Desk Tennis Blade Materials Information

Printed on March 7, 2022 Final Up to date on March 8, 2022 by Sorin Petroj

Understanding about desk tennis wooden sorts and species can reply many questions on why blades behave the best way they do. It is without doubt one of the most essential supplies utilized in blade building, and but it is without doubt one of the most controversial matters within the TT group.

Due to this fact, I assumed it will be useful to share what every type of wooden ought to ideally have, why you see so many various varieties in a desk tennis blade, and which kinds of blades use every sort of wooden.

What are the desk tennis wooden sorts?

Desk tennis blades made of various woods have totally different properties. That’s why it’s important to decide them relying in your recreation model in order that photographs come out with additional snap and energy or with a smooth contact.

However the selection isn’t all the time straightforward since there are greater than 40 kinds of wooden used for desk tennis blades. Some individuals even ask me which wooden is the most well-liked amongst skilled gamers or if a selected sort of wooden is best than one other.

You’ll discover my reply to the query “Which wooden is finest for blade: Balsa, Koto, Ayous, Limba, or a {custom} composite wooden?” beneath.

However first, right here’s a short overview of the 18 finest wooden sorts most most well-liked by desk tennis producers and professionals and the distinctive traits of every of the woods.

1. Ayous

• Overview: Ayous is an African wooden present in Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Nigeria. It’s a sturdy mild to medium-weight wooden that sees extra use in racket making due to its sturdiness and suppleness. This African softwood comes with high-compression properties that make a superb outer ply.
• Options: Ayous wooden is used within the desk tennis blade composition in numerous methods, together with the core, exterior plies, and outer veneer on many blades. It’s composite plywood constituted of layers of veneer, every compressed individually below warmth and strain with the grain particularly oriented to create efficiency traits just like these of hardwoods. Every layer of veneer is compressed in numerous instructions in order that the general plies is not going to break up when bent and enhance stiffness in numerous instructions for better management.

• Advantages: 1. Ayous combines the firmness of maple with the pliability of limba to produce a versatile but extraordinarily sturdy blade. 2. The floor ply of Ayous is 0.2mm thick, so it’s straightforward to do exact management steadiness between stiffness and flex. 3. The wooden is robust and light-weight which helps with fast motion management. 4. When correctly maintained, Ayous can lower blade building prices by as much as 50%.
• Appropriate enjoying model and configuration: For competitors play and close-to-the-net counter-attacks, Ayous is an ideal selection and is usually present in management or spin-oriented rackets.
• Examples of blades constructed with Ayous: Many of the Stiga blades (5 ply and seven plywood blades) are constructed with Ayous. The Butterfly’s bestseller, the Andrzej Gruba Carbon blade, and the Butterfly Hinoki Shake 5 are additionally constructed with the Ayous wooden because the outer veneer.

2. Ash

• Overview: Ash pairs properly in all wooden blades as medial ply with matching specs. It has a smoky look, very like rosewood, and this must be oiled to guard it. This wooden’s weight (medium) makes it supreme for all-wooden blades. The stiffness could make it excel in highly effective offensive enjoying types and with blades which can be on the heavier aspect.
• Options: Ash is a heavy 11-13.5 mm, lacquer completed wooden. It’s laborious and heavy with tight development rings and can be utilized in all-wood blades with matching specs. It may give you razor-like velocity when paired with softer woods with out sacrificing management.

• Advantages: 1. This wooden sort will help deliver out the enjoying traits of a blade. 2. The composition permits for quick wooden blade building.
• Appropriate enjoying model and configuration: The response could be very quick with this wooden of selection. blade constituted of ash along with Limba or Koto can have satisfactory management and is finest appropriate for spinier loopers.
• Examples of blades constructed with Ashwood: Some revered {custom} makers like Rei Li use this wooden completely of their high-end all-wood blades.

3. Kiso Hinoki / Cedar Port Orford

• Overview: Kiso Hinoki is a light-weight, stable, high-quality wooden for top-level desk tennis blades. This explicit cypress is used for blade manufacturing solely when having 300 years or extra of age. ‘Kiso’ is the highest Hinoki woods, accessible solely from a single location in Japan.
• Options: Kiso hinoki produces most spin with chopping method however is basically quick throughout smashes and pushes. This attribute means that you can get pleasure from hitting-power with nice management. It produces wonderful backhand loops, drives, and counters with infinite spin.

