OOAK Table Tennis Forum

I just bought my first sheet of tensor rubber (donic f3 big slam)
Why does the sheet lay flat just like any other rubber sheet? I expect it to curl into a bowl shape since the top sheet is supposedly pre-stretched?

I must be misunderstanding something.
Can you tell a tensor rubber from a normal rubber, without gluing it to a bat and hitting a ball with it?

I don't believe I've ever encountered a tensor that domed.

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Chasse Patate

They're not "pre-stretched". That's just advertising. All this talk about "high tension" and whatnot - no one actually says what it is, it's some property that makes these rubbers loop faster than other rubbers, at least at moderate racket speeds.

Evidence?? Well, the sheets, as you note, sit flat. So there's no tension between the topsheet and the sponge, as there would have been back when we used speed glue and the rubber would dome up because the sponge expanded more than the topsheet did. Forcing it flat onto the blade would then stretch the topsheet.

That doesn't mean the topsheet AND sponge haven't been expanded, they might be expanded to the same degree by whatever they do to the rubber (supposedly they "boost" it using chemicals). The reports of these rubbers shrinking if you remove them from the blade after some months of use would mean both topsheet and sponge have shrunk (to more or less the same degree if the rubber is still flat) because the chemicals have worn off.

Iskandar