We listened to the feedbacks that told us Virtuoso OFF- like Butterfly Primorac is a nice controlled offensive or from another approach spin offensive blade but sometimes players need something more. Yes, offensive table tennis needs offensive blade. We believe there is not only the 7ply blades fit playing offensive and you need no special carbon layers to give extra speed and sweet spot. It was not simple but finally we succeded to design the bigger brother of Virtuoso OFF- while we kept the same construction. The result: Virtuoso+ (Plus)
For those, who needed faster blade than Virtuoso but preferred the 5ply behavior Virtuoso+ Plus will do the job. It is between Ultimate and Virtuoso in speed. The harder outer ply, slightly thicker core and different laminating process provides 8-10% more speed and slightly clearer contact.
Origo – the point where things start. This is the reason we decided to give that name of our beginner table tennis blade. We designed a lighter 5ply blade to help the beginning to learn the first table tennis strokes for children. Besides we kept the regular OSP feeling and veneer combination by building this starter table tennis blade of the same hand selected raw material that we use for building the others. So the quality is still professional to let the youngs be professional from the first touch.
Beginner table tennis blade handles
It is not only the weight (and head size) that we keep our eye on when we design a blade. We also pay attention to the dimensions of the handle. This beginner racket is available with only FL (flared) and ST (straight) handle options to give clean and the most stable choice.
We have indroduced our first defensive blade that is a result of 3 years of development focused on modern defensive play called Immune Active DEF. Besides the regular OSP control and feedback we built a special big head architecture to provide power for the strokes from mid distance and further but really annoying and flat balls from pips at the same time.
Our first defensive table tennis blade is tested by professionals
We have tested this blade with Class 1 professionals like Adam Pattantyus to ensure your satisfaction. Adam plays the Joo Se Hyuk style active modern defensive game and we designed to meet the requirements of this kind of play. This is a 5 ply blade with full of hidden tricks to be the best modern defensive play.
You asked what is the different between factory made and handmade blades. We have different aspects but the most common feature of our manufacturing processs is that we are not forced by the machinery and sales division to spend less and sell more. This way we are allowed to use premium category materials and spend the time that a good blade needs. And yes the quality is always condrolled by humans since we hold every single blade an parts in our hand.
Our final quality control
For the best result we check every single blades right before we ship them and measure the key features like
weight
thickness
With every blade you receive a manually filled data sheet with exactly the measured data. After we attach the papers we put the blade into the box made of recycled material and we also place some silica gel to prevent the effect of possible humidity. You will also receive a high quality OSP and a Palatinus iron transfer.
We made a short video about our final quality control:
We opened a new online store to provide decided to provide our table tennis blade for sale as well as reveal new features from early April 2015 on the same website. Let us introduce our new shop the TableTennis-Pingpong.Equipment aka TTPPE. Generally this means we have divided our shop and brand page + blog.
In our new webshop we delivered some new features to make your job easier:
You can compare our products
All blades features are published in a comprehensive table format
We also revealed upper ply as a feature
We started a partnership with FedEx to shorten our worldwide delivery time to 48hrs.
We hope you will be more and more satisfied. with our products and services.
Have you ever tohught how to compare table tennis blades in a webshop? It is a general need of a buyer. Until we opened our new webshop it was not easy at OSP Blades. You had the only chance to read the descriptions of the blades and decide what you want. We made the first step in the late 2014 when we established standards and added a new data sheet to show the features of OSP blades. We collected the blades’ attributions like
Speed
Control
Spin
Arc
Dwell time
Stiffness (bending strength)
Outer ply hardness
You will receive a nice sheet with scale contains all these attributions that looks like this:
Then we expanded the list with few more lines:
Outer ply
Ply nr.
Thickness
Weight balance
Weight
After we had all the data we made som calculations and put numbers to the features where it is interpretable and put it onto our new webshop to open its compare function. Just visit our webshop and follow the three steps on these images:
OSP Blades is famous of its all wood blades all over the world. For 3 years we opened our carbon development to provide something extra for those who demanded composites and carbon table tennis blades. Just for clarifying we are able to make extremely fast blades without carbon with very similar behavior so this was not the main reason we started studying composites but we found a special carbon material that works very natural and met our philosophy.
After the first year we involved the pro players around us for testing and due to the number of positive feedbacks we prepared our manufactory to expand our product scale. Although we haven’t built new product types for those who are interested and asked we offered carbon blades in limited quantity and covered by the same process as our custom made blades. We believe the time is close when we are ready to offer carbon option to our blades. The Ultimate Carbon will look like this.
