Cleaning rubbers

In march I cut a new h3 rubber that was produced in 2012. I'm still playing with it, just played last night. Still perform great.

And the one-sidedness continues...

Thanks carl. Your sense of humour at least made me smile. That's the big difference. You make one think when others make one laugh about their attitude.
IMHO this is way more result oriented than insulting people and running into arguments on every tt-forum.
But I guess everybody's probably got to do what makes sense to him.

I now think i've got it:
Either maybe i make too much fuss about it, or maybe you guys just make too little.

Well basically everyone can do with his racket whatever he's up to, but it is what it is:
(and from my point of view...)
it's quite insanitary, unhygienic, pretty gross and hence quite disrespectful for your hitting partner!
The ball will carry the stuff from your racket to your opponent's racket...
Very respectful! Thanks for that!

Do you also give people you haven't met before a bear hug when you're all sweated up?

That would really be awfully gross and from reading your posts, I actually don't think so...

But as i already said:
To each his own and it might just be me makin' a fuss out of it...

[Emoji6]

I have full respect for peoples fear of germs and bacteria.. on the other hand, penicillin is actually old mold(mould)...

Just saying..

(I whipe my rubbers with water after play. During play I breathe om my rubbers and whipe them with my palm.)

More importantly I whipe of the soles of my shoes on my socks. Great trick I picked up playing floorball)

For those who do not have sweat from Der_Echte , here is video how i`m doing it
and you will have tackiness like hell
and i have forgot...
NEWER USE SOAP or anything like it onto a rubber ...
i have destroyed my first H3 this way .. the rubber gets absolutely dry and hard like stone, it will lose tackiness and it will crackle after three months of cleaning it this way.

That's probably why whenever I go to different countries and invites forum members to play with, no body seems to be able to make it...

Hahaha
That's.a good one.

Well since i get the feeling i already wrote more than i've should've, this shall be my very last statement on this topic.

Regarding penicillin of course you are right, but if we ask a doctor, i believe nine out of ten will tell that prevention is better than curing (Well actually i think it's ten out of ten, but taking into account that there always might be one nutty professor) [emoji6]

Liten said:

I have full respect for peoples fear of germs and bacteria.. on the other hand, penicillin is actually old mold(mould)...

Just saying..

(I whipe my rubbers with water after play. During play I breathe om my rubbers and whipe them with my palm.)

More importantly I whipe of the soles of my shoes on my socks. Great trick I picked up playing floorball)

Click to expand...

Zhang Jike and many top players breathe on and clean their paddle all the time. We've not heard anyone screaming about this behavior. Or maybe people do and I just have't heard about it. I pity the opponent who has to deal with ZJK's germs from his mouth. Or even inspect his racket before the match starts.

Not that this behavior is good. But it might have been better to get bent out of shape about that.

Suga D said:

Hahaha
Regarding penicillin of course you are right, but if we ask a doctor, i believe nine out of ten will tell that prevention is better than curing (Well actually i think it's ten out of ten, but taking into account that there always might be one nutty professor) [emoji6]

Click to expand...

Actually I think you are wrong on that one. I don't think a single doctor would tell you that a germ free environment is good for you.

I understand what you are saying, I'm a germophobe, I don't like people touching my paddle, keyboard, mouse or anything I touch on a regular basis. I have a obsessive-compulsion disorder and feel as if I have to wash my hands all the time. People are disgusting... I'm still under treatment for it though, because it has a severe impact on my life.

Bottom line is that germs are good for your immune system and the amount of germs spread the way you describe, from otherwise healthy individuals, are probably just good for you and your immune system.

It's a completely different thing if the person in question is actually sick, but then he has no business playing table tennis to begin with.

EDIT: What I'm trying to convey is that the bacteria we have around us actually do help to do what Suga D said, it helps our immune system to prevent illness. So Suga D is actually correct, a doctor would say that prevention is better, Suga D's idea of prevention is what I think is wrong. Just to clarify things.

Water damage surfaces too sticky? It is spent if clean water? I have a DHS G777, thnks

Broken said:

Actually I think you are wrong on that one. I don't think a single doctor would tell you that a germ free environment is good for you.

I understand what you are saying, I'm a germophobe, I don't like people touching my paddle, keyboard, mouse or anything I touch on a regular basis. I have a obsessive-compulsion disorder and feel as if I have to wash my hands all the time. People are disgusting... I'm still under treatment for it though, because it has a severe impact on my life.

