Gluing Rubbers

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Hair dryer that water based glues if you want. Speeds everything up a few minutes, which is important to shops and big TT clubs. Nothing wrong with either way. Try not to use conventional TT glue on Tenergy, stick to modern water based glue. Iczy has the tip of the month in cutting a couple mm of overhang.

Why? Instead of the shrink issue, Tenergy will start crumbling in a hurry around the edges if you hit hard and use it every day for a few hours a day. You let it ride a week or two, then reglue Tenergy back on a nd cut it flush to blade edge to give you an almost new rubber cut. That effectively extends the life of Tenergy a week or so. remarkable as Tenergy used daily goes down hill after 3-4 weeks.
 
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What the manufacturers mean by not using a hair dryer is the heat setting. Heating the water based glue can melt the adhesive when evaporating the water so you want room temperature air to be drying it. Typically I even glue the rubber and blade and dry the blade by fanning it over the rubber so that dry around the same time. A fan works well and even fanning the blade over the rubber in front of a fan could decrease the drying time.

Basically you want to be able to cover the entire rubber with glue taking less caution around the edges that will not be on the blade. Typically it's best to sponge the bottom (where the logo will be) of the rubber horizontally to initially cover it with glue and then from then on go vertically in both up and down when sponging the glue so that it's an even layer of glue. Usually you want either 1-2 thick layers on the rubber and 1 layer on the blade. If you tend to glue in thinner layers then you may want to do 2-3 thin layers on the rubber and 1-2 thin layers on the blade. The key is that you need to have the proper thickness of glue rather than worry about how many layers you use.

Our resident professional uses up to 8 layers of glue, but glues thin layers on the rubber sponge. So it's all preference and practice.
 
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Use water-based glue. When cutting Tenergy, leave extra edge about 2 mm. because when regluing, tenergy will shrink.
Drying naturally is better IMO because the glue manufacturer doesn't advise air-blower.

Just my own question, is regluing the rubber really a necessity? Or is it just personal preference. I know for 'speed glues' and 'boosters', people will often reglue to get the full effect of the boosters, but for glues in general?
 
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i recently did the whole process. on my raquet. i used butterfly "clean chack" a glue. all i would say is i found the process horrendously hard. that particular glue is very quick drying and a nightmare to be putting on. so i would say the more time a glue takes to dry the better it is. but the hardest part of the whole process was cutting the rubbers.I ran a surgical blade many times around the edge but still came out with a jagged finish. what i would recommend is making curved cut with long scissors and when you run of the top end to straight and then cut the leftovers with a sharp blade.
 
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i recently did the whole process. on my raquet. i used butterfly "clean chack" a glue. all i would say is i found the process horrendously hard. that particular glue is very quick drying and a nightmare to be putting on. so i would say the more time a glue takes to dry the better it is. but the hardest part of the whole process was cutting the rubbers.I ran a surgical blade many times around the edge but still came out with a jagged finish. what i would recommend is making curved cut with long scissors and when you run of the top end to straight and then cut the leftovers with a sharp blade.

Was the room temperature too hot when gluing? I haven't used the Butterfly water-based glue but my XIOM I-Bond has no problem with drying too quickly.

As to cutting rubber, you should immerse your blade in water before cutting. This little trick will ensure that the rubber and sponge will not stick to the blade and make a clean cut.
 
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If I were to change blades but keep the same rubber, can I peel off the rubbers and just apply another layer of glue or do I have to remove the old glue first? Does it change any properties? Also, normally when I peel off rubber it still feels sticky as if already ready to put on a blade. Btw I use tenergy
 
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