Stiga Rosewood XO from TableTennis11.com, quality issue...

[GiorgosTT]

Hi guys, I have this Rosewood XO for three months now, and last Monday in practice I noticed something strange.. I was missing alarmingly many serves, and the sound in contact was just not right. My first thought was that the rubber peeled off, after all Stiga blades with NCT coating are known to have problems when glueing the rubbers (I even posted a thread a while back seeking your advice!). So I removed the edge tape, only to find out that the middle and the second to top veneer were parted, not in one but in two places...

Here are some photos:

The first two photos are from the bigger and wider gap 7cm long, 1mm wide and at least 2cm deep...






Second gap, 6cm long and 0.3mm wide..





As you can see in the photos there are some small dents in the blade, and one could argue that the dents caused the veneers to part, but i have seen a lot of blades that were way more dented than mine, and i've never seen the wood peeled off like that.

I sent an email to TableTennis11 and i'm waiting for their response...

I think that Stiga has a major quality problem, considering how many people also have issues with their Infinitys.

 

[mr. tom]

Amigo,

it's not like I want to be an a-hole, but maybe you should stop hitting the table?

 

[rajd1234]

Hitting on the table should not result in separating the veneers. This is a quality issue from Stiga. You should wait for TT11 personnel to respond. In the mean time you can drop a mail to Stiga.

Thankfully, after my experience with Stiga i have stopped buying Stiga blades precisely due to this quality issue.

I have friend in my club who is the sister of India's National Level player who is Stiga Sponsored. So she gets all her sister's blades and rubbers. She owns a 7.6 carbo and there is another fellow club mate who also owns a 7.6 Carbo. The quality differs. Period.

 

[GiorgosTT]

Amigo,

it's not like I want to be an a-hole, but maybe you should stop hitting the table?

Yeah, that is not an unreasonable suggestion, but it's not like i walk around hitting tables with my blade. It only happened during gameplay a couple of times, as far as i can remember. In fact i was very surprised to see the bigger of the dents (as seen in the third and fourth photo), since i don't remember ever hitting the table that hard..

Anyway, as rajd mentioned above, that should not result in separating the veneers. I've seen many blades that are dented, some of them were in a pretty bad shape actually, but none of them had that issue (even Stiga ones).

What I didn't mention in the original post, was that when i first received the blade, the little plastic label on the handle was moving slightly. At the time i didn't think it was reason enough to complain, but now i see it as additional proof that the quality of the blade was sub par...

 

[mr. tom]

hmm, ok, I must admit...It sounds like you've got a point.

 

[mr. tom]

But in your first and second picture you can clearly see you have hit something right between the veins...it's a bit unlucky.

 

[Cornel]

Definitely, not a TT11 fault. As rajd1234 said, hitting the table shouldn't result in detachment of the veneers. That is definitely a Stiga quality issue, but, unfortunately, it seems that they aren't fixing it, because I see every month on this forum someone posting that he's got the same problem. I just think they aren't glueing properly the plies. That's why I changed my mind in switching from my Timo Boll Forte to Infinity. It seems that Butterfly are having blades of very high durability. I'm sure my blade has 5+ years(i have bought it used), the Butterfly logo is made of yellow shining granules, and I see a lot of players having very-very old blades which still play great. Yeah, their prices aren't good at all, but maybe you should consider buying an used blade.

 

[cakezxc280]

Knocking it hard and repeatedly enough CAN cause it. I have seen this on Xiom and BTY blades as well, and it usually come with constantly knocking on the table during service receiving...

 

[GiorgosTT]

I'm a bit late to update this thread, but since I last posted I got a reply from TT11, where they offered me a full refund.

With all the Infinitys having problems, and my experience, I am a bit reluctant to get another Stiga blade... I really hope they will get the message and start improving their quality, which might already have happened as I read very good reviews about their newer blades (in terms of building quality).

I would like to make a note here about the excellent customer service that TableTennis11 has. Not only for the refund, but also they were very helpful and polite in the few emails we exchanged. Credit to them for being probably the best online TT shop in Europe!

 

[Flash Gordon]

sad to hear this. anyhow i have not had any problem with stiga blades. but i think that they produce many many blades and sometimes i think this can happen in all type of products no matter what market it is. its also always that the better the brand are (no matter category) the more peoples look at it an judge with more critical eyes, but i still agree that it not nice when it happens but i still have faith in my stiga blades and my new carbonado 145

 

[cakezxc280]

sad to hear this. anyhow i have not had any problem with stiga blades. but i think that they produce many many blades and sometimes i think this can happen in all type of products no matter what market it is. its also always that the better the brand are (no matter category) the more peoples look at it an judge with more critical eyes, but i still agree that it not nice when it happens but i still have faith in my stiga blades and my new carbonado 145

quality issue is just so much more common in Stiga blades.....they have some serious issue with their veneer gluing. About half of their blades i've seen on the shelves suffer from adhesiveness issue due to veneer glues that arent completely dry. Also they tend to deviate a lot from their rated weight....

