OOAK Table Tennis Forum

I had been really enjoying my Fextra... until, after a few months, I decided to change the rubber and got this:

yah i have played with fextra, yogi bear the famous blade tester highly recommend this blade who are looking for bang for the buck blade

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I'm not one to bother too much about granular (pun unintended) details, such as blade composition .... A club-mate, whos a high-ranked player, and has a good sense and knowledge about these things, mentioned that hes, in the past, owned/played with both, Clipper and Fextra, found both the blades to be similar'ish; except that the Fextra seems to have a bit more control, and is a hair slower ..

BTW, the composition of both blades goes like this : -

Clipper : Limba-Ayous-Ayous-Ayous-Ayous-Ayous-Limba

Fextra : Limba-Limba-Ayous-Ayous-Ayous-Limba-Limba

So, the Medial ply for Fextra is Ayous, not Limba

Always varnish your blade. Some blades need extra varnish.. (The M8 does tend to peel if you don't...)

Iskandar

I'm pretty sure I did varnish it. And that's on one side only, the other side is fine.

Ah well.. maybe if you get another one you could use more varnish. What glue were you using? (I avoid water based glue these days.)

On the bright side, it wasn't a Butterfly Viscaria or similar.. that would have been REALLY painful..

Iskandar

It definitely was a water-based glue. BTY Free Chalk, maybe?

The rubber that used to be glued on that side has a very soft sponge, the softest I've ever seen. Perhaps that created a too strong of a bond between the sponge and the blade surface?
The other side of the blade had a harder sponge Chinese rubber glued on it, and didn't suffer.

Actually, looking at the damage, it doesn't look like it'd be too hard to fix - splatula some cellulose filler into the holes and sand flat, and then double seal it again. I don't think you'd notice the difference. If you don't want it send it to me..

I think the water based glue might've had something to do with it, too - we never used to have these problems back in the old days - no one bothered to varnish blades, etc.

Iskandar