OOAK Table Tennis Forum

I got my brand-new American Hinoki Port Orford Cedar blade today. Here are the pictures (I apologize for the relatively low quality of them, but my wife is traveling and took the good camera with her, of course):








On the other side of the handle that you cannot see, I had Kevin put my name so that the blade is personalized for me only.

It's pure unadulterated weight out of the box: 122 g. I asked him to get as close to 120 g with the natural cork handle as he could, and he made it nearly perfect!

I will of course have a review posted here once I have a chance to play with it for a bit. But I wanted to get the pictures taken before I messed it all up with glue and rubber.

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Currently playing classic defensive style (a la Chtchetinine)
American Hinoki Single Ply 9mm Bald Cypress
Palio CJ8000/1.2mm Dawei Butter
Saviga V 0.6

Wery nice Glue

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Look good Mike. I assume this is the one you chose after your trial yeah?

I'll be interested to hear how it plays

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I'm always in the dark, but the Dark sheds lights upon everything!! Beauty is only pimple deep! Beauty is in the eye of the pipholder!
S/U 1: Blade: Bty Gergely . FH Black Andro Rasant 2.1 . BH Red Tibhar Grass Dtecs
S/U 2: Blade: Bty Gergely . FH Black Hexer+ 2.1 . BH Red GD Talon
S/U 3: Blade: Bty Gergely . No rubbers...thinking of adding Red Dtecs and Black Rasant
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Beautiful looking blade! The graphics/text is very well done too, considering some of it is on cork! Hope it plays as well as it looks!

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Is the cork durable as a handle, or will it slowly wear away with use? I suppose sealing it would help a lot, but I assume the cork is used both for weight reduction and for sweat absorption. Is this right?

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I'm always in the dark, but the Dark sheds lights upon everything!! Beauty is only pimple deep! Beauty is in the eye of the pipholder!
S/U 1: Blade: Bty Gergely . FH Black Andro Rasant 2.1 . BH Red Tibhar Grass Dtecs
S/U 2: Blade: Bty Gergely . FH Black Hexer+ 2.1 . BH Red GD Talon
S/U 3: Blade: Bty Gergely . No rubbers...thinking of adding Red Dtecs and Black Rasant
Aussie Table Tennis Shop / Aussie Table Tennis Facebook Page / Equipment Review Index / Read my Reb Report Blog: click here.

Thanks for the compliments! I thought it was a real beauty also.

I got to play with it for the first time this morning for a couple of hours during a practice session. Very nice! I no longer have another single ply blade to compare it to, but it has no vibration and is nice and fast. In fact, with the 40° Inspirit rubber that I got for it, it might be a little bit too fast! But after a couple of hours of playing I was just about fully adjusted to the added speed and was very much enjoying playing with it.

Reborn: Yes, the natural cork handles are very grippy and do an excellent job of sweat absorption. While I have not had a cork handle for more than one day, I do believe that they are fairly durable (though obviously not as durable as a would handle). Kevin does offer a suggestion on his website, however, that if you do gouge or nick the cork handle you can simply go out and get a certain kind of wood filler to fill them and it works very well.

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Currently playing classic defensive style (a la Chtchetinine)
American Hinoki Single Ply 9mm Bald Cypress
Palio CJ8000/1.2mm Dawei Butter
Saviga V 0.6

You are right Reb cork ( not cock you mantioned in some posts ) handle is for weight reduction and exelent swet absorption or can be seald like I have done on my blades and will be like wooden handle and its not slipery at all.

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Cork feels better when unsealed but then it will be very easy to get dirty. What i do is wipe the cork with a wet towel after every session.

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Galaxy K-4/ Xiom Vega Pro/ Xiom Vega Pro

Thats good Idea.

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Is the average weight over 100 grams for the American Hinoki? The blade is very nicely and professionally done. Congratulations !

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Expert II crwi C-Pen
Red Acuda P1

The nice thing about American Hinoki is that they are a custom blade maker. He can make you a single ply Hinoki blade to almost any weight specification that you want. In my case, I wanted a pretty heavy blade (approximately 120 g) so Kevin and I picked a fairly dense wood and made it a fairly thick blade such that it would put the overall weight of the blade right in the neighborhood of what I wanted.

So to answer your question directly, no, the blades do not have to be over 100 g in weight.

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Currently playing classic defensive style (a la Chtchetinine)
American Hinoki Single Ply 9mm Bald Cypress
Palio CJ8000/1.2mm Dawei Butter
Saviga V 0.6

my 2 blades are both over 100.

btw, Kevin does a very nice sealing of the blade and finishing of the handles from what I can see in pictures. However I glued and rough finished my own handles so it's a good thing there is no visible "American Hinoki" label because it would not look good for American Hinoki, since my blades look very home-made, especially the POC which I shaved down. actually they look like i just took a chopping board from my kitchen and put rubbers on them

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Galaxy K-4/ Xiom Vega Pro/ Xiom Vega Pro

dude, I saw the pictures of your POC on the other thread. Yeah, I actually thought AH must be in a bad mood when making that blade of yours

Cheers.

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Main Setup: There is NO such thing
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Don't blame AH. The blades looked nice until I used my dremel tool on them.

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Galaxy K-4/ Xiom Vega Pro/ Xiom Vega Pro

Hi, just to check up on you and se how you and your beauty ( POC ) are doin together

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