is baby oil a effective booster?

If you get the right baby oil than I would say yes. Use very thin layers (put some oil on a kleenex/tissue and than spread it evenly on the sponge), wait until sponge is completely dry, repeat until rubber domes enough.
Right baby oil: Johnson's/Penaten Ultra Sensitive (only ingredients should be paraffinum liquidum (mineral oil) and isopropyl palmitate).
Other options: Lemon or orange oil. Main ingredient is D-Limonene that was used in some speed glues. Some guitar fretboard cleaners are also made from/contain lemon oil e.g. https://www.daddario.com/products/accessories/care-maintenance-tools/polishes-cloths/lemon-oil/
If you have or can get some used rubbers you could try that on these first.

davizoosk said:

Hi guys, the 2021 season is finished and i decided to do new things to start 2022 season. I bought a TG Skyline 2 NEO 39deg to use on FH, and i want to boost, i not have Seamoon or Dianchi or Falco. Baby oil is well? and if you used what model do you recommend and used??

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Im not a chemist, so ill just say plainly "no".
It does work but not very well. The duration is poorly and the result inconsistant. I would either go for several products you mentioned on aliexpress or just buy Falco Tempo Long Booster.

Only thing I found baby oil good for is softening the sponge. You can dome a rubber pretty decently but there is little boost effect.

Attitude said:

Im not a chemist, so ill just say plainly "no".
It does work but not very well. The duration is poorly and the result inconsistant. I would either go for several products you mentioned on aliexpress or just buy Falco Tempo Long Booster.

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If one has no idea what one is talking about - it is perfectly fine to say nothing at all. !

lodro said:

If one has no idea what one is talking about - it is perfectly fine to say nothing at all. !

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Hilarious to read that from someone who doesnt know the difference between two rubbers but still feels the need to share his nonexisting knowledge and the experience of a single test.

Besides i have at least decent experience with boosting for several years with different techniques and boosters. And i actually know what they are supposed to do and so i am simply able to judge that baby oil doesnt do the trick propperly.

But IF you want to go for it either way, many ppl recommend johnsons baby oil. But like i said it doesnt give you the expected result for long. Several days at best

The simple answer is that baby oil doesn't not work as a booster.
The reason why is that the oil does not compress like a gas such as air or whatever VOCs that speed glue give off.
Fill a basket ball with air and it will bounce. Fill a basket ball with oil and it won't.
For a booster to work it must evaporate and make the gas pockets in the rubber foam bigger. This has been discussed before. Also some foam rubbers have "closed cells" so the fluid will not easily enter. You are wasting your time trying to boost these rubbers.
Gases are very good at compressing and then expanding back returning most of the energy back.

Don't boost. The people that sell boosters just ripping you off.
Also, why make your paddle so much faster, if it is faster, if you can't control it?

Attitude said:

Hilarious to read that from someone who doesnt know the difference between two rubbers but still feels the need to share his nonexisting knowledge and the experience of a single test.Besides i have at least decent experience with boosting for several years with different techniques and boosters. And i actually know what they are supposed to do and so i am simply able to judge that baby oil doesnt do the trick propperly.But IF you want to go for it either way, many ppl recommend johnsons baby oil. But like i said it doesnt give you the expected result for long. Several days at best

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Respect your elders. If one does not respect the opponent, one loses the debate even if they are factually correct.

PingBirdPong said:

Respect your elders. If one does not respect the opponent, one loses the debate even if they are factually correct.

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'Respectfully,' neither you nor Lodro have contributed anything useful to this thread, and to any normal person it would appear as if Lodro came out with the disrespect first with his statement. Lodros statement can apply to theirself as well, as he appears not to have any knowledge on the subject matter.

brokenball said:

The simple answer is that baby oil doesn't not work as a booster.
The reason why is that the oil does not compress like a gas such as air or whatever VOCs that speed glue give off.
Fill a basket ball with air and it will bounce. Fill a basket ball with oil and it won't.
For a booster to work it must evaporate and make the gas pockets in the rubber foam bigger. This has been discussed before. Also some foam rubbers have "closed cells" so the fluid will not easily enter. You are wasting your time trying to boost these rubbers.
Gases are very good at compressing and then expanding back returning most of the energy back.

