Homemade table tennis blade

jammmail said:

Wow. All the blades in this thread look amazing - beautiful bits of craftsmanship. Would love to have the talent to do that. If there’s ever any going spare let me know

Click to expand...

Hi -sorry I haven't responded to this I must have missed it. Thanks for the kind words. Although most of the blades I make are custom orders for people, I do have a significant number of blades which I've made for myself, in fact, too many! Feel free to PM if you are interested.

GinjaNinja said:

A few new blades, the first 3 are for colleagues from 2 of the different clubs I play with.
1) This is another of the cedar - textreme - douglas fir - kiri; 88g and 5.8mm thick. I do like this blade and so do a lot of other players. It has a really crisp feel but had loads of control. This is for Maurice who plays close to the table and takes the ball early. He picked this one after spending a good few hours testing! He's pairing it with Tibhar Evo rubbers. For those who may have read the Blade Builders thread, the mahogany for the handles was a skip find. Originally a pair of desk drawers!

View attachment 17593

2) and 3) These were 'ordered' at the same time so I made them side by side. This one is for Aaron, who now has 4 of my blades, this is also the second of this composition, he wanted a slightly different handle shape with it being more rounded.
Aaron is a level 3 coach and plays mid-distance strong topspin. It's great to get to play someone this good and get feedback on my blades from him. His topspin backhand is just awesome! He pairs this with Andro Rasanters and it's fast. Definitely an off+ set up. The brief for the handle was 'Egyptian'. The composition is Brazilian mahogany - ayous - twarron carbon - balsa. It's 7.2mm thick and 85g. The control is really good but it has a few extra gears which really works for his offensive/heavy spin game. The handle is anatomic, thicker than normal but rounded. It was based on an Andro Blax handle.
View attachment 17594
Here is a another view of the handles before they were glued on. Mahogany, beech, yew and walnut.
View attachment 17597

The second is the same but with a camphor burl and mahogany handle. This is for Sebi who has also has Rasanters on it.
View attachment 17595

4) This one is my first all wood blade made with epoxy. It has a slightly larger head size, 159 x 153 and is elm - ayous - ayous. 5.8mm thick and 91g. I've been wanted to try elm as an outer ply for a while, it's properties suggest it will be softer version of koto but not as soft as limba. My aim was for a controlled looping machine! I've not had chance to test it yet but a bounce test suggests all+ to off-. When I get chance I would like to build a hide glue version of this blade to see how the two compare.
The handle is also elm with some yew and basswood. I like to keep the handle simple when the outer veneer is complex. It's also a slightly different handle design.
View attachment 17596

Click to expand...

Sorry, I forgot to ass photos of the different layers!
Blade 1 and 2: Mahogany - ayous - twarron carbon - balsa


Blade 3 Cedar - textreme - douglas fir - kiri


Blade 4 Elm - ayous - ayous

Nate4s said:

Great looking blades, as always. I'll be interested to hear how number 4 plays - I really enjoy messing with a single variable (such as glue) and seeing the effects.

Click to expand...

Thanks Nate. I'm with you, I think it's the best way to really understand blade composition, just change one thing and note the difference. I wish I had more time to do this though. I've always thought that hide glue as slower than pu and epoxy but now I'm not too sure, I think this would be one way to find out. I'd then need to make one with pu!

Two new blades, the first is a kiri - aramid carbon - limba - limba composition with a laurel handle. 91g and 5.8mm thick. This is a version of an earlier blade I made with a kiri - aramid carbon - walnut - ash where I used hide glue between the medial and outer ply. I really liked the ash blade but wanted to try something with softer wood plies. The aramid carbon is thicker and heavier (150g psm) than the ash (70 gpsm) version. There is a real 'woody' feel to this blade, more like an all wood.


This is another balsa - twarron carbon - ayous - mahogany. 84g and 7.2mm thick. I've made a lot of these now. This is for one of the guys I train with, his third of mine. He got chance to play with someone else's blade with the same composition and wanted one! He also wanted a unique handle, which I think this is. It took some glueing and needed plenty of care. Complex design handles like this are exciting to make as you don't know exactly how it will end up until you shape it. Too many materials to list here, but there's ash, mahogany, beech, walnut, ayous and several others that I can remember!

So I built another elm - ayous - ayous blade but this time with PU glue. Originally I wanted to make it with hide glue but I was feeling a bit lazy and hadn't competed the prep work so went with PU instead. I'm was keen to perform a comparison between the two and see if there is much difference. This is not designed to be scientific in any way and there will be gaping holes in my research methodology throughout but hopefully it will provide some useful information.

Here are some initial comparisons:
1) Due to the lower viscosity, epoxy is easier to spread and cover the area to be glued. However, it does not expand and spread like PU and it takes longer to prepare as it has to be weighed and mixed separately. You do have to take care with the PU as it's easy to put too thick a layer on.
2) There is very little difference in weight. Both blades are within 0.5g of each other.
3) The thickness of the PU blade is 0.07mm thicker. So very little difference in the thickness of the glue layer. I think the 0.07mm may well be down to the differences in the wood but I'd need to build and test further blades to be sure,
4) Bond - both glues have strong adherence and there were no issues with the build on either of these blades.
5) Bounce test - this is the first time I noticed any real difference. Although the main pitch of the blades is the same there is a fuller, more resonant sound from the PU blade. I then used a simple spectrum analyser (app) and found that the main frequency was around 1150Hz, however, there were a greater number of lower and higher frequencies with the PU blade. This was all quite subtle and wasn't obvious at first. I would suggest the PU blade felt better, but the difference was only small.
6) The PU blade appears to have greater flexibility. I tested by moving the handle up and down whilst it overhangs the edge of a work surface to see how much give/movement there is.