• Advantages: 1. Kiso Hinoki is known for its sturdiness, elasticity, and resilience. 2. It carries a superb weight to efficiency ratio, that means most expertise, minimal weight!
• Appropriate enjoying model and configuration: Little question this is a wonderful selection for extremely technical play with excessive topspins combos or a killer brief recreation with super-fast chops and counter loops.
• Examples of blades constructed with Kiso Hinoki: This conventional Japanese wooden is used for the blade core of Ajisai, Mizutani, many different Japanese blades of top quality, in addition to some Chinese language blades.

4. Anigre/Aniegre/Asanfena

• Overview: Anigre is a sturdy, easy, and light-weight wooden – excellent for all sorts of blades. It’s light-tan (yellow) in colour, native to Africa, and is especially used because the floor veneer of desk tennis blades.
• Options: Anigre wooden delivers high quality, class, and really feel. This wooden sort is used to create a number of the world’s highest high quality {custom} desk tennis blades. The highest layer of Anigre wooden is sanded right down to half an inch in thickness, offering you with a frictionless floor that ensures higher management and contact.

• Advantages: 1. Anigre wooden provides a cleaner-looking look, which makes the racket appear to be that of a professional’s. 2. Relying on the thickness of the grooves, Anigre from 1.8mm beneficial properties 10-15% extra velocity. 3. Waterproof, sturdy, and stable, this top-grade hardwood offers wonderful management and really feel.
• Appropriate enjoying model and configuration: It’s a good selection for learners to be taught with as a result of it presents simpler management. Additionally, Anigre wooden is appropriate for all-around efficiency and those that need the texture of a high-quality blade with nice management and optimum velocity.
• Examples of blades constructed with Anigre wooden: Butterfly Matsushita Professional and Sweden Additional blades are constructed with outer plies of Anigre.

5. Balsa

• Overview: Blades constructed with Balsa are a number of the {most professional} and quickest desk tennis blades immediately. It’s a standard selection for the core of desk tennis blades or handles as a result of its sturdiness and light-weight. It’s an especially light-weight, porous, and springy wooden. These traits make balsa wooden wonderful core materials for all sorts of blades, starting from quick attacking to sluggish defensive blades. Balsa has a construction that may stand up to affect and return a quick strike. When a ball strikes Balsa, the blade is minimize barely and bounces off.
• Options: In comparison with different wooden cores, Balsa is extraordinarily light-weight, making blades extraordinarily fast with out sacrificing a lot in the best way of management. Its excessive ‘springiness’ is nice for spin variation and looping however also can have an effect on the participant’s management if they don’t have time and expertise working towards with fiberglass blades to achieve a steadiness.

• Advantages: 1. Balsa’s light-weight makes for a quick blade with a very good feeling of management. 2. With a balsa blade in hand, you might be positive to expertise wonderful velocity and spin than bizarre wooden.
• Appropriate enjoying model and configuration: Balsa is hottest in “all-around blades as a result of its excessive means to supply spin. The stable core building with Balsa makes it appropriate for good assault and protection. Therefore, it’s appropriate for attacking gamers who need wonderful velocity, management, spin/quicker swings!
• Examples of blades constructed with Balsa: Butterfly Balsa Carbon X5 and Victas Balsa 8.5 are two of the most well-liked Balsa wood blades.

6. Basswood

• Overview: Basswood is a secure, light-weight wooden appropriate for every kind of blade sorts. This wooden is broadly accessible all through China and accounts for a very good portion of the budget-friendly participant blades that you will notice immediately.
• Options: Basswood’s conduct is broadly decided by the plies, and it’s one other very various wooden. The Options are virtually just like that of limba. It’s heavy and laborious but offers the racket with satisfactory stability and management on service and obtain. Because the wooden is stiff, it really works properly in all-metrics (mid-or backhand). It additionally creates stiff mid and skinny topspin.

• Advantages: Desk tennis blades with basswood composition are very economical all-around blades. 2. Though financial a high quality building offers all of the important advantages of a high-quality blade.
• Appropriate enjoying model and configuration: It’s good for sturdy fundamentals and all-around playability. Being very economical, it is a wonderful selection for learners to follow totally different drills. The traits of the wooden additionally make it appropriate for near the desk blocking.
• Examples of blades constructed with Basswood: DHS PF4 blade and Butterfly Midi Blades are constructed with outer plies of Balsa wooden.