Don't boost. The people that sell boosters just ripping you off.
Also, why make your paddle so much faster, if it is faster, if you can't control it?

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I also read that boosters are easy evaporating oils so that always a bit evaporates very slowly over a few weeks so there always is a bit of gas in the sponge until everything is evaporated and then you need to boost again.

Not sure if that is true though.

A quick search gave me several other experiences on boosting with baby oil and a lot of other options to do it without a booster^^
So many years ago and still so up to date.
https://www.tabletennisdaily.com/forum/showthread.php?7712-Boosting-with-baby-oil

lodro said:

If one has no idea what one is talking about - it is perfectly fine to say nothing at all. !

Click to expand...

Scarfed Garchomp said:

'Respectfully,' neither you nor Lodro have contributed anything useful to this thread, and to any normal person it would appear as if Lodro came out with the disrespect first with his statement. Lodros statement can apply to theirself as well, as he appears not to have any knowledge on the subject matter.

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I quoted Lodro so you can actually READ his post CAREFULLY. Notice he said: “ it is PERFECTLY FINE to say nothing at all” . He is telling Attitude that it’s okay to not know about this subject, and it’s okay to not post anything.
Also, in my opinion you shouldn’t even boost, it’s against the rules.

PingBirdPong said:

I quoted Lodro so you can actually READ his post CAREFULLY. Notice he said: “ it is PERFECTLY FINE to say nothing at all” . He is telling Attitude that it’s okay to not know about this subject, and it’s okay to not post anything.
Also, in my opinion you shouldn’t even boost, it’s against the rules.

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Actually, i said what I said because my research showed completely the opposite of my German friend"s research showed.
There are rubbers that react well to boosting and others do not. I therefore concluded that Attitude' s research was not necessairily
done enough methodical.
For me on the rubbers i tested, Baby oil did a great job, lasted long , longer than Seamoon.

Shall we just agree to disagree ?
I apologize if i stood on someones toes.

As far as the legality of boosting is concerned, honestly, i do not care. In the 2 clubs I play and the regional and local championships
i take part, nobody ever even looked at any of my blades AND nobody bothers to correct illegal serves 😖

lodro said:

Actually, i said what I said because my research showed completely the opposite of my German friend"s research showed.
There are rubbers that react well to boosting and others do not. I therefore concluded that Attitude' s research was not necessairily
done enough methodical.
For me on the rubbers i tested, Baby oil did a great job, lasted long , longer than Seamoon.

Shall we just agree to disagree ?
I apologize if i stood on someones toes.

As far as the legality of boosting is concerned, honestly, i do not care. In the 2 clubs I play and the regional and local championships
i take part, nobody ever even looked at any of my blades AND nobody bothers to correct illegal serves 😖

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Go absurdly illegal and they probably will correct it!😂

Dominikk85 said:

I also read that boosters are easy evaporating oils so that always a bit evaporates very slowly over a few weeks so there always is a bit of gas in the sponge until everything is evaporated and then you need to boost again.

Not sure if that is true though.

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So put a small amount of what ever booster you want to try in small container and see how fast it evaporates in minutes the effect will dissipate quickly. If it doesn't evaporate then no gas is created and there will be no effect. I know that paraffin oil evaporates too quickly.

brokenball said:

So put a small amount of what ever booster you want to try in small container and see how fast it evaporates in minutes the effect will dissipate quickly. If it doesn't evaporate then no gas is created and there will be no effect. I know that paraffin oil evaporates too quickly.