My next step is to put the same rubbers on both blades and get testing. I also plan to ask as many players as possible to compare too. Although there are some differences, I would suggest they are subtle. I have already tried the epoxy blade and it's very nice, it feels all plus, and has great control. It loops well and feels very secure. My only criticism is that it's not that exciting! Maybe this is due to the test rubbers (Galaxy moon) or the fact it's slower than I'm used to. I'll feedback at a later point when they've been tested.

So I have had some time to compare the two elm blades and here are my initial thoughts. I've only had 30 mins on a robot, and about 1 hour practice session where I also got the head coach to try it too. I put xiom vega pro (fh) and moon pro (bh) rubbers on both, same thickness.
1) Overall, the performance is very similar. Both have fantastic control, probably the best of any blade I've made. The speed is also good and slightly faster than the all plus that frequency on the spectrum analyser suggested, more off-. The blade works well for all shots, topspin, push, chop, serve but both the coach and I noticed that blocks were superb. Topsin is very controlled and it creates a nice arc with a medium throw.
2) There are differences though. The pu blade has a touch more flex and this came through on heavy topsin shots where there was a little more pace and spin. The difference was not huge but still noticeable. I think average level players like myself wouldn't notice this but those advanced players with strong 'whip like' top spins would notice that extra zip.
3) The feel is also slightly different. There are a greater range of vibrations with the pu blade, it feels more alive in your hand. Again the difference isn't huge but it is noiceable.

One thing I will say is that I'm really happy with this composition whether epoxy or pu. It's perfect for a controlled allround/offensive game for intermediate players, especially for those who enjoy blocking. As for which is best, pu or epoxy? This would be a personal preference, I couldn't make up my mind. I liked the feel of the pu blade but felt I got a touch more control and security on my backhand wth the epoxy blade. However, I'd like more time to test and for other people to try it before making any concrete conclusions.
For those blade makers out there, the exact composition is 3.15mm ayous core, 0.8mm ayous medial at 90 degrees and a 0.6mm elm outer. The head size on both is 160 x 152. Elm sits somewhere between limba and koto in terms of its hardness and I'll be definitely using for other blades in the future. One to add to the list of 'alternatives to limba and koto'!

hipnotic said:

I never used epoxy in my blades and probably never will because i feel PU gives great results. Also, i was wondering if it could be used as a substitute for resin and found it can be done, so i'm gonna try that in the future, maybe with glass fiber at first.

Click to expand...

This is the first time I've used epoxy for an allwood blade, previously I've used pva, hide and pu. I've been happy with pu and hide but I wanted to try something different and I'm glad I did. Many other blade makers use epoxy and are happy with it and I can see why.
In your post are you talking about using pu for the carbon layers? Not sure how that would work as my understanding is that you need a dedicated laminating resin to bring about the key properties of carbon fibre. Will the carbon harden in the way it is designed too? Maybe so, maybe not, and perhaps you may hit upon something unique that works well. Only one way to find out!

bobpuls said:

Epoxy is meant to be used with carbon ... do not use epoxy resin if you do not want the full potential from carbon ,but if so then carbon is only a dead weight.

Click to expand...

Hi Bob, is this in reference to hipnotic's post? I want quite sure what you meant, sorry for being stupid!

hipnotic said:

Yes, i was talking about using PU for the composite layers. I don't know if would work with carbon, but i found this report of good results with glass fiber so i might try it.

https://www.swaylocks.com/groups/polyurethane-glue-fiberglass

Click to expand...

i think us blademakers should be experimenting! So give it a good and feedback. Not many blademakers use glass fibre either but I think it's a good compromise between allwood and a carbon blades. It certainly works well with thick balsa cores.

cfagyal said:

I've also used Epoxy Resin for wood layers and not just with Carbon and found it worked well. I recently made a blade that the head pro at my club bought that instead of PU between the top and medial ply, I just continued to use Epoxy Resin. He absolutely loves the blade and just asked me to create an exact (as best as I could) duplicate so he'd have a backup blade. So I'm with GinjaNinja, that using Epoxy Resin between wood layers works quite nicely. It produces a slightly stiffer feel, but that may be what the customer is looking for.

Click to expand...

I think the key here is what Chris says about what the player or customer is looking for and what feels right to them.
I had one hour with 2 different players earlier this week who wanted to test some of my blades. One liked a Limba hide glue composition the most, the other preferred the mahogany/twarron/balsa (see earlier posts). What was interesting that the guy who has now ordered the balsa blade, is currently using an ALC balsa and thought he'd never like balsa!
With regards to glue, there are merits in all of them, what I am trying to do is to understand them more through direct comparison.

Test session three for the Elm blades;
After enjoying practising with these blades I thought I'd use one for a league match I had this week. The team were the strongest in the division so I thought I'd nothing to lose. I decided to use the epoxy blade as that felt so comfortable on the backhand. I'd never beaten any of the players in their team and after winning 2 out of the 3 matches, one of which 3-0, I looked down at this new 'magic wand' I'd created convinced it was the perfect blade for me and that epoxy on all wood was the way to go. It was then I'd realised I'd picked up the wrong one and was using the PU blade instead! Anyway, guess which one I prefer now? Perhaps this shows I shouldn't be allowed to test my own blades.

chintanmashroo said:

Which one did u use?
Kiri ayous elm ?


Sent from my using Tapatalk

Click to expand...

Hey Chris, it's ayous - ayous - elm. Post 248 for the full details!