7. Hinoki / Cypress

• Overview: Hinoki Cypress is rather like pure Hinoki wooden; it’s mild and simple to work with and produces a quick and highly effective blade. You need to use this sort of wooden for any type of blade. Therefore the recognition of this wooden within the manufacturing of quite a lot of custom-made blades. Additionally, it has an atypical property of typically holding up even after extended use. Nicely, you may solely purchase these properties from a real Blade crafted from this materials. Hinoki / Cypress woods are costly, however if you wish to purchase a high-quality blade, that is the only option for you!
• Options: Hinoki Cypress is essentially the most appropriate wooden when it comes to flexibility, weight, and correct springiness. This Japanese wooden contains a really easy texture, making it a superb materials for a blade, and Hinoki doesn’t encumber something which may make your shot off. However don’t you suppose this makes it slower, although, as a result of Hinoki is definitely comparatively quick!

• Advantages: 1. Management and energy are two important elements in selecting wooden for {custom} desk tennis blade building. Hinoki offers management and energy that can assist you along with your recreation. 2. It offers a superb feeling to the touch.
• Appropriate enjoying model and configuration: Hinoki Cypress delivers smooth contact and energy. It’s a high-quality offensive wooden finest for topspin and, in fact, to win factors!
• Examples of blades constructed with Hinoki: 1. Butterfly All Hinoki 5 blade Cypress Wooden. 2. Butterfly Cypress V-Max.

8. Koto

• Overview: Koto is a Japanese phrase utilized in desk tennis blades. This wooden is often known as Ofete, Kakende, Kefe, Ake, Ikame, Awari, and Kyere. Koto has a decent, stiff grain and sharp tone. Blades constructed with Koto look pure and supply the lightest, truest feeling.
• Options: Koto wooden has a excessive density and is usually very laborious – 19 factors on the Janka hardness scale (in Europe, Beech = 420 and Oak = 600). This wooden is of medium weight and due to this fact helps to offer the blade with good stability. Combining the tight grains with a barely reddish hue creates a really good look.

• Advantages: 1. Stability, precision, flexibility, and wonderful management are the important thing advantages of this sort of wooden. 2. It’s a medium-fast to quicker wooden which provides you an especially good really feel and management of the ping pong ball and makes it potential to play with a excessive trajectory.
• Appropriate enjoying model and configuration: The constant ply construction, along with the light-weighting that this wooden has within the blade, leads to an ideal blade for an offensive participant!
• Examples of blades constructed with Koto: Stiga Offensive Basic and Butterfly Viscaria blades’ composition contains two performs of Koto wooden. Butterfly Timo Boll Spirit additionally comprises 0.5 mm Koto outer ply and three.2 mm Koto internal layer.

9. Kiri

• Overview: Essentially the most thrilling factor about Kiri wooden is its lightness. It weighs just one/2 the energy of a balsa blade, and with the identical quantity of weight, it has 2 instances the stiffness. Somethings occur while you press the strings down on a Kiri blade.
• Options: Kiri wooden is medium-hardness wooden, a attribute of Paulownia and one essential issue for selecting a blade. Hardwoods, like Balsa, are for learners and Stiga fundamental blades, who wish to play quicker and look extra attacking. (It’s simpler to get quick photographs with a tougher wooden.) However, if you need extra management and a extra defensive/affected person recreation, it’s best to attempt a blade with a medium hardness wooden core. Among the best medium-hardness wooden is Paulownia. It’s light-weight and stiff however not a lot as a Balsa blade. You get to listen to a really distinct sound when hitting the ball on Kiri and Balsa, making the management side of those 2 desk tennis blade wooden sorts well-known among the many Chinese language gamers!
• Advantages: 1. Kiri wooden is extraordinarily mild (about 68% lighter than balsa wooden and Its lighter weight makes it stronger and extra sturdy. 2. Kiri comes with an extended life span than bizarre woods; therefore cash is saved.

Desk Tennis Wooden Sorts – Japanese Butterfly

• Appropriate enjoying model and configuration: A blade with a core of Kiri wooden is made to beat all of the topspin photographs of your opponents. Any such wooden core is best suited to quicker or longer blades as a result of they create little or no vibration with outer plies. You may really feel such as you get extra power out of your wrist. And in addition, there’s not a lot dwell on the desk for the ball to fall away from the blade on a Kiri blade. This little little bit of spin in your photographs comes from the dwell that bounces off a typical Balsa or Ayous (cypress) desk tennis blade. However due to the -1st Class Graphite Carbon Fiber building (which results in much less vibration), you should use lighter rubbers and get extra spin, higher management, and velocity than what you might be used to. And right here is one other plus. Your accomplice’s strokes received’t really feel as sharp in your forearm and hand due to the -1st class carbon fiber building of Kiri wooden blades.
• Examples of blades constructed with Kiri: Butterfly blades with a core of Kiri wooden (often known as Paulownia, Princess Tree, and Empress Tree) are a number of the lightest, most sturdy blades on the planet. Kiri wooden has additionally been utilized in F2 and Connelly desk tennis merchandise for nearly 15 years.