Table tennis rules changes sometimes make our life and game more difficult. You surely remember when the glue ban came up in 2010-11. We suffered from the companies development through years. Now in 2015 most of the rubbers are high quality and usable. Surely our blades are made to substitute speed glue effect that was a big success at that era.
The latest change in table tennis rules is around the material of the balls. This part of the table tennis equipment is made of celluloid. That material might be harmful for our environment during production so it is not that green as the latest requirements want. As a result in 2012-13 we could met a new type of balls and a new type of material.
At early 2014 finally ITTF approved the new material: Polyvinyl chloride (PVC). This plastic substantial is known of our everyday life eg. isolation of cables or plastic bottles are able to made of PVC but it is absolutely new to our sport. The main confusion is about the hardness that is not easy to imagine how can it work as a ball.
Fortunately polyvinyl chloride comes in two basic forms: rigid and flexible so making table tennis balls of it is not an impossible mission. Manufacturers started to go on two ways:
Regular melted balls. The balls are made of two half balls and then melted together.
Seamless balls. The balls are made as one part with a special process.
Table tennis rules changes – semaless PVC ball
The early balls were terrible. We got the one of the first poly ball made by DHS. The hardness was not enough and the sound was like a 60mm fun ball. When we tested it in this video at our club the players around us asked if our ball was broken. At that hour our table were the most popular but not because of the game just the sound we made.
Test video of an early DHS poly ball
Now in 2015 we can say development is on the right track as it happened with rubbers. Seamless balls are more spread – I guess due to the less expense of changing production gears and the seamless one is a bit more flexy.
The stamina is the weak point, the poly balls easily be broken and you need 2-3-4 times more balls for the same time of play. Also the roundness is a regular point of failure. There are more balls coming with not exactly round shape that results strange flying trajectory.
In this video we made a test with the latest 2015 Joola Super P *** poly ball and the behaviour tested to be very similar. Professionals say it is easy to get used to it. The problem usually turns up when it is not announced which ball is used and you can face a celluloid ball match after a week of PVC ball training.
Test video of the 2015 Joola Super P *** poly ball
In the late 2000’s I was a big collector of old Stiga table tennis blades. In retrospect now I have to say owning those ancient blades started me thinking about what is inside and why old Stiga table tennis blades are so expensive. The age is not everything. I got around 1000 pcs of old blades and I had
Barna
Banda
Cor de Buy blades also
but none of them had the fame and value that Stiga paddles had.
Did you know that the Dutch company Cor de Buy copyrighted the sandwich construction laminated woods (in their terms: core + 2 thinner outer plies per side) for building table tennis blades?
Well, I have been thinking about what made Stiga so outstanding table tennis brand and why they lead the pingpong equipment world and then collectors. Many experts say because of the processes and raw material and I have to agree. But there is another factor that Stiga mastered and it is not connected to Esklistuna. It was their huge amount of knowledge on sports equipment. In the 40’s to 60’s period they ran fishing, hunting, archery and ice-hockey business that might be that necessary fragment or collection of knowledge to build a strong bases for establishing and developing Stiga table tennis empire.
Stiga table tennis blade – Original
I am convinced their experience on laminated wood is coming from archery and ice-hockey bats and precision is also needed for manufacturing fishing reels and airguns. Once I found mechanic shaver in our early 70’s catalogue so Stiga was really multifunctional company that helped a lot to make good quality table tennis blades at that time.
The blades features provided the extra feeling that enables you to enjoy playing pingpong. It means for me Stiga blades were comfortable to play so they spread easily expanded by their goo marketing that is coming from their other departments.
It would be a longer story but this is the end of the article, you can read more at my special website.
Players are equipped with a table tennis bat means a laminated wooden racket covered with rubber on one or two sides depending on the players’ grip. The ITTF (International Table Tennis Federation) uses the term “racket”. In other terms “bat” is common in Britain, and “paddle” in the U.S.
Table tennis bat regulations
The wooden part of the racket, often referred to as the “blade”, commonly features anywhere between one and seven plies of laminated wood, though cork, glass fiber, carbon fiber, aluminum fiber, and Kevlar are sometimes used.
Table tennis bat veneers laminating
According to the ITTF rules, at least 85 percent of the blade by thickness shall be made of natural wood. Common wood types include
Samba
Limba
Koto
Cypress or “hinoki,” which is popular in Japan.
