This info will save you a lot of money !

[ttmonster]

@WFal : I am all for your booster if its legal .
@Carl : I am convinced about your footwork argument , the technique part I would need a bit more convincing , isn't it simple ? If your car can do the parallel parking for you, you won't ever learn, or lose your skill by the day ?

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

@WFal : I am all for your booster if its legal .
@Carl : I am convinced about your footwork argument , the technique part I would need a bit more convincing , isn't it simple ? If your car can do the parallel parking for you, you won't ever learn, or lose your skill by the day ?

But the racket does not parallel park or loop underspin. You still have to do the work.

Tenergy is a great rubber. It has its advantages and its disadvantages. When you are advanced enough to play with it, it does not make your technique worse. In fact, you need good enough technique to handle and control the rubber. Tenergy is a rubber that is trying to imitate a speed glue effect. A recreational player would not be able to handle speed glue or Tenergy. I have had recreational players try and use my racket only to give it back because they could not control it or keep the ball on the table. I know, if my setup has too much boost, I cannot handle it. It is like saying that if you use pips you will lose all your technique because the pips do all the work. Pips require a different technique than smooth. And with pips there is the possibility that you let the equipment do the work and your technique stagnates or gets worse; or you can develop the techniques that allow you to improve as a pips player. Same with smooth, boost, speed glue, or Tenergy. And I have no question about the fact that I can pick up a racket with Sriver or Mark V on it, a recreational racket or a hardbat and play at a decent level. But you have to adjust your technique and how you contact the ball.

Again, the real question would be, why would the pros use speed glue if it only made them worse and they could not continue to improve their technique while using it. And when speed glue was not banned ALL THE PROS USED IT. All of them.

You can ask guys like Dan and Matt (pingpongpom) about this. I am sure they would have an educated opinion having played at the levels they play at.

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

By the way, if you are training and learning technique and not at a level where you can loop short underspin yet, I agree that it is better to use a basic rubber like Sriver or Mark V and a basic All+ or Off- blade to learn the basic skills and techniques of Table Tennis. I think a lot of players jump up to a setup that is too fast for them too quickly. Fast blades and Glue Effect rubbers, like Tenergy, are not needed until you are at a decently high level and are playing competitively. And they will not help your game until you already have good technique for all the basic strokes. But once you have that, they will not make your technique worse. Only you can do that to yourself by lazy habits.

Good technique has a lot to do with training good strokes into your body so that when you are in a situation where the technique is needed muscle memory causes the right stroke and the right kind of contact for the situation to come out. Good technique comes from a lot of training and a lot of repetition. Equipment will not make that worse once you have the muscle memory for the good strokes and the right kind of contact for the situation.

 

[WFal]

TTmonster - When the tuner is available I will make an announcement. I am still trying to find the right can for the job
Carl - Although I never was highly rated player (only reached around 1800 US rating), I spent a significant amount of time working around and training with national and world class players. Further, I designed equipment for players in the top 100 in the world, including blades, rubber, speed glue and booster. For example, I was a technical coach for the 1992 US Olympic table tennis team and developed the world's first computer controlled table tennis robot in conjunction with Simplicity Tool of Oregon. I was the person who ran the drills for Sean O'Neill and Jimmy Butler. Although my rating was not very high, my technique was fairly advanced, as this was needed to test equipment. On occasion these skills allowed me to have some big upsets. Perhaps the biggest was my win over a fellow New Yorker to you, Tahl Leibowitz. We had a very famous "grudge match" many years ago, which I won. Tahl was around a 2300 US rated player at the time. I still practice with a fairly high quality player, John Thach Tran, who typically has a 2400 US rating. I think at that level one can really see the difference in tuned versus not tuned rubber. Even at my level I can feel a huge difference in my game playing against Thach. It is perhaps worth 500 rating points for me, which is a huge jump. That is am around a 1500 player without the tuner and my technique jumps to around 2000 with the tuner.

I think the 2700+ players are really affected by the "glue ban". One has to only look at the problems Fan Yi-Yong of the USA is having to know this is the case. Perhaps it is worse for older players who trained for many years with speed glued rubber. The difference is dramatic. But it is not suited for lower level players as has been stated by others.

Anyway I believe many will enjoy playing with the tuned rubber. I have worked hard to get a balance increase of speed and spin. Fortunately, I have a considerable amount of experience in speed glue/booster formulations and even have a US patent years ago on this (see US patent 5910528).

