Hand Made Blades

I want everyone who reads this post to know that I have searched this question and have not found any useful info so I am going to ask the question. Please don't beat me up for asking this question

I am an avid golfer! Love the sport! i discovered in golf that a regular old person could build and assemble their own golf clubs. When I learned that I could build my own golf clubs I decided to study everything I could about custom golf club fitting. I read books took classes, and talked to every expert I could about building my own set of golf clubs that would fit my unique swing ! The journey has been awesome I have learned a lot about golf and more important about my personal swing. I am a very handy person and I love the feeling of using something that I have personally built.

Now that I am addicted to table tennis and have studied the game for some time that urge to create with my own bare hands that I can use is starting to enter my mind. I think that it would be fun to build a table tennis blade with my own 2 hands. I know that this would be just for fun and be just a hobby. I would not use the blade in competition or even in practice for that matter, well maybe if it was good enough in practice just to see how it felt! Anyway

Is there anyone of you out there who has ever had this idea and more importantly tried to build a blade from scratch? Is there any web resourses books, videos etc that talk about building a blade from scratch wether it be a single ply blade or a multy ply blade.

It would be awesome if anyone has experimented with this idea of building a blade they could possible play with, with their own 2 hands?

Added by mod:

list of US-based custom-blade "manufacturers" (usually company consists of just one-two guys making the blades in their garage, but don't you worry - their blades are first class, we are only putting here those who are well-known for their quality and reliability)

1. Ian Worz Beatsticks

2. American Hinoki

3. Borko and Son

4. Blades By Charlie

We have a few members here who actually do that - ianworz (Ian @ http://worzbeatsticks.blogspot.com/), ahinoki (Kevin @ www.americanhinoki.com) - at a rather professional level.

Ask them for the pointers, but be aware that this will require some serious investment in tools and in wood materials, not to mention time and money spent on acquiring the necessary skills.

We have a few members here who actually do that - Ian Worz (http://worzbeatsticks.blogspot.com/), ahinoki (Kevin @ www.americanhinoki.com) - at a rather professional level.

Ask them for the pointers, but be aware that this will require some serious investment in tools and in wood materials, not to mention time and money spent on acquiring the necessary skills.


Thanks! I will look in to those!

I have never played with a 1 ply blade. How do 1 ply blades differ from 5 or 7 ply blades?

The main problem from my point of view is that it's extremely hard to find the right balance and the right combination of thickness for your plies.

Great example is Nexy Color vs Nexy Dexter. They have exactly the same construction (same woods, same plies) but slightly different thickness of outer layers and central layer (Dexter is 0.4-0.5 mm thicker than Color).

As a result, Dexter plays 10% faster (not as surprise), is somewhat head heavier, not as superbly balanced (again, something that can be predicted from the description) but - surprise! surprise! - has a rather different behavior in short game. As jcdi so succinctly put it in his review on Dexter, it is a 1-gear blade as Color is a 2-gear blade. Meaning that slow gentle shots with Dexter do not play as gentle and controlled as Color - they tend to be rather bouncy and fast. All that from slight difference in ply thickness.

So in short - consistency and predictability in making your homemade blade is almost  unattainable unless you have some expensive industrial-grade tools and therefore you should be prepared for  the results of your labor to be disappointing (or pleasantly surprising, who knows...).

OMG! We forgot about Borko!!!

www.borkoandson.com

Originally posted by Anton Chigurh Originally posted by cntcasey Thanks! I will look in to those! I have never played with a 1 ply blade. How do 1 ply blades differ from 5 or 7 ply blades? I don't want to confuse you further, cntcasey, because you seem to be struggling in deciding on equipment. But... a one-ply might be right up your alley (maybe). I say that because, I too used to play baseball a lot. (Certainly not as much as you, but I played a lot and loved it for a long time.) Hitting a ping pong ball with a one-ply blade feels very similar to hitting a baseball with a wooden baseball bat. It is so freakin awesome. However, one-plies are very thick so they can be uncomfortable for some people. Also, they're very fast so they're probably not good for developing players. However, they have nice control for being as fast as they are so... who knows? They're probably not the best for you, but you may want to pick up a one-ply WRC from Kevin at American Hinoki some time in the future, just for fun/experimentation.

