OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Sort of outside of my scope of expertise.. I'm sure some others might comment. Probably a good thing to do is look at existing blades and see what's been done already. The problem is - you probably won't succeed on the first bat, you'll have to make several, trying different things. Unless you're making the blades yourself I can imagine it's going to get expensive.. Even if you make them yourself it might still be expensive, depending on the materials you use and the equipment you'll need to acquire. THE big problem with making your own blades is acquiring the veneers in the thicknesses you need. Normal furniture veneers are fairly thick (around 2mm).

Iskandar

I got this interesting information surfing the net: https://stervinou.net/ttbdb/lexik.php

Interesting indeed.

I did find a problem - Hinoki is listed as "Also known as Port Orford Cedar, Oregon, Oregon Cedar, Lawson Cypress." Most definitely NOT true. They also don't mention single ply hinoki blades.

Iskandar

I'm looking for Kiso Hinoki or Hinoki veneer sellers in Europe?

Most veneer dealers sell decorative veneers - things that look nice on the surface of furniture. I don't think paulownia or hinoki would fall into that category, unfortunately. Nor would pine, or basswood or willow.

Iskandar

Does not sound bad at all! Build it and test it!
Also, you might even try it with a 3mm Ayous (or Abachi) core.

I have made two tests using balsa as second ply and this was not a bad aproach. But it should be refined. My prototypes were built with a black-cherry top-ply and they tested by a colleague that plays pips (OX and 0.5mm). On the OX, he could do all the spins he wanted with a very low speed. Like doing some small flick (similar to the top-spin hit, but only from the wrist) and he obtained top spin. Also he could get spin reverse with OX.

As Iskandar said, probably this will not be the best build from the 1st one, but still you will get the play character of that ply. And that's what matters.

First idea was trying doing something similar Stiga all round Classic that's the blade I'm using actually before the confinement. But the carpenter said kiri is lighter than ayous and I know kiri is also a very good center veneer (BTY uses a lot) and I don't like balsa core so I decided to use as intermediate veneer between the kiri & the limba outer veneer, as I don't want to use composite material only 5 ply all wood blade I decided to use spruce (intermediate) between the kiri (center) & the limba (out) to have spin & speed without no losing touch.

Lately I'm measuring the resonant frequency & the weight of all blades that I own & the differences in the weight between manufacturer specs & measured aren't always the same & some very different for example I own a Donic Alligator with 65gr & manufacturer says 80gr....

There are two things to measure that helps mine search process:
1-Light weight
2-High resonant frequency for the offensive side & low resonant frequency for the defensive side

A source of very thin (0.5mm) veneers. They're made in Belgium, but balsacentral.com sells it in Australia.

http://www.microwood.com/

Iskandar

so... I am used to playing with oversize balsa blades, normally Hallmark Ultra. 160mm wide x 162mm high, 70 to 75g - or at least they were, while Hallmark were still in business. Now, they seem to be getting heavier, and are not as easily available.
Hallmark Ultras are:
7.5mm balsa core
fh veneer 0.5mm I think koto
bh veneer 1.5mm I think walnut and abachi. I could be wrong on veneer types.

I was planning on trying to make my own balsa core blades, but I can get paulownia/ Kiri locally in 200mm width. What would a 4mm or 5mm pure paulownia blade feel like - with no veneers? The plan is to make a 4mm and 5mm paulownia core blade, with and without veneers (I have also got 0.6mm Koto and Walnut veneers).

How easy is it to add a veneer without expensive equipment?

Try the simplest of balsa bats - go to a aeromodelling supply store (or mail order from Tower Hobbies). The balsa is self-explanatory - get some 3/16" and 1/4" (in America) or 5mm or 6mm sheet (in Europe). Also get some sheets of 1/32" (actually 0.8mm) and 1/64" (0.4mm) 3 ply birch aircraft plywood. A 12" x 12" square will be enough for the two sides of one blade (though not if you want an oversized blade, of course..). Glue together with Elmer's Wood Glue or Titebond (or some other aliphatic wood glue). A couple of sheets (7 inch x 11 inch or so) pieces of 3/4" particle board shelving, some wax paper and a few C-clamps (including some large ones) would be needed for clamping. Oh... a scroll saw or bandsaw or router table or disk/belt sander would be nice to have but I have actually made blades with a box cutter and sanding block in the past.

You can try different variations of core thickness and face plies.. a 3/16" balsa core with 1/64" birch ply faces will give you a nice, ALL- blade with great feel, a 1/4" core with 1/32" faces will be very fast indeed.

Handles? Get a sheet of 1/2" wood with your order - you can make handle halves out of that, and you can easily whittle and sand it to shape.