I would really appreciate it if those who claimed they know what's in the Dandoy can confirm it contains 95% paraffin oil.

Thanks

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

TTmonster - When the tuner is available I will make an announcement. I am still trying to find the right can for the job
Carl - Although I never was highly rated player (only reached around 1800 US rating), I spent a significant amount of time working around and training with national and world class players. Further, I designed equipment for players in the top 100 in the world, including blades, rubber, speed glue and booster. For example, I was a technical coach for the 1992 US Olympic table tennis team and developed the world's first computer controlled table tennis robot in conjunction with Simplicity Tool of Oregon. I was the person who ran the drills for Sean O'Neill and Jimmy Butler. Although my rating was not very high, my technique was fairly advanced, as this was needed to test equipment. On occasion these skills allowed me to have some big upsets. Perhaps the biggest was my win over a fellow New Yorker to you, Tahl Leibowitz. We had a very famous "grudge match" many years ago, which I won. Tahl was around a 2300 US rated player at the time. I still practice with a fairly high quality player, John Thach Tran, who typically has a 2400 US rating. I think at that level one can really see the difference in tuned versus not tuned rubber. Even at my level I can feel a huge difference in my game playing against Thach. It is perhaps worth 500 rating points for me, which is a huge jump. That is am around a 1500 player without the tuner and my technique jumps to around 2000 with the tuner.

I think the 2700+ players are really affected by the "glue ban". One has to only look at the problems Fan Yi-Yong of the USA is having to know this is the case. Perhaps it is worse for older players who trained for many years with speed glued rubber. The difference is dramatic. But it is not suited for lower level players as has been stated by others.

Anyway I believe many will enjoy playing with the tuned rubber. I have worked hard to get a balance increase of speed and spin. Fortunately, I have a considerable amount of experience in speed glue/booster formulations and even have a US patent years ago on this (see US patent 5910528).

I would really appreciate it if those who claimed they know what's in the Dandoy can confirm it contains 95% paraffin oil.

Thanks

Nice info Wfal. I know Tahl. That is a pretty big upset. And he gets angry. He must have been throwing his racket and I can imagine some of the things he might have been saying while you were taking the match from him. He is quite a character. And yes, I can feel a difference in my game with well boosted equipment.

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

@WFal : I am all for your booster if its legal.

I guess you cannot repeat this info enough. Any kind of boosting that happens to a sponge after it leaves the factory is against ITTF rules. I quoted the rule in an earlier post in this thread. But the rule does not make sense so I would ignore the rule with products that are safe. It is just worth knowing that, if you do something to change the playing characteristics of a rubber, purposely, after the rubber has left the factory, that is against ITTF rules. The companies can boost the rubber in the factory and then get the approval of the ITTF. But once the product has left the factory, the only thing you are supposedly allowed to do with the rubber is put it on your blade with WATER BASED glue and then clean the topsheet with water or one of the cleaning products from the companies. Spin Max, even though there is now a non toxic version, is also against the rules. Anything put onto the sponge or the topsheet that is used to change the playing characteristics of the sponge and/or rubber is against the rules.

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

Here is the rule again and the article by Greg Letts where he explains the rule and gives some opinion on the rule.

By the way, here is the rule:

Law 2.04.07 - The covering material should be used as it has been authorised by the ITTF without any physical, chemical or other treatment, changing or modifying playing properties, friction, outlook, colour, structure, surface, etc.

Here is an article on the subject by Greg Letts: http://tabletennis.about.com/od/speedglue/a/ban_speedglue.htm

 

[WFal]

Thanks Carl,

Tahl was pretty defensive about it for a while as it made the rounds on the TT forums around the world. We became friends after this. He always wanted an "official" rematch but it never happened. Once I did play him at the San Diego club a few games. As I told him at the time, this was not a rematch as I had already played that day for many hours. He played me lefty the second time (he is a righty) as opposed to playing as a righty in the "grudge" mach. He plays around a 2000 level lefty, and I believe he won those games with fairly close scores. When I played him in the match I won (it was a one game match which I won at 21-17) I was perhaps at my highest level in my career. I estimate I was really around a 2100 player at the time (with a high 1700 US rating). I had been training for the World Masters Games dor some time with several very good players including Sean O'Neill. I made it to the round of 16 in the over 50 division having match point against the no.2 Russian player. I lost concentration on the winning point and lost my chance to be in the quarter finals.