We mainly use the classic material for a table tennis bat.
The average size of the blade head is about 16 cm long and 15 cm wide. Although the official restrictions only focus on the flatness and rigidness of the blade itself, these dimensions are optimal for most play styles.
Table tennis regulations allow different surfaces on each side of the racket. Different types of surfaces provide various amount of spin or speed, and in some cases they neutralize spin. A player may have a rubber that provides much spin on one side of his racket, and one that provides no spin on the other. By flipping the racket in play, different types of returns are possible. For these players we offer asymmetric blade – the Immune OX or Immune OX Classic. To help a player distinguish between the rubber used by his opposing player, international rules specify that one side must be red while the other side must be black.
The player has the right to inspect his opponent’s racket before a match to see the type of rubber used and what colour it is. Despite high speed play and rapid exchanges, a player can see clearly what side of the racket was used to hit the ball. Current rules state that, unless damaged in play, the racket cannot be exchanged for another racket at any time during a match.
For few weeks you could see a counter on Butterfly World that shows something is coming soon. (You can watch it here in video format). Today Butterfly opened the box. They revealed their latest rubber the Butterfly Bryce Highspeed coming with new cover design that replaces all the present rubbers of the Japanese company. Hopefully from now these rubbers can not be couterfeited.
Butterfly Bryce Highspeed with MicroLayer
Bryce branched our in 1997 and it was the best seller among pro players and it was the predecessor of Bryce Speed. Butterfly promised this new generation of Bryce provide higher arc and spin without losing speed at high power strokes. The main feature of Highspeed version is the “revolutionary invention” called MicroLayer that is on the top of the rubber surface provides exra grip. It looks they have not changed the sponge that is an interesting factor.
We have been experimenting with carbon for about three years now. We have already sold few dozens of carbon blades but those blades were custom made. Month by month we got closer to the process that allows us to reproduce carbon reinforced wood table tennis blades with the regular high quality that is our benchmark besides meet our philosophic approach.
We wanted to keep advantages of wood and somehow exploit the advantages of carbon but without suffering its disadvantages. Well, the mission completed. Finally, I can report we are able to build carbon reinforced wooden blades with fantastic dwell time and the famous OSP feeling plus the sharp spins and killer arc that is characterized by carbon layered blades.
In addition we are able provide lower weighted 7 or even 9 ply blades that was also sometimes a demand of our customers.
Here you are the Ultimate tricarbon 3CRW test from a real expert the Experttabletennis.com
We start to sell four carbon table tennis blade models of our product scale from ALL to OFF range:
Expert CRWi UNI ALL++
Virtuoso CRWi UNI OFF
Ultimate 3CRW UNI OFF
Martin CRW UFS OFF++
What do those letters mean?
We found that for the best result we have to build different type carbon blades with applying different process. For the best result we use two types of carbon and we laminate the sheets by different order to make the necessary characteristic.
Our carbon blades got the shortcut CRW for carbon reinforced wood. You can find a letter i at the end if the carbon layer is next to the core. We used 3 layers of carbon for the Ultimate that is named 3CRW.
We used a special unidirectional carbon for most of the blades to provide natural feeling. This is the material where the fibers running side by side. We implement the sheets like wooden sheets but the process (and the result) is totally different. We put UNI word at the end of name of these kind of blades.
The other type of material is a special woven fabric. It is a new development in carbon fibre reinforcement whereby a sophisticated production process spreads out each tow (bundle) of carbon fibres making them significantly flatter and wider than they would be in a conventional woven fabric. Spreading the tow in this way creates ultra-flat strips of unsupported unidirectional carbon fibre which is then carefully woven to create a biaxial carbon fabric with an unprecedented flatness and a unique appearance. Blades with this material got UFS in their name.
So those 4 blades are coming soon. The OSP logo shines black in our carbon blades.
The news conference of the Hungarian gala called Battle of Generations was held and that was a good opportunity to meet the King. Waldner beat our star Tibor Klampar at Budapest in the late 80’s and the main program of the event will be the rematch Tibor Klampar (62) vs. Jan-Ove Waldner (50).
He was very patient and we talked about Istvan Szabo who eventually inspired Robert Palatinus to implement the philosophy inside the wood and who was the coach of his son Martin as well as JO Waldner when he played for Saarbrucken. Remembering the old days I asked Waldner to sign one of my old Swedish Pingis magazine and it was also a nice moment when I delivered our gift for him.
