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Been busy making a few blades lately. The last blade I posted my coach liked so much he bought it as soon as I showed it to him. He put Tenergy 05 on it, and says its an absolute dream to play with. Really controllable with a huge sweet spot, and really lively with a significant extra gear on more powerful shots. That makes sense given the Hinoki top two plies above a stiff carbon medial above a kiri core.
Lately i've made a couple new blades, and purchased a bunch more different types of carbon. One of the blades ended up being an "experiment" that went a little wrong in that I discovered that some of the templates I'd had laser cut recently I didn't pay close enough attention to the dimensions and i'd ended up skewing them to having the handle 3mm too long and the blade itself 3mm too short. You'll see that on the picture. The blade however plays great, and is using a top ply i've never heard of anyone using before. The composition is 5 ply: Andiroba - Mahogany - Western Red Cedar - Mahogany - Andiroba. Andirbao is an african wood that has visual charasterics a lot like mahogany, and is actually just a bit harder and a bit stiffer than genuine mahogany. So I thought it might play like a slightly stiffer walnut-mahogany-kiri combination that has been popular for Ginja. It did end up testing very similarly to such a blade. It weighed in at 87g roughly when finished, and 5.9mm thick. Plays very well even if a bit small. I barely notice it when using it. The handle is made out of a combination of Golden Teak, Big Leaf Maple Burl, Ambonya end-cap, with a combination of Mahogany and Pine for the veneer in between the various wood pieces., and mahogany + hinoki for between the main handle and the end cap.
The next recent blade is a 7 ply wood combination with a Hinoki top ply. I then used two different spruces as medial plies, Red Spruce and Lutz Spruce. Red Spruce is right below the top ply and is 0.8mm thick, and Lutz is just above the core and is 0.6mm thick. Lutz Spruce is a bit stiffer than Red Spruce and also a bit harder, but the differences are very minor. As a core I used a 2mm Hinoki core. Hinoki is very heavy to be used as a core, so some extra weight saving measures were needed to accomplish the goal of under 95g. I had to hollow out both handles (I used some heavier woods as you'll see), but the results are wonderful feeling. 94.4G, and a very interesting spectrum analyzer profile unlike any i've ever seen. This blade has all 7 plies being in the 490-510 range for Janka Hardness. The profile of the blade ended up being a very even fairly flat curve that peaked around 1072 Hz, but didn't drop much at all until nearly 2000 Hz. I've never seen such a flat profile. It makes for a very smooth feeling blade with a serious kick due to the flexibility of the hinoki top ply combined with the stiff inner plies. It is taking some getting used to playing with it, but I think once I do i'll quite like it. Handle is made out of Pomelle Bubinga + Birdseye Maple surrounded by small end grain strips of Birdseye Maple. An Ambonya encap and Mahogay + Hinoki used at various areas between wood plies.
Finally, for the interested. I've also been adding to my tools lately. I purchased a nice dust collector for my router, and an additional Hand Saw (bottom saw in the picture below) plus a new router bit (the middle one in the picture below). I discovered on some types of wood a compression trim bit like the Ultimate Flush Trim compression bit in the picture below can cause some splintering of the wood while routing, or tearout. It produces a super clean and smooth finish, but I have to be careful which woods I use it on.
Router+Dust Collector setup:
Hand Saws (Top is a Rob Cosman Dovetail Saw, bottom is the new Bad Axe Toolworks Bayonet precision Carcasse Saw). I use these when building handles a lot to get very crisp glass smooth cuts for the individual handle pieces.
