A friend asked me to put together a sandpaper table tennis bat for him, like the ones they used in the old old days, so I thought that would be an interesting little project to write about. Below is a brief description of the process of putting it together, and some pictures of the final result.

He supplied me with grit 80 (P80) sandpaper (not sure what they used to use?), which he had spray painted to red and black colours. It looked nice and shiny, especially the bright red colour!

The blade used was a TSP Swat blade, a 7ply Offensive blade rated about OFF, with fairly hard outer plies. Since he supplied the blade to me already, I did not really consider if it’s suitable or not, but time will tell.

I decided to use my normal Donic Vario glue to put it together. Since the back of the sandpaper is actually paper, I blew a fan over it as soon as I had put on the glue, so that the water (in the water-based glue) did not have much time to soak into the paper.

Since sandpaper is quite thin, I took extra care to ensure my glue application was very smooth, so that the glue lines would not show through.

It all seemed to go very well, and I applied the sheets to the blade just like I attach rubbers. I used some strong chunky kitchen scissors to cut the sandpaper around the edges, as I was a little worried the sandpaper could damage the scissors.

It turned out quite nicely, here is the final result (click to zoom in):

The sandpaper feels quite rough. I’m not sure if I would want to test it with my own balls, as I doubt they’d last very long! Hopefully I’ll get a chance to have a hit with it.

 By: haggisv