It was really an honor to be able to make a table tennis blade for Waldner. We knew he is contracted to Donic and he probably never use that wood but, you know, it is an extraordinary moment that does not happen to you every day. He immediately opened the box and pulled out the blade and hit some strokes into the air and said: “It is very nice. It must play well.” Well, we are very proud of the blade was accepted by Jan-Ove Waldner.
As you all surely know Jean-Michel Saive stopped his international and professional carrier this year. I made this interview with him also at the World Tour early this year where he apperaed in January and he looked like playing for fun and loves table tennis.
At the end of the year we met again on a table tennis gala and for the rason of his retirement we made a special JMS blade for him. He was very surprized and I believe he liked the moment and the way we express our respect for the sportsman Jean-Michel Saive.
It is not a news that we offer custom table tennis blade handles since many of you want some unique besides the premium quality and exteme playing characteristic. We found that we can determine two part of customers who want custom handles. Certain part of buyers need only a name or sign engraved onto the handle.
Special engraving only
Other buyers need special handle construction that means not only a taxt changing but the woods and the way of building the handle is different from our designs. They mainly want us to reproduce their old blades or want to try something out.
A fully customized handle
So far we offered only a single custom table tennis blade handles option for our customers. But from now it is able to select only special text engraving (for cheaper price) besides cutomized handle.
You can order your blade with custom table tennis blade handle in the following variations
If you need only a custom engraving onto the handle instead of the model name or in addition to the model name just tick “Special engraving” option.
If you need special handle construction that exceeds custom engraving opt in Customized handle. Please pay attention that we will put Palatinus metal tag since this is a mandatory element.
Any of the options above please write your preference and specification in few lines into the order form’s customer note section. We prefer drawings in case of option 2 that should be sent to ospblades @ gmail.com with your order reference number in the email’s subject.
We were very surprised when turned out that one of our customers Brian, who ordered blades from us wrote an article about Robert Palatinus and his blade maker manufactory that makes OSP table tennis blades.
Although we focus on European market it is really good news for us that our products and philosophy aroused the interest of people in China. Or at least the interest of one man Lau Ho who is really a big table tennis enthusiast and collector. He is also known as Dreamer21 on the table tennis forums. We really respect this opportunity to be able to turn up in Table Tennis World magazine’s 03/2016 issue with Zhang Jike on the cover.
Zhang Jike 張繼科
We believe Chinese people might be interested in the unique approach of Robert Palatinus and they would like the theory we pack into a handmade table tennis blade but we have never thought we can take the same surface as Zhang Jike does. Thanks to Brian the article he wrote about the handmade process and custom made blades, handles hopefully reveals the important things inside of wooden shivers.
The article says we are the Rolls-Royce of hand made blades
Reading the words “Rolls-Royce of handmade rackets” flattered us very much. Maybe it is not by accident that Zhang Jike is holding an ancient Chinese sword on the cover photo that means for us not only a kind of legacy value much but also a table tennis blade should consider as a weapon and the players are warriors who need the best weapon a to win their battles.
Good news for the Japanese players. We are officially approved table tennis blade brand in Japan so we are allowed to use the J.T.T.A.A. logo on our blades sold in Japan. Notedly, due to the system they registered our brand name also and this way we use the full registrated mark in the Japanee Table Tennis Associations Approvement list that contains OSP.
Bunch of J.T.T.A.A. approved table tennis blades of OSP
We are happy to cooperate with our Japanese reseller WRM (the World Rubber Market) who navigated and supervised the process in their country. We believe they made a valuable and inevitable job in this matter as well as promoting and selling our products in Japan that is a unique and special territory on the table tennis globe.
Tre Kronor sticker
We found much rumours over the internet about table tennis blades with and without that J.T.T.A.A. mark (eg.: OOAK, TT-News) but considering our blades we clearly clarifíy those are the same as without the mark. There is no quality difference or other variance. This is the process of the Japanese Table Tennis Association to check and validate product samples as well as manufacturer if a company wants to sell their blades there. In Japan there are tournaments that requires JTTA approved blades to compete with.
You can tell it is a strange process and makes players life more difficult but it is not a new thing. Do you remember the old Stiga blades from the 60’s and 70’s? All of them was put the “Tre Kronor” sticker to the bottom of the handle. It was the regulation made by the Swedish Table Tennis Association to validate blades sold in Sweden. Nowdays many collectors consider that as the proof of original.
Here you are a short video how we put the OSP-J.T.T.A.A. logo on.
