says
Serve, top, edge. Repeat.
says
Serve, top, edge. Repeat.
Active Member
Because of the nature of this method being simplistic and focused around practicality only, the blade is not gonna look good when finished. The purpose of it is to reinforce the structure, get it even, straight and get it playing how it used to before getting damaged.
0 - If the blade has lost flat pieces of its top ply and you still have them, try your best to glue them back on and then use the guide here as a filler for all the gaps. The sanding should be avoided until the part is solidly fixed with the filler. If you don't have the pieces then you can try to chop very very thin pieces of wood in roughly the shape of the missing piece, glue it on, and then sand them down to roughly the correct thickness. Then the process of using filler around the spot is the same with a side hit of the racket.
1 - Take off the rubbers and put even pressure on the point of contact from the 2 faces of the racket. I would recommend a wood press or if you can't find anything like that, then get a plastic mallet and start trying to flatten the wood.
2 - Use TINY portions of LIQUID super glue and then pepper it with saw dust from on top to fill in the hole and give it strong structure. Then when it dries, put some more TINY amount of superglue and pepper it with sawdust. Repeat many times to the point where the filler is bigger than the hole and starts to go out of the original shape of the blade, so you can shape it without worrying of damaging the wood underneath even more. I cannot stress this enough, add more material to the hit area than you think is nessesary so you can shape it back to perfection.
This step is important cause if done wrong then you'll end up having a cavity inside of the blade. So take your time and do it correctly, slow and steady.
3 - Take a heavy sandpaper and start giving the basic shape, then take a lighter and start finishing it to make it smooth, even and straight. If you end up sanding a bit of the wood from the top ply don't worry, just make sure it's even, even if the plies from underneath appear, they don't affect the blade's playing characteristics in any way.
4 - When you get it all uniform, add one more small layer of bare super glue, very small, to seal the wood and make sure it doesn't splinter. Take your lightest sandpaper and slowly even that out as well. The wood underneath will have drank the liquid super glue and will have gotten a good bond.
The blade should be fine now. Just keep in mind that white wood sawdust turns a pale reddish colour when mixed with super glue. The reason we mix sawdust with superglue is so that the rigid superglue bonds better with the characteristics of the wood and end up feeling like normal wood. It's very important to the blade that it's superglue with sawdust. It is not gonna look pretty, but it's gonna play stably and as you would expect it, before the hit.
If you have any questions, leave a comment by replying to this post, so it appears in my notifications, and I'll try to help the best I can.
Here's how my viscaria ended up. Not pretty, but perfectly playable. It had swollen right side of the fh and a bunch of the top ply had broken off. It looks pretty good for what it used to look like.
0 - If the blade has lost flat pieces of its top ply and you still have them, try your best to glue them back on and then use the guide here as a filler for all the gaps. The sanding should be avoided until the part is solidly fixed with the filler. If you don't have the pieces then you can try to chop very very thin pieces of wood in roughly the shape of the missing piece, glue it on, and then sand them down to roughly the correct thickness. Then the process of using filler around the spot is the same with a side hit of the racket.
1 - Take off the rubbers and put even pressure on the point of contact from the 2 faces of the racket. I would recommend a wood press or if you can't find anything like that, then get a plastic mallet and start trying to flatten the wood.
2 - Use TINY portions of LIQUID super glue and then pepper it with saw dust from on top to fill in the hole and give it strong structure. Then when it dries, put some more TINY amount of superglue and pepper it with sawdust. Repeat many times to the point where the filler is bigger than the hole and starts to go out of the original shape of the blade, so you can shape it without worrying of damaging the wood underneath even more. I cannot stress this enough, add more material to the hit area than you think is nessesary so you can shape it back to perfection.
This step is important cause if done wrong then you'll end up having a cavity inside of the blade. So take your time and do it correctly, slow and steady.
3 - Take a heavy sandpaper and start giving the basic shape, then take a lighter and start finishing it to make it smooth, even and straight. If you end up sanding a bit of the wood from the top ply don't worry, just make sure it's even, even if the plies from underneath appear, they don't affect the blade's playing characteristics in any way.
4 - When you get it all uniform, add one more small layer of bare super glue, very small, to seal the wood and make sure it doesn't splinter. Take your lightest sandpaper and slowly even that out as well. The wood underneath will have drank the liquid super glue and will have gotten a good bond.
The blade should be fine now. Just keep in mind that white wood sawdust turns a pale reddish colour when mixed with super glue. The reason we mix sawdust with superglue is so that the rigid superglue bonds better with the characteristics of the wood and end up feeling like normal wood. It's very important to the blade that it's superglue with sawdust. It is not gonna look pretty, but it's gonna play stably and as you would expect it, before the hit.
If you have any questions, leave a comment by replying to this post, so it appears in my notifications, and I'll try to help the best I can.
Here's how my viscaria ended up. Not pretty, but perfectly playable. It had swollen right side of the fh and a bunch of the top ply had broken off. It looks pretty good for what it used to look like.