Bottom line is that germs are good for your immune system and the amount of germs spread the way you describe, from otherwise healthy individuals, are probably just good for you and your immune system.

It's a completely different thing if the person in question is actually sick, but then he has no business playing table tennis to begin with.

EDIT: What I'm trying to convey is that the bacteria we have around us actually do help to do what Suga D said, it helps our immune system to prevent illness. So Suga D is actually correct, a doctor would say that prevention is better, Suga D's idea of prevention is what I think is wrong. Just to clarify things.

Click to expand...

Even though I felt basically everything is said, i feel the need to reply to this. Sorry for having to break my promise.

Well, thanks for your thoughts on this.
I must say, that i agree but also disagree.

I agree that the overusage (or misuse) of sanitizing liquids literally kills one's immune-system. This goes for germs and bacteria your body knows how to handle.

But if I tell this to a southamerican native from amazone rainforest like e.g. the yanomani whose tribe and fellow tribes have nearly been eradicated by european flu which their body was impossible to handle,
he would probably punch me in my face for saying that.

And this is not only recently. As we all know the Americas have been very populated, even way before europeans arrived.

So nevertheless i think there still are germs out there, that you're body doesn't know how to deal with, therefore i still stand by what i said:
Prevention's better than curing.
[Emoji6]

Sorry for the derailing from rubber cleaners though.

BTW: Thanks for your vid, Bobpuls.
That tackiness Test is quite impressive. I couldn't do that with my H3Neo.
I was also surprised that the H8 is even more tacky than the TG2.
I always thought it was the other way around.
Thanks for enlightening.

bobpuls said:

For those who do not have sweat from Der_Echte , here is video how i`m doing it

and you will have tackiness like hell

and i have forgot...
NEWER USE SOAP or anything like it onto a rubber ...
i have destroyed my first H3 this way .. the rubber gets absolutely dry and hard like stone, it will lose tackiness and it will crackle after three months of cleaning it this way.

Click to expand...

Suga D said:

Even though I felt basically everything is said, i feel the need to reply to this. Sorry for having to break my promise.

Well, thanks for your thoughts on this.
I must say, that i agree but also disagree.

I agree that the overusage (or misuse) of sanitizing liquids literally kills one's immune-system. This goes for germs and bacteria your body knows how to handle.

But if I tell this to a southamerican native from amazone rainforest like e.g. the yanomani whose tribe and fellow tribes have nearly been eradicated by european flu which their body was impossible to handle,
he would probably punch me in my face for saying that.

Click to expand...

I have never seen a person from a south american amazone rain forest training at my table tennis club tough, have you seen may at your club?

You are comparing apples and oranges here. We where discussing what you said about germs transferred by playing table tennis. It is quite a leap going from that to people dying from the flu in the amazons.

What you said was in error, just accept and move on, anything you say after this will only make you look like a fool.

bobpuls said:

For those who do not have sweat from Der_Echte , here is video how i`m doing it

and you will have tackiness like hell

and i have forgot...
NEWER USE SOAP or anything like it onto a rubber ...
i have destroyed my first H3 this way .. the rubber gets absolutely dry and hard like stone, it will lose tackiness and it will crackle after three months of cleaning it this way.

Click to expand...

I've looked at those videos, and they where quite informative. I have a question, if those videos are yours?

The text in the second video says that the rubbers where cleaned with cleaner or tap water. How often do you clean with tap water and how often do you use the cleaner to achieve that result?

Broken said:

I've looked at those videos, and they where quite informative. I have a question, if those videos are yours?

The text in the second video says that the rubbers where cleaned with cleaner or tap water. How often do you clean with tap water and how often do you use the cleaner to achieve that result?

Click to expand...

Thanks ... this videos are my work.
And i clean with tap water after each game ... and at the end off the day i`m using the cleaner.

Gotta love what this discussion has turned into. I guess we are a twisted group.

I agree that the fear of germs is not going to protect you. That your immune system gets stronger from facing small amounts of different germs.

In my work, I often put my hands on hundreds of different people in a week. Most of them are sweating. My hands touch their sweating flesh quite regularly. I very rarely get sick. And I can say with confidence that I am quite sure that has never caused me to get sick.

Sweat on rubbers which then evaporates and then the ball touches the rubber that previously touched the sweat that has long since evaporated and then the ball flies through the air: I don't think you are going to get sick from that.

