OOAK Table Tennis Forum

So I bought one of those goofy oversized Donic autograph blades. The face measures 180mm wide x 188mm tall. For a laugh, I'd like to put some rubbers on it. Not expensive ones, of course!

I've seen the pictures of mega-expanded OX long pips sheets, but I don't want to put LP on it (I might still go the OX short pips route if all else fails).

I have some cheap 729 General with 1.5mm sponge. It measures about 165mm on each side. It would have to stretch by 14% to fit the novelty blade's height, 9% to reach its width. I'd be happy with the 9%.

Has anyone achieved ~9% to 10% linear expansion with booster on inverted sponge rubber without delamination or other nasty things happening?

_________________
"Once you get past a certain threshold, everyone's problems are the same: fortifying your island and hiding the heat signature from your fusion reactor." –Doctor Impossible

I doubt you can do that with a Chinese sheets without delaminating. With a soft sponged Japanese/German rubber you might have a chance.

_________________
OOAK Table Tennis Shop | Re-Impact Blades | Butterfly Table Tennis bats
Setup1: Re-Impact Smart, Viper OX, Victas VS 401 Setup2: Re-Impact Barath, Dtecs OX, TSP Triple Spin Chop 1.0mm Setup3: Re-Impact Dark Knight, Hellfire OX, 999 Turbo
Recent Articles: Butterfly Tenergy Alternatives | Tenergy Rubbers Compared | Re-Impact User Guide

Back in the day someone who posted on Usenet (on my instigation) tried sealing a sheet of rubber in a biscuit tin with some ASTI booster (not the same as today's boosters - this was essentially VOC speed glue without the glue part) to see what would happen. At the time my theory about why speed glue worked was that it would cause the sponge to expand, making a dome. When the sheet was applied to the blade (which was flat) the topsheet would be stretched, and this, I believed, gave the extra tension needed to make the sheet faster. The idea of the experiment was to see if the topsheet would also expand if you sealed the sheet in a can with the speedglue solvents, and indeed it did. Not only did it ALL expand (a lot), but it had the same speedglue effect (way too much of it!) when playing. This despite the absence of a dome and the stretching of the topsheet.

The drawback, of course, was that the VOC speed glue effect would wear off in two or three hours, the rubber would shrink back again, which was why people would glue up just before playing. And I doubt it got THAT big.

Some of those expanded long pips sheets WERE pretty big, though, I wonder if you could get the same effect by subjecting inverted sandwich to the same procedure (which is supposedly to soak it in olive oil for a few hours). You'd probably have to massage it in the bath to get the air out between the topsheet and sponge.

I'd be tempted to just splice on more than one sheet of rubber - put one in the middle, with its logo centered, and then use another sheet to provide the bits covering the left-over areas on the top and sides. Batwings is cheap enough, if you use thinner sponge (1.5mm) it shouldn't weigh too much.

Iskandar

Butterfly Orthodox DX is pretty large. Not enough to fully cover those gigantic autograph blades, mind you, but big enough.

I believe that Valor Premier is also very large out of the pack.

But in terms of large inverted rubbers, I don't really know where to direct you.

_________________
SPW/Solo

The USD23.95 Valor Premier would almost certainly do the job. It is supposed to "easily" fit the largest Valor blades, and the Valor Big Stick blade measures 161mm wide x 179mm tall (I don't know if it's the largest Valor blade, but it's big!). Unfortunately, I can't justify spending 94 Australian dollars, shipped, on a pair of Valor rubbers for what is essentially a toy bat.

Splicing seems the easiest/cheapest option at this stage. Might try it with short pips instead of inverted, for a less obvious seam.

_________________
"Once you get past a certain threshold, everyone's problems are the same: fortifying your island and hiding the heat signature from your fusion reactor." –Doctor Impossible

On the other hand, with pips, the seam will be obvious unless you can abut the sheets just so so that the rows and columns continue aligned across the seam.

Iskandar

There is that.

Plan C is sandpaper.

_________________
"Once you get past a certain threshold, everyone's problems are the same: fortifying your island and hiding the heat signature from your fusion reactor." –Doctor Impossible

Video, please.

Sent from my T1X Plus using Tapatalk