OOAK Table Tennis Forum

I will try to share you some stuff from what I have learned by miself in the last 2 years, while analizing values, staring at pictures on the net, glueing ply and recording frequencies. Anyway, please keep in mind that I am a self teached hobbyst in this field and I may be wrong.

If you look only density, stiffness and Janka hardness you might get into the idea that many woods are alomost similar, but it is a wrong path in the field of TT making. For an engineering field like house-roof building they can be (more than) enough, but not for TT. Here we keep these toys in our hands and we need to fell the ball at impact. And this feel is what helps us build better reflexes and play (hopefully) better.

In my opinion, together with these 3 factors (density, hardness and stiffness) there are another 2 factors that influence speed and feeling: wood pores and fiber structure.
I will take your examples and disect them a bit, just to explain a bit better what I mean.

Willow vs Ayous
You mentioned Willow and Ayous, and their performances are like these:

BlackWillow - density=0.42, Janka=1920N, stiffness=6.97GPa
Ayous - density=0.38, Janka=1910N, stiffness=6.69GPa

but only these 3 values are misleading. If you analyze their pore structure, you will see they are totally different woods.

Here they are:

Willow



Ayous



Willow has a bit harder sapwood with many small pores (almost typicall structure for temperate climate woods), which gives you a structure good for absorbing impact. This is why this wood is/was used in defensive blades.
Ayous has softer sapwood (you can feel that when you carve it by hand) with big-wide pores. This structure it has is very sponge like and the air trapped there makes is very bouncy. This is way it is good as a core layer in offensive blades.

Another factor is the feel factor. Those pores in the wood act like some sort of resonance tubes and makes the wood resonate at different frequencies depending on their pore structure, stiffness, hardness and density. This is why many of the all-wood blades that use ayous, you get a very nice feedback at ball impact.

Pine vs Limba
This is a very misleading comparison. Those 2 woods are even more different. Limba has also pores and it has interwoven fibers, while pine has very distinct parallel fibers (dark colored ones that grows during winter and light coloured ones that grow in summer).

Limba



Pine (pinus radiata here)



Anyway both these woods will offer performance and nice feeling in a TT blade, but the way they do it is (almost totally) different. Limba vibrates and gives a specific staying feel (like the ball stays a while on the blade) while pine will give you some different feel (like the ball goes a bit into the blade and is then thrown out).

Ash vs Koto
Here you nailed it a bit, because these are 2 very nice woods offering good performance, both of them. Still Ash is denser and stiffer than Koto (0.67 vs 0.59 and 5870N vs 4200N) and I think it can produce a bit faster blades if it is used in a ply where koto was used previously. Anyway they have some different character compared to each other, also because of the pore structure. Here it is:

White ash



Koto



You may think that it cannot be like that. But the fact is, when glued in a Ply it's almost a big difference, in the way you feel the ball impact and the game itself.

Once you will aquire some veneer and build-up a collection, I propose you one experiment consisting of 2 blades (using Ash and Koto).
Builds are like these:

Blade 1: ash - ash - pawlonia(kiri) - ash - ash
Blade 2: koto - koto - pawlownia(kiri) - koto - koto

where ash and koto is veneer of 0.6mm and the paulownia(kiri) core is 3mm.
The first composition is similar to what you can find in the Nittaku Violin blade, which is a thin blade with a hard feel that is considered to be a fast blade (OFF- to OFF speed).
Now, try to glue the second ply and see what you get !!!

Hello...I also make custom-made blade from Borneo's own local species. I try to make an all wood feeling.

Nice. SouthEast Asia has some nice woods for blades.

Impressive, thanks to share your knowledge.

_________________
No more political prisoners in Catalonia.

Maybe jelutong would make a good core wood. It's light enough. If not you can always get 6mm paulownia from Daiso. A surface sander would be nice to thin down wood.

By the way, the Yinhe N11 uses meranti face plies.

Iskandar

https://stervinou.net/ttbdb/liste.php?find=compo&pli=12

The Sanwei m8 seems to have 5 walnut Plies.I wonder what walnut is good for.I guess control and between all / all + speed.

The entry for M8 is wrong.

That's right. The outer ply is Dedaru,which is typical from South East Asia.

This one?
https://www.wood-database.com/jelutong/



Performance wise looks in the range of Ayous (0.38g/cmc, 1910N, 6.69GPa) and has a nice pore structure.
Density 0.45 g/cmc
Hardness 1740N
Stiffness 8.44 GPa

I would see it used (maybe as a core) in a modern defensive blade.

What exactly is dedaru? Nothing in Wikipedia, nothing from a general web search.

The face ply actually looks a lot like obeche (abachi/wawa/ayous). They were selling obeche wing skins in the US (for making model airplanes) and I got some, looks just like that.

Iskandar

Yup. Here it's sold mainly as wood moldings, for use around floors and ceilings, but mainly for picture frames. Fairly expensive wood, soft, good for carving. Kinda similar to basswood (which is also used for carving). Quite expensive. Problem is getting thin slabs or veneers.

Iskandar

I have the oportunity one man can make me a blade following mine needs: combi for one side LP push-blocker & the other one attack. What about the wood & thickness selection:

Kiri 3/3.2mm (center)

Attack side
Spruce 0.8mm
Limba 0.6mm

Defense side
Balsa 1.mm or Willow
Limba 0.6mm

Total 6mm width & 85/87gr

I'm looking for a blade to play with the BH LP close to the table blocking & chop blocking & with the FH driving & looping not choping.

TIA
Felipe

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No more political prisoners in Catalonia.

This seems to be the holy grail of blades, and a LOT of manufacturers and custom blade builders have given it a try. Look up Re-Impact blades, for instance, or BBC. Dr. Neubauer has several in their catalog, I think. Even Sanwei makes one (no idea how good it is).

Iskandar

Limba it's the outside veneer in both sides of blade.

_________________
No more political prisoners in Catalonia.

What do you think? No suggestions?

_________________
No more political prisoners in Catalonia.