10. Limba

• Overview: Limba, often known as Korina, is a tough west African wooden of sunshine yellow colour. Limba is a well-liked selection for mid-priced and higher mid-priced blades as a result of it has a pleasant really feel and doesn’t value as a lot as extra unique woods.
• Options: Limba is inflexible and stable. This wooden offers wonderful really feel and sound qualities for topspin play. It’s best used along with different woods within the blade so as to add feeling, contact, and liveliness. Blades with limba outer plies have a excessive throw angle (a excessive arc/curve in your photographs). Due to this, these blades are usually slower however have extra potential for velocity when paired with appropriate rubber.

• Advantages: 1. Its vibrations or flex are favored by topspin gamers. 2. All sound vibrations are transmitted via the blade faster than Hinoki or Koto woods. So that you’ll have extra management to position the ball the place you need over the desk. 3. Limba adheres with velocity glue very properly.
• Appropriate enjoying model and configuration: Limba is a well-liked wooden utilized in desk tennis blades resembling OFF- and ALL+ blocks and seven ply mixture blades with 10 mm carbon fiber ply layers.
• Examples of blades constructed with Limba: Butterfly Primorac and Nittaku Acoustic blades are constructed with 4 plies of limba every.

11. Walnut

• Overview: Walnut is a well-liked outer plywood veneer utilized by desk tennis blade and racket producers. The wooden is alleged to be extra advanced than most different woods, and it imparts additional energy and management when used because the outer ply, however on the similar time, it makes the blade really feel crisper. Walnut has additionally been described as a high-speed outer ply materials.
• Options and Advantages: Walnut is a tough, dense, tight-grained wooden. It’s used as a prime ply however is usually additionally seen for use as a medium layer ply. It is without doubt one of the rarer outer veneers available on the market and has a tough however crisp feeling. Blades constructed with Walnut outer ply.
• Examples of blades constructed with Walnut: Walnut blades are produced by the world’s finest manufacturers, together with Nittaku, Butterfly, Donic, and extra.

A Temporary Overview On The Further 7 Wooden Sorts Used For Customized Desk Tennis Blade Development:

12. Douglas Fir: Because the first prototype of desk tennis blades made from Douglas Fir wooden and plywood was constructed in 1954 by J. H. Wray, Douglas Fir has been used within the manufacturing of desk tennis rackets. It’s standard as a result of its hardness and distinctive means to be formed into numerous curve sorts.
13. Poplar: Poplar is mild and smooth, which offers substantial management within the recreation of desk tennis, and that’s the reason used for blade building. ready tennis blades with poplar handles present higher feeling and better management
14. Jatoba: Jatoba woods are very dense and heavy, {and professional} gamers desire this wooden to get extra velocity and management.
15. Spruce: Spruce wooden is without doubt one of the strongest and most dense woods. Many contemplate getting “poplar thickening” or so-called “tiger stripes” for his or her custom-made spruce blade.
16. Willow: Willow is a heavy wooden that deadens the impact of incoming balls, making laborious, quick loops simpler to manage. It’s amazingly defensive and solely really helpful for choppers.
17. Zebrano: It has a superb woody really feel – some pips that you simply hardly ever discover on carbon blades. And it’s value contemplating for its hardness and sturdiness, regardless of the big pore problem that may have an effect on your recreation.
18. Tung (Vernicia fordii): Tung is light-weight and powerful. Nevertheless, because it makes up many of the outer ply, you may play good spin photographs with tung-based blades (although they’ll be restricted in velocity).

Desk Tennis Wooden Sorts – Conclusion

After all, the wooden species is only one think about selecting a blade. There are numerous different concerns like the kind of carbon, weight, velocity, management, and the gamers’ model.

This blade materials information is meant to help you in studying in regards to the 18 widespread wooden kinds of desk tennis blades and the way they carry out.

Lastly, in your technical references and to be taught the rankings of every wooden species based mostly on the rankings of the Janka Hardness Scale, I recommend you go to: Pohepa.gr.

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