It is interesting to know why we did the "grudge" match. Tahl had been bad mouthing the ASTI rubber. We sponsored Sean O'Neill at the time, and Tahl called him a "hasbeen", claiming he could beat Sean (especially with the ASTI equipment). I told Tahl that he had no chance against Sean and I bet he could not even beat me. So this was the context of the match. Fortunately, for me it was played on the red mats which helped my game considerably. Also, he fortunately played into my strength, forehand to forehand counter looping. He also very much underestimated the quality of my serves (attempted to win point off the returns). Finally, his serves were very similar to one of my training partners for the World Master Games. The irony of this whole episode is that Sean became his coach for the Para-Olympics and other international and national events. I got to know Tahl a bit after that crazy episode and got to see a "nicer" side of him.

I am thankful for the time I have been able to spend with good players. Once I even got to be Sean O'Neill's "official coach" in the 1991 US Nationals Mens open semi-final and finals, which he won over Jimmy Butler. I was chosen by Sean as no one knew who I was. It is strange to see me on ESPN as I really didn't have a clue what to say to him between games ( just had to look the part and remind him of his "plan"). I remember this event well as I noticed for the first time on television that my hair was getting pretty thin. Sean was/is very magnanimous as listing me "as one of his coaches".

By the way can you show me in the rules where it says you have to attach the rubber using a "water-based" adhesive. And wouldn't water soaked sponge change the playing characteristics of a sponge? And as I have said before even when it dries the adhesive will change the sponge characteristics. There are many types of water-based adhesives. For example, what if one used a wood glue. There are also water-based urethane glues used in the shoe industry (ASTI used this type of adhesive for bonding top sheet to sponge). The fact remains there is no approved list of adhesives. Period.

 

[phillypong]

We are way off topic here ! Where are the results of the WD40 or paraffin refreshing of worn rubbers ?

 

[Bishop Rasta 27]

i've tried wd40 on my super729 fx both on forehand and backhand...but maybe i've sprayed too much because its a long wait to dry after wiping and spreading it on the sheet with my hands...but its a surprise because the tackiness that was lost on the blacksheet seems to have come back...its quite effective!

 

[fongchengloy]

Because VOCs are expensive in a long run, most players would mix the Chinese brand speed glue with bicycle glue (50/50) and the result is you get a boosted rubber without going thru a long process.

 

[daxx101]

are there any boosters for the topsheet?

 

[yurybarquero]

Applying baby oil on the topsheet helps you recover the grip of the topsheet but do not do it to a bryce fx. Now if it is a brand new rubber you only need to boost the sponge.

 

[judah000]

Is putting oil on it will be healthy to the rubber?

 

[yurybarquero]

Oil is a natural part of the rubber but it dries out so what you do is to give back to your rubber the oil that it has lost.

This video is for the Falco Life Expander. And by the look of the video I can gurantee you that it is just oil...

 

[Scorpnox]

Oil is a natural part of the rubber but it dries out so what you do is to give back to your rubber the oil that it has lost.

This video is for the Falco Life Expander. And by the look of the video I can gurantee you that it is just oil...

nice video

 

[sunilcse04]

Dont use Oil of any kind.. It makes the rubber heavy and much slower.. Its my experience..

 

[JustAlt]

Dont use Oil of any kind.. It makes the rubber heavy and much slower.. Its my experience..

Did you use raw-oil that was pumped just minutes before use?

 

[Kan]

I tried the wd40 on a no name blade with an unknown rubber (test case). It had become quite slick and lost any of its grip. It was one of the higher priced, packaged inverted rubber paddles you can buy from a general sporting goods store. After applying the WD40 the rubber is now glassy and slicker. So one of three things:

1) The rubber is not really rubber,
2) The type of rubber is resistant to the charms of wd40,
3) The rubber was an anti-spin rubber already, and is now even more so. Doubtful, since these types of racquets usually have a cheap rubber that has some spin potential properties.


Update Nov 30.

The rubber has now regained grip - more than before application. I must have used too much WD40, or the interaction between Wd40 and the rubber took much longer to develop than expected. My post above was given after 12 hours of drying.
This post is after 60 hours.

 

[XIII]

Dishwasher liquid has chemicals...
That may be poisonous...