Butterfly blades - the whole truth!

Sorry for the clickbait, I couldn't resist 😅

** labels might be misleading, I'm talking about the second layer here, not the core**

I had this conversation so many times that I decided to write a post about it. If you look at the composition of a Butterfly blade online you will see Limba written all over the place for their second layers. That is incorrect. The truth is that Butterfly doesn’t disclose the composition of their blades, all you see online are just guesses that got passed around, and unfortunately the majority of them are incorrect. Butterfly uses Ayous in the second layer for the majority of their blades, such as Viscaria, TB line, ZJK line, Innerforce, etc… How do I know this? The difference is clear if you know what to look for, but I also saw the inside of some of these blades and proved it myself. There are brands that use Limba, such as Xiom for example, and if you compare a Viscaria with a 36.5 you will see what I mean. Ayous can look like Limba in certain situations, but Limba is unmistakably Limba. First you gotta look at the end grain, which for the second layer will be on the side of the handle. If you look at the bottom of the handle they will look the same. Also, the blade must be new or in good condition, when sweat gets into the handle it makes the grain swell and the wood darker, which hides the characteristics we are looking for. Limba is usually darker than Ayous, that’s a clue, but it may not be the case. The give away are the little diagonal lines you can see on the Ayous layer, which Limba doesn’t have. They are called medullary rays, cellular structures found in some species of wood, what we in the TT world also call the fish scale pattern.

So, is there a big difference? Not really… If we look at the average density of each wood, Limba is about 1.4x heavier than Ayous. For a normal blade this means 3-4g more. Limba is also about 1.5x harder than Ayous, this will give the blade a slightly harder touch. In the end, all else being equal, a blade with Limba instead of Ayous will feel a little harder, less bouncy, but with more speed potential.

So you can say money is not part of issue.

you can see Revoldia CNF and Victas Dynawood Power like brothers, this is not funny from Butterfly

I dreamed about ZHANG jike blue dragon, the time of searching was like the highest mountain for me and you can see real Boss in myself , legendary status, big player, all eyez on me.

 I find that I wrote around  111th times about ZHANG jike blue dragon to my female friend WHO had near deadstock ( like new) and she bought by my short recommendation or idea, I send her link and short note.

 The funny part is guy WHO sold her zjk blue dragon was addicted to gambling and he received money but he didnt want to send her the blade 

So I wrote 111th times to her with full good deals just to buy vnds Blue Dragon for me, and she never wants to sell IT....

One day I bought from my different  friend.... 

This blade is like soft Brick without any Control. I put 50 different rubbers, spend 100h with Zhang Jike BD... I never tried destroy anything, because it is like bread to myself.

But here I was shocked how IT works. I was near to put flying knee on my ZJKBLUEDRAGON, IT made me nervous everytime I glued rubbers and played all 2hours training, IT drops my performance to 20%
soft rubbers- ish, hard rubbers ish, hybrid rubbers ish, pips=ish
heating stove-> "Leonardo Di Caprio/Drake pointing finger meme"

 

So I call my female friend  to try different batch for a week and she sends me her Zhang Jike Blue Dragon VNDS with the same rubber  combination (TSP Ventus Spin/Speed)  and IT was the same situation:
- no quality balls, slipping from rubbers, a lot of edges, błocks goes high and loops are going down and it  was worse than Chinese stiff blade from Boer,

 the action was like= low throw and high throw at the same time, no linearity, no pleasure to even hold big size handle,
IT plays too bad on plastic balls

TOOOOOO fast and toooooo slow at the same time, I tried 05/05fx and was like WTF

the nearest blade I can compare  to Zhang Jike Blue Dragon is Yinhe V14 Pro which sounds not that bad, but Yinhe played 20xtimes better

the top ply was easy to destroy, the edges were chipped, every gluing and regluing was nightmare

and it cost me 150 euro,