And finally the router bits. From left to right, my 3 most used ones: 5/8" Freud Quadra-Cut Roundover Bit, A Freud Down shear Helix Double-fluted Flush Trim Bit, and a Highland Woodworking Ultimate Flush Compression Trim Bit
Lately i've made a couple new blades, and purchased a bunch more different types of carbon. One of the blades ended up being an "experiment" that went a little wrong in that I discovered that some of the templates I'd had laser cut recently I didn't pay close enough attention to the dimensions and i'd ended up skewing them to having the handle 3mm too long and the blade itself 3mm too short. You'll see that on the picture. The blade however plays great, and is using a top ply i've never heard of anyone using before. The composition is 5 ply: Andiroba - Mahogany - Western Red Cedar - Mahogany - Andiroba. Andirbao is an african wood that has visual charasterics a lot like mahogany, and is actually just a bit harder and a bit stiffer than genuine mahogany. So I thought it might play like a slightly stiffer walnut-mahogany-kiri combination that has been popular for Ginja. It did end up testing very similarly to such a blade. It weighed in at 87g roughly when finished, and 5.9mm thick. Plays very well even if a bit small. I barely notice it when using it. The handle is made out of a combination of Golden Teak, Big Leaf Maple Burl, Ambonya end-cap, with a combination of Mahogany and Pine for the veneer in between the various wood pieces., and mahogany + hinoki for between the main handle and the end cap.
The next recent blade is a 7 ply wood combination with a Hinoki top ply. I then used two different spruces as medial plies, Red Spruce and Lutz Spruce. Red Spruce is right below the top ply and is 0.8mm thick, and Lutz is just above the core and is 0.6mm thick. Lutz Spruce is a bit stiffer than Red Spruce and also a bit harder, but the differences are very minor. As a core I used a 2mm Hinoki core. Hinoki is very heavy to be used as a core, so some extra weight saving measures were needed to accomplish the goal of under 95g. I had to hollow out both handles (I used some heavier woods as you'll see), but the results are wonderful feeling. 94.4G, and a very interesting spectrum analyzer profile unlike any i've ever seen. This blade has all 7 plies being in the 490-510 range for Janka Hardness. The profile of the blade ended up being a very even fairly flat curve that peaked around 1072 Hz, but didn't drop much at all until nearly 2000 Hz. I've never seen such a flat profile. It makes for a very smooth feeling blade with a serious kick due to the flexibility of the hinoki top ply combined with the stiff inner plies. It is taking some getting used to playing with it, but I think once I do i'll quite like it. Handle is made out of Pomelle Bubinga + Birdseye Maple surrounded by small end grain strips of Birdseye Maple. An Ambonya encap and Mahogay + Hinoki used at various areas between wood plies.
Finally, for the interested. I've also been adding to my tools lately. I purchased a nice dust collector for my router, and an additional Hand Saw (bottom saw in the picture below) plus a new router bit (the middle one in the picture below). I discovered on some types of wood a compression trim bit like the Ultimate Flush Trim compression bit in the picture below can cause some splintering of the wood while routing, or tearout. It produces a super clean and smooth finish, but I have to be careful which woods I use it on.
Router+Dust Collector setup:
Hand Saws (Top is a Rob Cosman Dovetail Saw, bottom is the new Bad Axe Toolworks Bayonet precision Carcasse Saw). I use these when building handles a lot to get very crisp glass smooth cuts for the individual handle pieces.
And finally the router bits. From left to right, my 3 most used ones: 5/8" Freud Quadra-Cut Roundover Bit, A Freud Down shear Helix Double-fluted Flush Trim Bit, and a Highland Woodworking Ultimate Flush Compression Trim Bit
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Been quite a while since I posted anything as I took a while off from blade making. However recently a few of my all-wood blades from middle of last year sold to some coworkers, so I decided to build some new blades. The latest creation is below, a 3+2 blade with Kiso Hinoki 1.2mm as the top ply, https://compositeenvisions.com/carb...oz-196-65gsm-hexcel-282-with-primetex-finish/ as a carbon fiber layer, and a 3mm Western Red Cedar core. It measures at 1365Hz on a bare blade bounce test, is 5.86mm thick and weighs 92.45g
Handle materials are Boxelder Burl for most of the handle, with a Pomele Sapele endcap separated by the end-grain of some birdseye maple.
Handle materials are Boxelder Burl for most of the handle, with a Pomele Sapele endcap separated by the end-grain of some birdseye maple.
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Yea higher hz = higher pitch noise which in general = more stiff. In general stiffer blades are faster. There is a lot of good discussion on this here: https://www.tabletennisdaily.com/fo...950-Numerical-Analysis-of-table-tennis-blades
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Some stunning pieces of wood, and a great looking blade. Glad to see you're back making blades!
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