That weird thing Dima does when he sticks the ball in his mouth to clean it, now that is a bit disgusting and if I was playing someone and they did that I may wonder or even ask what their problem is. But I think the only person who would get sick from that, under normal conditions, is the person sticking the ball in his mouth.

Now, if you were flying to certain parts of the world, you would be required to get immunizations for certain diseases that you have had no exposure to in your life. That is different than what we are talking about and things like that, you are not likely to catch from the sweat of a healthy person anyway.

But I guess everyone has a right to his own beliefs and phobias.


Sent from the Subterranean Workshop by Telepathy

bobpuls said:

Thanks ... this videos are my work.
And i clean with tap water after each game ... and at the end off the day i`m using the cleaner.

Click to expand...

Ok, that often. I was taught that you should clean with water most of the time and use a cleaner once a week or even more seldom than that.

I'm not saying that what I was taught was correct either, how to clean your rubbers seem to be surrounded by quite a few myths and not that much solid facts, that's why I liked your videos. I'm all for a fact based discussion about things like this.

So, a follow up question. Using the procedure you use, what would you say is the average life time of a rubber?

A truly fact-based discussion would be based on an experiment n which rubbers were cleaned with different methods for a period of time, say 3 months. They would have the same playing time in the same room with the same player during those months. And we would need an objective measure of rubber performance and wear at the end. And you would probably want to repeat this for at least four rubbers in each group.

So without that, everything we have is anecdote (even if the anecdotes are communicated by videos). And, also, judging how much spin you are imparting on the ball is one of the most difficult and flawed things one reads on forums.

Anecdotal evidence is sometimes true. Often not.

I would therefore strongly argue that we really as a community don't know the best way to clean rubbers. We really don't. It is all anecdote. Based on completely uncontrolled observations.

People are really good at fooling themselves. That is why this kind of experimental method evolved, because it works, and other methods dont. And since we don't have any widely disseminated results like that for rubber cleaning, we don't know. Also, we don't know if we need different cleaning methods for tacky rubbers. It certainly wouldn't surprise me.

Continuing.

There are a lot of variables to control. Frequency of cleaning, how soon after play. Type of cloth or sponge. How many strokes and how hard you push the cloth or sponge against the rubber. Each cleaning method would need to be compared to some standard, such as distilled water.

There are a lot of things we don't know because it is too hard to really know them, and frankly not worth the effort to properly find out.

This is one. So I use tap water and a microfiber cloth. It is a guess. That is all it is. But really we are all making informed guesses about cleaning. And gluing. And rubbers that we buy. How we treat our aches and pains. Our shoes. Etc.

Broken said:

I have never seen a person from a south american amazone rain forest training at my table tennis club tough, have you seen may at your club?

You are comparing apples and oranges here. We where discussing what you said about germs transferred by playing table tennis. It is quite a leap going from that to people dying from the flu in the amazons.

What you said was in error, just accept and move on, anything you say after this will only make you look like a fool.

Click to expand...

Well, maybe you just can't (or rather don't want to) see a relation of my little example what germs and bacteria can cause.

See i live close to airport region, and one undertaker from a neighbour town had to burry somebody who was sick from SARS and who came to Germany and then deceased here. Now after a couple of days that undertaker was diagnosted to have caught SARS as well.. and then died.
End of story. No happy end. Especially not for his family.

So my phobia (at least to me) seems to be quite real...

Now let me ask you:
who would be considered as the bigger fool?

The one having phobias and exposing them on a tabletennis forum
or rather the fool belittleling it and trying to make fun of it?
And jumping on the bandwagon just to look smart wouldn't be considered as very brave anyways. Plus i think this kind of behaviour is not known as an indicator of a nice character...

[Emoji12]

Well, basically you can carry on trying to defend disgusting methods of rubber cleaning with body sweat.
But the question who is the bigger fool has now clearly been answered.

Thanks again.
[Emoji2]

If you get bear hugged by Der_Echte, the BAD bacteria and virus will be crushed along with your lungs and breath.

If somehow a virus gets by, all over Europe DM store sells 100 gram bottle of L-Ascorbate powder for a few Euros, which if you take a tsp each hour until saturation (you azz will tell you when) the virus will stop replicating and your body later removes them. A tiny quarter tsp or less of that stuff as daily maintenence does good for immune system, but many Europeans know that already and not so many Americans know.

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Yes Carl, individually and collectively, we are all twisted, but has potential to be good.

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