It is for fixing the blades’ edge hits. Here you are the video with a simple trick for showing how to use it. If you are a wood fan it will be easy. You need some really simple tools.
Step1
In the first step you should find a solid ruler. We use a broken metal ruler. Stick two pieces of double sided sticker tape onto it. Then stick it to the blade face right next to the hit.
Step2
Cut the upper veneer using a sharp cutter driven by the sticked ruler. Then remove the upper veneer part. We did it with a sharp plane but the cutter also can do the job. Sand down the remaining upper veneer until you can see the second ply’s fibre. Keep the surface straight.
Step3
Cut the veneer sample to suit best to the blade’s remaining upper ply.
Step4
Put a transparent sticker onto the veneer sample on the cut side.
Step5
Join up the veneer sample to the blade’s upper ply and stick it on with the transparent tape. ***TRICK*** The tape holds the veneer in the right position.
Step6
Turn up the sample veneer and put some wood glue on to the blades second ply only then turn back the veneer and push it smoothly onto the glued surface. Wipe the unwanted glue off.
Press the fixed parts together using two pieces of wood and clamping tools. After the necessary waiting remove the clamps and the woods.
Step7
Cut the fixed veneer to the shape of the blade’s head then finish the edges, sides, and surface with a smooth sandpaper.
Step6
Put a light coat of lacquer onto the fixed part. Let it dry and your blade is ready to play.
Tiny Dancer blade family is the result of almost a year development collaborating with the Japanese WRM and Mr Yohei Takahashi the master of the idea. The idea of Tiny Dancer came out of his mind early 2018 and had been developing that for almost a year to branch out in November for only the Japanese market.
Tiny Dancer is a very classic defensive blade for those Japanese players using long pips defensive style. We went through the development phases month by month working together with Mr Yohei Takahashi. For us, the hardest part was to understand how the Japanese players are thinking about the vintage style.
Some handle samples
It was very important to make a good blade for the players as well as bring back the ancient Japanese defensive style. We made some samples with different handles and finally the two versions of Tiny Dancer materialised.
Production of Tiny Dancer
Thanks to WRM those blades got the J.T.T.A.A. stamp easily, so the mutual effort has reached its goal. But the most valuable thing was the lesson we learnt. Although we all play the same sport, Japanese table tennis community is very different, but we all are capable of collaborating and understanding this, and Mr Yohei Takahashi with WRM is a good guide in this matter. Thank you all!
A member of the Hungarian table tennis society, Alexa Szvitacs, was attacked by a terrible illness leading to horrible health difficulties. Because of life-threatening complications, Alexa has lost her left forearm and all her toes. Treatments are a substantial financial burden for Alexa and her family.
After the tragedy happened, the Hungarian table tennis community united to one collaborative group led by Szandra Pergel and Marton Szita to establish a charity event and help Alexa to survive and pass through her rehabilitation by donating her and the family. Locally people can help with voluntary offerings during a gala as well as transferring money to a bank account. They opened a fundraising channel through ‘gofundme’ to receive donation internationally.
Both ITTF and ETTU reported that on their website.
In two weeks the story of Alexa’s gala became worldwide. The Hungarian Table Tennis Association made the national team’s Ormai Laszlo Hall available for the event. Hundreds of Hungarian table tennis enthusiasts want to donate and join the show where they will be able to play against not only the Hungarian National Team and top Hungarian players but also champions like Krisztina Toth or the Golden Team’s Jonyer, Klampar, Gergely and even with Alexa herself.
The community of that sport proved its global unity this time too. Table tennis pros are still sending their items allowing to achieve maximum donation. There are T-shirts with the signature from J.O. Waldner, Aruna Quadri, Apolónia, Maze, Ovtcharov, Karlsson, Persson, Gerell, Mazunov, Calderano, Gauzy, Tóth Krisztina, Tokic, Jorgic, Franziska, Assar, Samara, Dodean, Szőcs Bernadette, Freitas and also the Hungarian World Champions Jonyer, Klampar, Gergely as well as the National Team provided items.
Waldner offered his T-shirt
All the visitors have the chance to get one of these valuable relics in exchange for donations. Besides, the National Team plan to perform an own show with songs and dance and provide Christmas mood with bringing their cakes made by their hands.
We thought st is a perfect moment to support that charity movement. We offered the first Ultimate II+ blade with customized handle to the organisers to support Alexa.
OSP Ultimate II plus blade for Alexa
Finally, it will be undoubtedly the most significant table tennis charity action for a long time. Here you are the Facebook event link.