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Water evaporates quite slowly🤣

lodro said:

Actually, i said what I said because my research showed completely the opposite of my German friend"s research showed.
There are rubbers that react well to boosting and others do not. I therefore concluded that Attitude' s research was not necessairily
done enough methodical.
For me on the rubbers i tested, Baby oil did a great job, lasted long , longer than Seamoon.

Shall we just agree to disagree ?
I apologize if i stood on someones toes.

As far as the legality of boosting is concerned, honestly, i do not care. In the 2 clubs I play and the regional and local championships
i take part, nobody ever even looked at any of my blades AND nobody bothers to correct illegal serves 😖

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That is because you play for some shiny plastic trophy and some piece of paper certificate, hence no one gives a darn.

When you start playing for USD 25,000 prize money.... a little bit in violation of ITTF service rule and you will raise hell! I know I will!

Gozo said:

That is because you play for some shiny plastic trophy and some piece of paper certificate, hence no one gives a darn.

When you start playing for USD 25,000 prize money.... a little bit in violation of ITTF service rule and you will raise hell! I know I will!

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hehehe, I am over 70, i will never be playing for money hehehehe

brokenball said:

The simple answer is that baby oil doesn't not work as a booster.

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I'm not a chemist but I can lookup and read some patents.
Baby oil (the real thing) = mineral oil/paraffinum liquidum/white oil (not precise but im still not a chemist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral_oil)

1. Yasaka "Swelling agent of rubber for table tennis" https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2008049094A/en They found that dibutyl sebacate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dibutyl_sebacate (sometimes used in ice creams as a flavoring additive) is a good booster but also quote a patent application "As such an adhesion method, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-51328 discloses a method using an adhesion aid mainly composed of vegetable oil or mineral oil. According to this adhesion aid, the permeated rubber can be swollen and softened."
2. 2006-51328 is this one from Juic (they still make table tennis equipment) https://www.j-platpat.inpit.go.jp/c...75544C842D349B05894E15CBD32CB0AA06BC8EE/11/en
"[0019]
In view of safety, swelling power and softening effect, the present invention has found that a material suitable for an adhesive auxiliary agent has a sufficient swelling and softening effect even in vegetable oils such as olive oil.
Examples of vegetable oils include soybean oil, rapeseed oil, sesame oil, camellia oil, sunflower oil, and the like. These vegetable oils are edible. Therefore, there is no fear that the table tennis player will be harmful to health even if it is usual.
[0020]
Also, it has been found that, from the viewpoint of safety, swelling power and softening effect, a sufficient swelling and softening effect can be obtained even in mineral oils such as white oil. As the mineral oil, paraffin, naphthenic, aromatic, Liquid Paraffin, white oil, petrolatum, petroleum sulfonate, or the like is used...
[0031]
[Example 2]
In this example, as in Example 1, an adhesive auxiliary agent was constituted only by white oil. First, to see the degree of swelling, a sponge having a thickness of 2.2, a hardness of 35 degrees, and an aspect ratio of 190 was prepared, and the adhesive auxiliary agent was applied to this sponge. After 6 hours, the dimension was measured, and the dimension was 214 in length and width...

From the test results shown in Table 3, it was found that, in the method using a vegetable oil and a mineral oil as an adhesive auxiliary agent, since the volatility is very low, a substantially constant hardness persisted for 24 hours. Also, this effect lasts for at least 1 weeks, and an almost constant state lasts from 1 months to 2 months. Therefore, it can be used even if it cannot be replaced for a long time...

The adhesion aid may be not 100% of vegetable oil such as olive oil. To the extent that the swelling effect is not impaired, stabilizers, fragrances, and the like may be added. A plurality of vegetable oils may be mixed."

You guys see a lot of crap being written and you don't know what it means! How does swelling or softening help with returning energy to the ball? the articles don't say.

I have done engineering with fluids, air and oil are fluids, for over 35 years. Air or gas that stores and returns MUCH more energy that a liquid as in oil or water.

I hydraulic systems there are accumulators that contain oil and a bladder usually filled with nitrogen. It is the nitrogen that stores energy, not the oil.