Ping Pong / Table Tennis Paddles

[Joe D'Attilio]

Anyone have any experience making Ping Paddles?

I'd like to make a high end paddle for a friend, and was wondering where i might find any info, particularly: dimensions and most commonly used wood types for a high end paddle as seen here:

www.butterflyonline.com (http://www.butterflyonline.com)

http://www.butterflyonline.com/images/catalog/7713FL_big.jpg

[David Peters]

The dimensions are pretty standard, so if you picked up a cheap paddle from a sporting-goods store you could use that as a guide/outline, however the materials in the higher-end paddles are quite exotic. Carbon fiber is my paddle of choice -- it's a 5-ply material that when examined on-edge goes thin-wood, thin-carbon, thick wood, thin-carbon, thin-wood. The handle is all wood.

[J. Z. Guest]

Being a table tennis player myself, I don't think I'd even attempt it.

The last paddle I had a thin walnut layer sandwiched between some sort of hard plywood layers.

The faster paddles have carbon or fiberglass layers, and are several plies thick.

For more ideas, go to www.paddlepalace.com (http://www.paddlepalace.com), which is where I bought mine. Here's a page to start at. Look at the 'Descriptions' column:
http://www.paddlepalace.com/productschart.asp?dept=7

The rubber he chooses is going to be even more important than the blade. There are dozens, if not hundreds of different types. Fast, slow, super sticky, mildly sticky... It is mind-boggling.

You won't be able to build a paddle to compete with the high-end ones that are out there, IMO.