OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Sorry - not at this time.

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Ross
Handcrafted Table Tennis Blades

Ross from where do you source your paulownia if I may ask ??

From an unlikely source: a surfboard supply company. They import it for their surfboard kits, and they also sell the raw planks. I've been very pleased with the quality of the wood I've purchased from them. Here's the link: http://www.woodsurfboardsupply.com/wood.html

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Ross
Handcrafted Table Tennis Blades

From an unlikely source: a surfboard supply company. They import it for their surfboard kits, and they also sell the raw planks. I've been very pleased with the quality of the wood I've purchased from them. Here's the link: http://www.woodsurfboardsupply.com/wood.html[/quote]

Ah,
I see now you are in the US..I have been looking for someone in the UK for this Kiri. Seems not easy.

From an unlikely source: a surfboard supply company. They import it for their surfboard kits, and they also sell the raw planks. I've been very pleased with the quality of the wood I've purchased from them. Here's the link: http://www.woodsurfboardsupply.com/wood.html[/quote]

Ross,
no more questions after this , promise (maybe not) lol.
Ok, I have been very very lucky to find a supply of KIRI .
Would you say that KIRI (I understand it all depends on what it is combined with) makes a faster bat than OBECHE core-wise.? On avg.?
Also I will be using UREA RESIN glue. This will dry crystalline. Is this bad/good/doesnt matter too much.?
I found that the flexibles (pva) made the bat feel a bit dead.
Thnx Mr Leidy

Kiri is more springy than Obeche, and that can favor speed. However, Obeche is harder and more dense, and that can favor speed. I've found that if the Obeche is too thick, the blade can be too stiff and have no personality. You'll generally get a more lively blade with Kiri. Is that sufficiently vague? As you've anticipated, "it all depends."

I use polyurethane glue - completely waterproof and excellent creep resistance. I've never tried urea resin glue because it seems kind of fussy to prepare. However, I'm guessing that once you get used to it, it would work well for blades.

_________________
Ross
Handcrafted Table Tennis Blades

Urea resin glue.. Not Aerolite, is it?? Is this the 2 part one where one part comes as a powder? You have to mix it with water. This you apply to one part. And the second part is a liquid, which you brush onto the other part. When they meet, they stick together. You have to clamp the parts together. The brand name was "Aerolite", it was made by Ciba-Geigy, and was used to assemble the Mosquito bomber in WWII. I was looking for this glue high and low some years back, I figured it'd be great for gluing spruce spars into Styrofoam wing cores because (like polyurethane glue) it would foam up a little, and was supposedly very lightweight. C-G quit making it years and years ago, but apparently a small company in Britain started making it again and it's still being used mainly by people who home-build aircraft for wood-wood joints. Way too expensive to have it shipped to me, though.

http://www.seqair.com/skunkworks/Glues/ ... olite.html

I used polyurethane glues when I was in the US (this being the famous Gorilla Glue). I still use it, the main problem is it goes bad if you DON'T use it. When I was in Holland a couple years ago I found that they sold it in home DIY lumber yards, a lot cheaper than you'd pay for it in hobby stores.

Incidentally, for a lot of my balsa-birch blades I used plain old Titebond (yellow aliphatic glue). Worked pretty well, but I had to use epoxy when I started using fiberglass and carbon fiber. I think the big guys (Butterfly, YinHe) use a hot melt of some sort. The blade blanks go in hot presses.

Iskandar

Hi,
the glue is powder yes, however, as far as I am aware it just needs to be mixed with water and applied to the substrate then clamped for at least 12hrs.
I am using a (diy)heated press as well.

What's the brand of the glue, and where do you get it? Might be good for my model airplanes if I can get some.

Incidentally, for those who live in the Far East - if there's are Daiso shops around, they sell paulownia sheets. Typically 6mm and 9mm thicknesses. Not all the shops sell wood, but maybe you can get them to order it for you. (Of the five or six Daiso stores around here one sells wood.) If you need it thinner perhaps you could find someone with a thicknessing plane or sander. If you want large quantities, I know of one supplier I found on Alibaba that sells paulownia (they mainly sell balsa).

Iskandar

Hi
the glue is 'resintite' powdered glue based on UREA FORMALDEHYDE .
I got it from my friend who is a joiner.
Yes , the KIRI wood is still an issue for me in the uk. I have sourced a bit of it but am still awaiting delivery.
My first bat will be the kiri-white ash-white ash.
I have alot of wenge and ebony to try as well.

Ah.. found it.

http://www.sealantsandtoolsdirect.co.uk ... 23598.html

On that same page there are several of the polyurethane glues Ross mentioned. I see a clear, 5 minute version I've never come across before, too:

http://www.sealantsandtoolsdirect.co.uk ... 23937.html

Not much use for blade making, but it might be useful elsewhere for my other hobby. Too bad it'd cost quite a bit of money to have this stuff shipped from the UK. Also, that looks suspiciously like a sealant gun cartridge. Gorilla makes an excellent clear quick-setting PU as well but it doesn't set in 5 minutes.

Iskandar

Hi yes, thats the one.
What s your opinion of the resintite.? I wanted to try something that dries crystaline.
Still awaiting my KIRI grrrr.
Cant wait to get started on my blade as I do need a new one.

I've never used urea-formaldehyde glues so I don't have an opinion. I'd love to get my hands on some to try in other applications (not in table tennis blades). They're supposed to be lightweight so they'd be useful for the application I have in mind. Since it's water-based it would probably make thin layers of wood expand and warp. This doesn't matter since it's going to cure and dry in a press anyway, but your veneers will curl up unless you apply the glue to both sides simultaneously, or for the face ply, dampen the wood on the other side. This happened to me when I was playing with obeche veneer (which I got from a model airplane source - they used to use it to skin model glider wings).

Iskandar

The stripes on the handle are actually leftover pieces of the glued veneer plate from which the frame is cut.

Thanks for the compliments

Thanx for your reply. Can you pls be more specific.?