That sounds really cool! I would love to have that baseball feel of a wood bat in table tennis! It might bring back memories from the good old days! I have a very nice piece of poplar that I am in the process of making into a 1 ply blade! I will let you k now how it turns out! I guess you have to start somewhere.

Do one ply blades loop any better or worse then multi ply blades?

Is it just me or is anyone else having problems with this web site?

http://www.americanhinoki.com/

I can open any of the drop down links?

Originally posted by cntcasey Is it just me or is anyone else having problems with this web site? http://www.americanhinoki.com/ I can open any of the drop down links?

Use IE - won't work with FF or other browsers...

Here's another custom blade maker: www.BladesByCharlie.com

I just finished my very first hand made blade! It's a one ply blade made out of poplar wood. I Sanded it down to about 1/4 of an inch! I slapped some rubber on and wow the thing is flexible! I can totally feel the dwell with this blade! I found a place here in Denver that sells Cypress wood and I am very excited to start my first single ply Cypress blade! This time I am going to make it a 3/8 inches to start and then will sand it down if I want it more flexible! It's a fun to hand shape a blade very rewarding! 

I'm not going to classify myself as blade making scholar, but I have made about 10 or 12 blades, and each one has been a little nicer with additional innovations like hollow handles, etc. Although it helps to have bench tools, you can accomplish a surprising amount without them. It is very helpful to have a digital scale that reads in grams, a small bandsaw is desirable, but a coping saw will get the job done. A drill press or drum sander can also be very helpful in the final shaping of the blade. As far as milling veneers, etc., you can get past that by buying pre milled wood. I have used balsa, purchased from a hobby shop as well as birch plywood, and basswood, which are available in many thicknesses, so you have the option of building the blade in layers as opposed to shaving it from one piece. I use polyurethane glue i.e. Gorilla glue for laminating my plies, and place them between two 12" square polished granite tiles protected by waxed paper, and cover this with a 50 lb. weight. It works great. Shaping the handle can be done again by laminating to the right thickness, and sanding and shaping with a rotating random orbital sander, and/or a Dremel tool with a sanding drum. I created a template from my favorite factory paddle. I have played with most of them with pretty satisfactory results, but there is a lot of experimentation when it comes to creating various performance traits. Each new paddle is a new experiment, and I sense that you, like me gets that bug where you're just dying to try some new combination to see what it does. Don't get intimidated with what other people are doing, just keep playing around with it. It's tremendously satisfying, and who knows, maybe you'll come up with the next great paddle one day.

Don't forget the german guy, Ulmo;

http://www.ulmo-blades.de/en/

He also makes some nice looking blades.

Chris.B. I don't want to take any credit from cntcasey, but if you look further up in the tread, you will see this message posted by Jim T:

"I have added a comment with the list to the title post - I hope Casey won't mind - this way we will have this very useful list right there at the top of the thread."

So I think the credit should go to Jim for making the list.

these blade makers take so long to respond

I've made a few blades out of cedar.  I started out by roughly hewing a half inch thick blade out of fencing cedar I found at a lumberyard out here in Fort Collins, Colorado, it was the only plank that wasn't warped and cracked from being outdoors.   I didn't end up putting any rubbers on it because it was so roughly made but instead ended up playing a style of hardbat with it.("burring" the faces with coarse sandpaper allows you to give the ball enough chopping spin to play that style)  The thwock of celloid on cedar is incomparable, much like others mentioned a wooden bat hitting a baseball.

I went on to get some good western red cedar from a lumberyard in Washington state.  It was beautiful kiln-dried clear vertical grain(at ~ $3 a board-foot) and made my first real single-ply blade out of that and put some rubber on it.   It has a thickness and solidity of a good instrument and hits like charm.  It provides good touch on the short shots and has power to spare when you want to "drop the hammer". At about $3 plus my labor and sweat I couldn't be happier with the result.  And as cntcasey remarked, there is a feeling that goes with fashioning a blade with your own hands.