OOAK Table Tennis Forum

I'm thinking it might be a way for me to try one of these fancy carbon-arylate blades. They're generally way too heavy for what I like, being around 90 grams. If I can shave 10g off I'd be able to use it. Problem is... the heat might affect the epoxy they use in the cloth layup. Epoxy creeps when it gets hot. I'd perhaps have to build some sort of press to keep the layers from coming apart and use a fairly low temperature over a longer period of time. Naah… Even the cheap Chinese ones cost $30-40... too much for a casual experiment that might end with a destroyed blade. I do intend to bake a M8 some time, if I can figure a way to easily remove the lens without damaging it.

Iskandar

You really love that blade ...

Greetings all!

First, I would like to say thank you to all of the contributors to this thread. The information is incredibly helpful to new builders. After reading 35 pages of posts and taking bits and pieces into consideration, I have completed my first blade. Rubbers are arriving this afternoon and I will be giving it a test run later in the week. I have a fairly-high rated friend in San Diego that is going to be testing it after I try it out. I decided to try my first in the style of Bob Brickell per Iskandar Taib's recommendation. I just received a few sheets of 9" veneer from CertainlyWood (Ipe, Black Limba and Cypress). I'm also waiting on a Roarockit Vacuum Press kit and some 1/8" Mahogany and smaller pieces of balsa for some different core/medial compositions. What an addicting hobby!

I'm afraid it's going to be a rocket, but she (my friend that will be doing the testing) is definitely ok with that.

Size is slightly smaller than the Ross Standard blade template.


Blade composition:

• 1/32" 3-ply Birch A/AB

• 1/4" Balsa

• 1/32" 3-ply Birch A/AB


Handle:

• Koa


Glues:

• Blade Layers - Titebond Liquid Hide Glue (planning on switching to Gorilla Poly for future)

• Handle to blade - Contact cement

Finish:

• Two coats Wipe-On Poly with light 320 grit sand between coats


Weight:

• 98 g (I'm guessing this is due to the handle being slightly longer than average? It was a request from friend. )

The handle is definitely the weak point of this one, and I plan to mitigate it by building a router jig for the future builds. This was my first and I thought I would be able to do it without building one. That was a bad line of thinking. I'm not quite good enough with a chisel to keep them consistent.

Nice!

Looks great!

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Came across this just now. 4mm cores, 12x8 inches. 3 sheets for $5.22, including shipping. I think the wood is paulownia (kiri). This is from XVT, they seem to OEM blades, so this probably comes from their factory.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32809627985.html



Incidentally, you can get 6mm paulownia planks from Daiso, but you'd have to find someone to sand it down to about 4mm for you unless you want a really thick blade.

Also came across this:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32627446243.html



Iskandar

It looks more like balsa then kiri
this will be much better choice
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000267 ... b201603_53

Kiri (paulownia) does look remarkably like balsa. It is a fair amount denser than the most dense grade of balsa, though (balsa varies a lot in density - the heaviest is about 4X the density of the lightest). It's still fairly light, as woods go, which is surprising because it's used for making cabinets and musical instruments in Japan.

Iskandar

How much would a single thin layer of Limba plus glue weigh.

I have a 70gm Dr Neubaer Bloodhound blade that is very stiff and hard with low throw which is good for BH pimples but not for looping with inverted on the FH. I had the idea of adding a layer of a soft wood such as Limba to the FH to add dwell and feel but not slowing it down.

Depends on how thin, I suppose. Aside from the weight, actually obtaining a thin sheet of limba might be a problem.

https://www.commercialforestproducts.co ... ite-limba/

The average specific gravity is given at 0.57 (this would be grams per cubic centimeter, water being 1.00). A typical attacking blade has 200 sq. cm. of area (not including the shoulders and tang), so let's see - if you can find 1mm thick limba, the volume would be 200 x 0.1 = 20 cu. cm, and this would weigh 11.4 grams. Not sure what the glue would weigh - the lightest glue would probably be 24 hour epoxy, applied to both sides and then wiped almost completely off using a playing card and paper towels before clamping under high pressure. (This is how people sheeting foam wings on model airplanes do it - or at least, the serious competition fliers do it - in fact a lot of them will vacuum-bag the wing in lieu of the clamping.)

Iskandar

What european wood types can be used for core? Only basswood?

Spruce too. But it will be a bit tricky to match with something else.

Going by the hardness and density itself Willow sounds like a good candidate to replace Ayous too. Any opinions on that?

Going with the same "param by param" comparison I deducted that Ash could be used instead of Koto and Pine instead of Limba, how wrong am I here?

Willow was used in classic old defensive blades. Can't remember which Butterfly blade used willow, but I remember reading about in in an old Butterfly catalog.

Iskandar

Butterfly Defence II, according to stervinou ttdb it has also been used in Darker Esteem, but as secondary veneer. I guess I will have to find out how it functions as core material lolz.