How to cut a table tennis racket?

[glim]

Hi there

wonder if you could help me with a small project... 

I have a very thick/heavy 10mm table tennis blade and would like to cut it in half with Laser and make two 5mm ones... if that's possible, how much it would cost??

Regards

Glim

[Akanksha]

A warm welcome to the Bunnings Workshop community, @glim. We're delighted to have you join us and hope you find our site a handy resource for all your D.I.Y. projects.

Thanks for your question. Our resident D.I.Y. Bunnings expert @EricL will be online later today and will be happy to provide some suggestions on how to cut your table tennis racket.

In the meantime, let me tag our ever-helpful members @Dave-1, @Super_D, @Jewelleryrescue and @TedBear to see if they have any thoughts.

Akanksha

[Dave-1]

Good Morning @glim 

Now this is an unusual question! I do like different questions. I dont know of any lazer that will cut to that depth (or even half that depth) Someone with a band saw or probarly better a hobby type band saw as it will have less play for the fine tollerance of cutting you are asking. If the blade is 10mm then cutting it will use 1/2 a mm and keeping it true while cutting is my concern. 

A water cutter could potentially do it, but most people dont have access to one. You could hit up your local engineering places and they may have one and be kind enough to try something new?

The final port of call would be to look up your local mens shed and have a chat with them. There may be a few people that would have a go.

Id also like to offer a warm howdy and welcome you to tthe Bunnings community page There are lots of questions liks yours if you take a wander through the pages it may give you a few outside the box suggestions :).

Dave

[TedBear]

Hi @glim and @Dave-1 , not knowing much about table tennis blades, I have bookmarked this conversation to see what unfolds.

My reaction is that the cost and effort of cutting the blade, plus the fact that the handle will then become 2 half handles and each will need rebuilding, would outweigh the cost of buying 2 new blades. But I am interested in finding out the actual details of the project. 

[Jewelleryrescue]

Hi @glim 

Sorry unless you have 2  extra rubber pads to glue on to new bats cut in half it wont work and the cut handle will no longer have a blanced symetrical grip. unless you fashion two new timber grip halves as well.   Any saw  cut down the middle of the blade will take out 1mm to 3mm so the bat halves will be  only 4mm thick at best.

Easiest way is to buy two new lighter paddles you like, I like the paddles smooth but grippy one side and textured on the  other. 

[EricL]

Hello @glim 

Thanks for sharing your question about cutting your table tennis racket in half. I'm aware that lasers can cut thin timber panels to create intricate pieces. However, I'm not aware of how deeply they can cut into timber. As an alternative, I suggest having a look at the Craftright 3 In 1 Multi Saw Set. In the set you will find a blade called a dovetail blade. It's made for precision cuts and its ideal for cutting your racket in half.

Let me call on our experienced member @Super_D for their recommendations.

If you have any other questions we can help with, please let us know.

Eric

[Super_D]

Good morning,

This is a very different request, I also like them as they di make me think.

The laser would not work for this, at the moment I am thinking belt sander,

on both sides as this would be 2.5mm on both sides to get to the 5mm.
Or you could try and make your on bat from scratch, event if you use the handle from the other bat. 

If I think of any thing else I will let you know...

[Wakkibatty]

Hi Glim.

I actually manufacture and repair table tennis blades professionally.

I must ask -- why on earth do you want to split your racquet down the middle like that? It seems like an awful waste of what may be a perfectly good TT blade

I very much doubt either blade will still be useable, even if you could manage it. Most thick blades like yours are made from woods like cypress or Japanese Hinoki. In which case, the two halves would be far too weak to function as a proper table tennis blade at 5mm thick, even if you were theoretically successful in perfectly splitting them down the middle with a laser or bandsaw (...neither of which would actually work BTW. Neither a galvo laser nor gantry style laser has the ability to accurately cut at that depth and "'butterfly" a blade like it were a chicken breast. Any laser strong enough to cut wood to a depth of 75-150mm would simply incinerate the the blade's core, and you would end up with nothing but charcoal. Similarly, a band saw --- even if it didn't drift during cutting) -- would remove 2-3mm worth of sawdust as kerf, and each half would end up being both 4mm thick with one rough-cut face. Further sanding would then remove another 1 mm, leaving you with two halves that were about 3mm thick at best... Which is simply far too thin to use as an actual blade).

Your particular blade also looks like it was hand made (going by the label on the bottom), and may potentially be a collectors item. In which case, it may be simpler to just sell the blade second hand, and then buy two replacements.

Please feel free to reach out and ask me any questions, happy to assist if I can.

Cheers.

S.Woodbury

Perth WA.

[JacobZ]

Hi @Wakkibatty,

A warm welcome to the Bunnings Workshop community, it is wonderful to have you join us.

It's so valuable for us to have members like yourself with such unique skills and experiences. I've seen stuff about how cricket bats are made, but never table tennis rackets. I imagine similar to a cricket bat having a solid core is extremely important.

Thank you for sharing your knowledge, I hope you feel welcome, and I look forward to hearing more from you in the future.

Jacob

[Wakkibatty]

Thanks for the very kind words, glad I could help. 🙂

Just as a BTW, the style of blade in question with the OP is called a one-ply blade, and is actually quite rare here in Australia, as it's made from a single piece of wood .

Most blades are actually made of either 5 or 7 layers of low density wood veneer comprised of anywhere from two to four different species of wood. (Often composite materials like carbon fiber or kevlar are also added, especially with attacking top-spin competition blades.)

That blade however was a custom-made one ply, quite possibly made by hand in Japan or China out of Hinoki (an extremely rare and expensive species of cypress native to Japan).

Hinoki wood has some amazing playing characteristics which makes for an amazing blade with incredible playing feel...but you don't see such blades used widely anymore, as the wood is so expensive (if for example that blade is made of Hinoki from the Kiso prefecture, then there's about 300 euros worth of the stuff  contained just in that single solid core of that blade! With that in mind, cutting it down the middle would be an absolute disaster in terms of destroying such rare and valuable wood).