If you've ever had a hankering to make blades, you should give these a try before letting the difficulty of getting thin veneers stop you.

Incidentally, if you have a Daiso store nearby, they stock sheets of paulownia. Thinnest is 6mm, unfortunately, but you can probably find a woodworker somewhere nearby with a surface planer to thin it down. If you have a Daiso store within 300 miles it's worth a pilgrimage, and not just for the wood...

Iskandar

Hi Iskandar, thanks for all the advice!
I have 2 Daiso stores within 5km - when I last visited, they didn't have paulownia. I will go again, when I have lots of time - my wife loves the stores! I spent a month in Japan at the end of last year, and got addicted as well.

A local hobby shop has balsa sheets - 5mm, 6.5mm, 8mm - I got a range. However, the sheets are all 100mm wide - meaning a join in the blade core. Is this normal? It was one of the appeals of paulownia - the piece I got was 200mm wide.

I have a scroll saw - will use that.

thanks for the tips on clamping, and the handles - those were the two aspects worrying me. I will give it all a go!

Peter

Yeah, it's normal to join sheets together to make wider sheets. The big manufacturers do it, they even join face veneers together. There were pictures on the Yinhe website some years ago (which I should have downloaded, because they disappeared..) - among them they showed how it was done (with a zigzag of holt melt glue across the seam - this holds the sheet together, and then they assemble the sandwich with more heat-activated glue, and the zigzag will then melt). There are even rules in one of the technical leaflets that explains the word "continuous" - seams are allowed, but they have to be restricted to one layer of wood.

Bob Brickell (lived/lives in Detroit) used to sell blades at tournaments which were balsa/birch. One of the big model airplane suppliers in the US is SIG Manufacturing, and one of the blades Bob had on display had a big blue SIG emblem stamped on the face, off to the side. I'd been making blades for a year before I saw that.. just made my day. Talking to Bob, he said he bought wide sheets (6 inches wide) at the hobby store due to the "continuous" rule. The thing was - those wide sheets were made at the SIG factory by gluing together long blocks of wood (it comes from Ecuador in trimmed blocks, 40-50 inches long and maybe 4-6 inches wide). The SIG factory (in Montezuma, IA) is a point of pilgrimage for serious model airplane hobbyists driving through the Midwest, so I've seen the blocks in the clamping rig myself! Serious competitors will actually sit in the SIG wood store room with a digital scale and hand-pick sheets of wood.

Since I was stingy, er, frugal, I'd make my cores by using a long piece in the middle and two shorter pieces (cut from one wider piece) on the sides.. and I'd keep the ply offcuts for use elsewhere.

Daiso stores vary in what they stock - most of the ones around here have a small amount of paulownia (maybe a dozen sheets and a small assortment of strips) but there's a particular one that has a huge stack of it in one of the aisles. It's a neat wood, very much like balsa except about two or three times as dense. Carves nicely. Try talking to one of the managers - I'm sure they can get it. If you need help with stock numbers or photos maybe I could help photograph the stickers or something.

Iskandar

so... went shopping yesterday.
bought 6 c-clamps, the glue and the shelving board. I also bought 4 metal plates, that I thought would aid in spreading the load.
I also went to Daiso, and found some 30cm x 20cm x 0.9cm paulownia (actually a chopping board). Got 4 of these, simply because they were so cheap, and I was so pleased to find them! Perfect, except double the thickness I need. I had a look at thicknessers, but the cost doesn't make it worthwhile.

and finally - I found a local woodworking co-op just down the road, that has thicknessers, routers, all the machinery I could ever want - where you pay $150 for 10 hours. The only issue - I need to be inducted, and this will only be in October. For now, I will experiment with the 6.5mm balsa I have, and put a 0.6mm koto sheet on each side.... this is going to be fun!

I managed to get the paulownia log sliced down to 4.5mm to 5mm thickness, and ended up with 36 pieces 300mmx200mm - so lots of options! The log was 80 years old, and a lot darker than the new cutting boards


I also had the chopping boards thicknessed down to 4.5mm

a 300mm x 200mm piece is 82g


and finally - I cut the 6.5mm balsa with 0.6mm koto both sides into an oversize 160mm x 162mm blade. Exceptionally light (with no handles yet) - only 46g. Cut fairly roughly on a scrollsaw - I will look at a neater way of cutting once I stop experimenting


For the handles, I am looking at importing a range from China - rather than making my own. It was the one thing making me reluctant to make my own blade

made a (rough) pine handle, to test it out. added a thin layer of wipe-on polyurethane
Weight is 60g, for a 160mm x 162mm blade