Production of table tennis bats
That is why we only use sawn veneer for the construction of our table tennis bats
You can’t build good table tennis racket without good base material. That’s why we don’t use prefabricated, cheap veneers, but saw each one individually from the raw block of wood. Although the amount of work involved is huge, we can be sure that we have the best material for building our blades. It’s worth the effort!
The production of sawn veneer
The first step to the finished table tennis bat
First, blocks with a side surface of 180 x 280 mm are cut from the raw wood. These are already subjected to a quality check here – blocks with cracks or disruptive inclusions have no chance and are not processed further.
On the band saw, these blocks are cut piece by piece into individual sawn veneers.
Most standard table tennis bats are made from sliced veneers. Although the production of sliced veneers is far less complex and much cheaper than that of sawn veneers, the material suffers greatly during the manufacturing process.
Before slicing, the wood is steamed, sometimes even boiled, which makes the wood very brittle and therefore extremely unstable. The surface is rough and the wood loses its beautiful, natural color and turns grey.
For these reasons, inexpensive sliced veneers are out of the question for us.
Instead, we saw each veneer individually by hand in the following thicknesses:
0.6/ 0.8/ 1.0/ 1.2/ 1.5/ 2.2/ 3.2 mm.
This is followed by the first fine sanding of the surfaces.
Difference between sawn veneer and sliced veneer
This picture shows very clearly why we go to the trouble of producing our own sawn veneer instead of buying in cheap sliced veneer.
The surface of the sliced veneer is gray and brittle, and the entire veneer is very unstable.
A high-quality sawn veneer, on the other hand, has a beautiful wood tone and is very stable in itself because the wood structure is retained and is not softened.
Do you have any questions about building table tennis bats?
If so, just write us in the comments below and we’ll be happy to answer your questions!