if boosting is illegal, why...

el luchador wrote: if boosting is illegal but a lot of people boost, why not just speed glue?

BeaverMD wrote: el luchador wrote: if boosting is illegal but a lot of people boost, why not just speed glue? Easy, because boosting is what pros do and amateurs want to do what the pros are doing.  If Ma Long and Timo were putting bull semen on their rackets, amateurs will do it too.  Table tennis players are sheep.

mog1111 wrote: I was just teasing Baal, he knew what I meant and he was ok with it.

Very much ok.

As a former EJ and speed gluer from 1991-1997 (we're talkin' Brendling balsa walnut/mahogany/koto/ash/limba combinations plastered with Mark V GPS, Mark V AD, Schildkrot V-Max, Bufferfly Tackifire, Donic Vario Soft, Donic Supersonic 40 marinated in Tip-Top, Vulcofux, Spinny Top and Butterfly Unfair Chack) I fell somewhat qualified to write about my experiences with speed gluing and its deleterious effects upon this noble sport of ours.

Edited by berndt_mann - 01/25/2017 at 5:25pm

"  In 1992 alone, speed glue did in more table tennis players than fires, floods, pestilence, famine, automobile accidents, gun violence and skateboarding combined."

We need zeio.  Haven't seen him in a awhile.  He at one point found a bunch of old patents for speed glues that described the principle of how they worked, but I really don't remember the physical chemistry behind it and am not sufficiently curious to actually find them.

In practical terms, the effect dissipated quickly, so you definitely need the VOCs to still be there.  In effect, once the rubber stopped giving off fumes, your speed glue effect was mostly gone.  Of course, everybody in the room was breathing those fumes.  That meant re-gluing right before each time you played, which I really don't miss doing.  In the earliest days, the glues contained halogenated hydrocarbon solvents -- really bad from a toxicological perspective.  In the early 90s the companies changed their formulas to things that were probably not so nasty, but still, you were sniffing glue.

From what I have read and from limited experience, the sponge expands when the glue gets absorbed by the sponge, the sponge being attached to the rubber sheet exerts tension upon the rubber, the effect of this is the doming effect you see on pictures, once you glue the rubber onto the blade and the rubber is flat against the blade there is tension on the top sheet. But the effects goes away as the VOCs escape during the next few days. Leaving the top sheet stretched. I have experienced some rubbers shrinking after having being expanded and the top sheet loses its elasticity. There is a limit on how many times you can boost/speed glue a rubber. Once you reach this limit the rubber feels dead. Nothing will revive it, not even if the Pope comes from the Vatican to spray holy water on your rubber!

Fulanodetal wrote: From what I have read and from limited experience, the sponge expands when the glue gets absorbed by the sponge, the sponge being attached to the rubber sheet exerts tension upon the rubber, the effect of this is the doming effect you see on pictures, once you glue the rubber onto the blade and the rubber is flat against the blade there is tension on the top sheet. But the effects goes away as the VOCs escape during the next few days. Leaving the top sheet stretched. I have experienced some rubbers shrinking after having being expanded and the top sheet loses its elasticity. There is a limit on how many times you can boost/speed glue a rubber. Once you reach this limit the rubber feels dead. Nothing will revive it, not even if the Pope comes from the Vatican to spray holy water on your rubber! FdT

For sure that's a big part of it, it is certainly how I always thought about it.  However, I recall from old posts that there is quite a bit more to it than that.  It related to how the pores in the sponge behave, and phase transitions of gas inside the pores when the ball hits that absorb energy and all sorts of stuff like that which really doesn't matter much now. 

Anyway, to my everlasting shame, I have provided people all the information they need to check out the effect for themselves, just for historical perspective or to satisfy their curiosity. 

Baal wrote: We need zeio.  Haven't seen him in a awhile.  He at one point found a bunch of old patents for speed glues that described the principle of how they worked, but I really don't remember the physical chemistry behind it and am not sufficiently curious to actually find them.

there's also this....

Fulanodetal wrote: "  In 1992 alone, speed glue did in more table tennis players than fires, floods, pestilence, famine, automobile accidents, gun violence and skateboarding combined." Ok, in the interest of conversation, is there any documentation, link, article that has any info regarding players succumbing to the noxious gasses from speed glue? Just curious.....I mean, thats quite the claim there.... FdT

FdT,

It's hard to say.  A lot of toxicology is random, you are just lucky or unlucky if some poison you have been exposed to binds to your DNA in just the right way, etc. etc. etc. (More often, it is a metabolite of the poison, but this is a detail). The odds of something bad happening of course increase as the concentration of the poison increases, or if the duration or frequency of your exposure to the poison increases, and in populations of people, or in people in certain occupations, you can specify a risk. 

But whether that one particular speed glue exposure is going to give cancer to that one particular player, impossible to say.  Same reason why once in a while smokers live to be 90.  They got lucky.  But make no mistake, smoking is bad for you. 

I don't personally know of anyone who passed out from speed glue fumes, i.e. acute toxicity, but I have to say, a few times back when my club was in a smaller and poorly ventilated space, I remember getting one hell of a headache when we are all using speed glue + lighter fluid at about 7 PM at the start of the evening.  A few times I wondered WTF we were all doing and kind of asked myself, don't you know better?

Like I said, I definitely don't miss this stuff.

Some of the solvents in the later generations of speed glue are actually not all that bad from a toxicology point of view (like in the patent Chairman Meow found).  The halogenated hydrocarbons that were used in the 80s, though, they were really bad.

(I had to take a graduate course in toxicology back in about 1982, I can't say I remember a whole lot more than the basics).

Fulanodetal wrote: "It's a well known alternative fact, Jack." I don't disbelieve your claim. I only asked for specific info, like, who, when, what, which supports your claim. I don't doubt the VOCs are noxious, I just don't know to what extent, and what the potential consequences are. FdT

Alternative facts are facts which come from an alternative point of view, unfamiliar to those who insist on conditions of evidence and logical soundness.  I use them sarcastically while trying (successfully?) to be amusing; Kellyanne Conway, spokesperson for our newly elected President, uses them whenever she finds them to be convenient, which is just about all of the time.