OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Has anyone noticed any difference in your rubber in various seasons? It's just starting to get warm here in MI. Although the temperature indoors is basically the same the humidity is definitely different. It seems like my rubber has better grip when the humidity is a little higher. During the dead of winter the air is dryer and the rubber is ok. But as it warmed up and humidity increased it seems like the rubber has softened and grips much better. My control is off the charts and I can produce higher spin.

Interesting, I have experienced quite the opposite - when the humidity is high, the rubber loses its grip and becomes slippery.
But it's Florida, I don't know how absolute values of humidity here compare to that in MI.

I guess a little humid isn't the same thing as 100% humidity... Yeah, buy a pair of sheets of 999 and put them on a spare blade. That's your emergency humid racket.

Iskandar

Hmmm, interesting. So maybe if the humidity is too high it could make it less grippy. So there must be a perfect range. Not too moist not too dry....

Heat certainly makes the rubber softer and more dynamic, that's very noticeable to me.
From my experience humidity only becomes an issue when it's very high, making the rubber more slippery.

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It's pretty humid here a lot of the time. But the only times I have had trouble was when we were playing somewhere with no airconditioning and it was raining cats and dogs outside. You'd actually get a fine layer of condensation on the rubber and it would lose all grip. You try to lift backspin and it makes a squeaking sound and the ball drops onto the table.

Iskandar

We can get the opposite problem in the UK as our league season is in winter when temperatures in poorly or unheated venues can be below 10°C. The rubber get hard and slow with reduced spin.