soft one is a good idea). Under ITTF rules, water is the only thing you can use to clean your rubbers anyway. I thought about...

How much difference in vibration did the horizontal core make -- a lot of a little? 🙂 I've made a few 5-ply all wood blades with WRC cores and really liked them -- I find it's a great (but pricey!) substitute for ayous, especially in a medial layer. I've never tried a WRC horizontal core...

Depends on where you are located 🙂🙂 Currently you can only buy them through us directly, or one of our stockists / representatives. If you're in Europe or the UK you can buy them there through our stockist Peter Aird. He's based in Scotland but travels a lot through Europe on various...

I agree -- In terms of preventing impact damage, then absolutely it works 🙂 I do this with a lot of my blades, and it's a brilliant technique to protect the edge grain. In terms of preventing flex-related material fatigue however, it would only help if it prevents the playing surface from...

Without actually bouncing a ball on them, it's just impossible to say sorry 🙂🙂 Individual pieces of wood vary hugely in their density distribution -- even with a wood like Hinoki. I constantly buy sequential veneers for all my blades so I can get the best possible grain match on both FH and BH...

Well, there's Skollawood for one, obviously (thank you for that opportunity to plug my product 🤣🤣 it felt tacky to say it without prompting 😂😂)... ...but there's also: ...various other cypress species (Hinoki is a particularly fragile wood compared to other cypress trees like macrocarpa...

Yes and no. No, in that virtually every conifer / softwood is capable of failing in this manner if it's subjected to enough stress for long enough. Softwoods just doesn't have the same physical transverse grain strength that hardwoods do. And yes, in that there's other woods out there that...

The weakness in Hinoki comes not from the sides of the blade, but from within the grain. On most woods, there is a huge density / hardness / strength deficiency between latewood and hardwood. This difference in density is anywhere from 8 times the density of the earlywood, to 32 times, which is...

The weakness in Hinoki is inherently built into its structure, so there's only so much you can do to protect it. It's latewood (i.e.:winter growth) is extremely dense compared to its earlywood (summer growth). This creates geometrically regular large density shifts in the wood, each of which...

I agree -- Stiga were huge in the 1980s and 90's --now they're just a shadow of their former selves. Not sure why they lost their way, but I believe a failure to continue innovating is part of it. 🤔 There's so much space to innovate with blades that still hasn't been touched -- even just within...

Hinoki is fast because it's extremely springy, but it's hardly unique in that regard. There are numerous alternatives -- e.g: European cypress, Asian cypress, Port oxford cedar, western red cedar, Sköllawood, gabon/okoume, ...even select pieces of low density Huon pine can sometimes come close...