 

[varik]

huummm seems that i will not buy mu carbonado after all ... dont want to have that kind of probles in a 150€ blade

 

[Killerspintt]

Also they tend to deviate a lot from their rated weight....

That can also be a pretty good thing. You will notice the same big weight variations from any "premium blades" manufacturers (Butterfly, Nittaku, Nexy, Xiom......).
This permit almost anyone to get "any" blade at the weight they like, you can get a 80gr viscaria as well as a 95gr viscaria....and I think it's a pretty good thing. Of course it can be an issue if you buy a blade without knowing his weight before, thinking that you will get a 85gr blade or not far and getting a 100+gr one....but it is possible to make from those weight variations, an advantage to get the weight you want from "any" blade.

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

These photos are for those who think the plies are separating because of the blade getting banged against a table:

This blade has really been slammed around and the plies are not separating at all. A well bonded piece of ply wood should not delaminate (separate) because of a few bangs. Sorry. As a basic rule, if you don't bang your blade into the table once in a while, I would question how much you are learning and how hard you are playing.

If you look at any blade from a pro, if they have been using the blade for more than a few months, it will have its battle scars.

A blade where the plies separate like that, that is a manufacturing problem and a quality control issue. The wood was not glued, laminated or pressed properly during the gluing process. The plies are supposed to bond to each other. If that process is done right, the plies should not delaminate unless you take a tool in between the two plies and really work to separate them. And even then, it should not happen so cleanly. Some would should refuse to be peeled off.

With GiorgosTT's blade, you can see the wood is delaminating by itself which means there is a problem with the gluing process or how they pressed the wood while it was bonding, or how much glue was in those particular spots. Whatever it was, something went wrong. That has nothing to do with those dings and would have happened at some point, even from just hitting mid-distance loop rallies.

Sorry, but we shouldn't fault the player for the quality control issue of a company that is know for quality control issues.

 

[GiorgosTT]

My previous blade (also a Stiga), already second hand when I bought it, was pretty beaten up and I did my share playing with it for almost two years. At no point there was any indication that the layers could separate like this. An example of a wood, as Carl says, well bonded.

I remember reading somewhere, although on a different context, that when one glues wood with a proper glue (and method), the bond becomes stronger than the wood itself, making it almost impossible for the two pieces to separate. I imagine the same applies to table tennis woods and gluing techniques

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

My previous blade (also a Stiga), already second hand when I bought it, was pretty beaten up and I did my share playing with it for almost two years. At no point there was any indication that the layers could separate like this. An example of a wood, as Carl says, well bonded.

I remember reading somewhere, although on a different context, that when one glues wood with a proper glue (and method), the bond becomes stronger than the wood itself, making it almost impossible for the two pieces to separate. I imagine the same applies to table tennis woods and gluing techniques

Yep. That is why, if you took a long thin knife and tried to separate the plies, if the wood was well laminated, you would have the wood separating at places other than where the glue bonded the wood for the most part.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Flash Gordon]

These photos are for those who think the plies are separating because of the blade getting banged against a table:

This blade has really been slammed around and the plies are not separating at all. A well bonded piece of ply wood should not delaminate (separate) because of a few bangs. Sorry. As a basic rule, if you don't bang your blade into the table once in a while, I would question how much you are learning and how hard you are playing.

If you look at any blade from a pro, if they have been using the blade for more than a few months, it will have its battle scars.

A blade where the plies separate like that, that is a manufacturing problem and a quality control issue. The wood was not glued, laminated or pressed properly during the gluing process. The plies are supposed to bond to each other. If that process is done right, the plies should not delaminate unless you take a tool in between the two plies and really work to separate them. And even then, it should not happen so cleanly. Some would should refuse to be peeled off.

With GiorgosTT's blade, you can see the wood is delaminating by itself which means there is a problem with the gluing process or how they pressed the wood while it was bonding, or how much glue was in those particular spots. Whatever it was, something went wrong. That has nothing to do with those dings and would have happened at some point, even from just hitting mid-distance loop rallies.

Sorry, but we shouldn't fault the player for the quality control issue of a company that is know for quality control issues.

bad day?

 

[Flash Gordon]

quality issue is just so much more common in Stiga blades.....they have some serious issue with their veneer gluing. About half of their blades i've seen on the shelves suffer from adhesiveness issue due to veneer glues that arent completely dry. Also they tend to deviate a lot from their rated weight....

all brands has problem with exact weight and there i dont think stiga is worse than others

 

[mr. tom]

It would be nice if they would categorize their blades, so you can select weight like you can select rubber thickness.

 

[raazzz]

It would be nice if they would categorize their blades, so you can select weight like you can select rubber thickness.

Agree since no brand are able to get the exact same weight on every blade this would be really good. In one way it's good that not all the blades weights the same either since you can get every blade in the weight you want. You can also ask the store in some cases to weight the blade before buying