SDC Handmade Blades

This is a fully experimental blade, and one of the weirdest I ever built. It starts with the composition, it's a center composite blade which is very unusual, it doesn't get more "inner" than this. The idea was to make a very flexible blade, so I used a hard carbon layer in the center to avoid breaking. The core itself is very thin, and it's surrounded with two thick spruce layers laid horizontally. This ensures their contribution to the longitudinal stiffness is as minimal as possible. Furthermore, the handle system adds even more flexibility to the blade, you can literally bend it with your fingers.

The feeling is very unusual, it doesn't really feel hard, but it feels hard on the inside (hard to explain 😅), which makes sense given it has a hard center carbon layer. Despite this, you can feel the huge dwell time given by the flexibility of this composition and handle system.

Available FS.

- Anigre / Spruce / Ayous / TC200 / Ayous / Spruce / Anigre

- 90.8g

- 5.7mm

- 157x150mm

- ST (102x29x23.5mm)

- 1250Hz

- Balance: 3.3cm (Med)

What was the price?

Any blade?

This time a purely defensive blade, also with an unusual composition. The stiff and relatively hard Sycamore outer layers provide a crisp feeling, the thick Ayous medial layers offer good sweetspot and stability, and the soft and dead Cork core makes it very dampening. It's a slow blade, yet it doesn't feel hollow and has a pleasant feeling. It's a bit cheesy using leftover layers of the blade on the handle, but sometimes it just works.

Available FS.

- Sycamore / Ayous / Cork / Ayous / Sycamore

- 90.4g

- 6.35mm

- 165x155mm

- ST (102x31x22mm)

- 1012Hz

- Balance: 3.1cm (High)

I wanted to pay tribute to the 2023 European Champions, and decided to do so with a blade that combines the weapons of choice of two Swedish players: former glory Waldner, and the new generation Truls. Waldner is best known for using the Waldner Senso Carbon in the last stages of his career, and Truls currently uses the Cybershape, so this blade combines certain properties of both. The WSC is a very popular blade, but a bit slow for the current game and I've had many requests to upgrade that composition to handle the polyball a bit better. However, it's not easy making a blade faster without changing its characteristic feel, which would certainly happen if we used anything other than soft-carbon (believe me, I've tried 😅). So I'm introducing a new fiber, the "Super - soft carbon", super not in the sense that's it's very soft, but a higher density version of soft-carbon, like what happens with other fibers. It's actually a bit harder, but not as much as a plain carbon, and it's obviously heavier making it harder to pair with an Ayous core, used in the original composition. So I decided to use Kiri for this one, which is lighter than Ayous and also used in the Cybershape. In the end this blade feels something between a toned down Cybershape and a faster WSC.

Available FS.

- Limba / Meranti / Super - soft carbon / Kiri / Super - soft carbon / Meranti / Limba

- 84.8g

- 5.9mm

- ST (102x28.5x23.0mm)

- 1356Hz

- Balance: 3.5cm (Med)

Making the springy, springier! This is a HL5 structure, but with Fir instead of Ayous in the medial layer. Fir being slightly harder than Ayous, you get a crisper feel and a bit more speed, which makes it more suitable for Bh compared to the original composition. Of course that "directness" will also manifest on the Fh.

The handle flares out a bit, but it basically feels like a normal straight handle in the hand.

Available FS.

- Limba / Fir / A-C / Ayous / A-C / Fir / Limba

- 91.0g

- 6.0mm

- 160x150mm

- ST/FL (103x23.0mm)

- 1335Hz

- Balance: 3.1cm (Med)

The so called "super" fibers are theoretically faster, but why don't we see them being more used on inner fiber compositions, for the blades that are on the market? The answer is simple, because it doesn't necessarily makes the blade faster. Here I'm not using a "super" fiber, it's just my regular AxC, but the principle is the same: the weave type is vertical carbon, which gives more stiffness, and horizontal aramid, which gives more softness. The rest of the composition is similar to a HL5, with a regular 3mm core, a thick medial and a thin outer layer. The thing is, the stiffness of the blade is dictated by the relative distance of its layers, and on inner fiber blades the composite layers are close together (roughly 3mm). This means that the extra stiffness provided by these layers isn't being truly utilized, only when you put them further away from each other, with to extra layers in between, you are able to magnify this characteristic. So here, what you end up having is a slightly stiffer blade, but softer than if you had used a fabric of the same density but with a 2:2 weave type (carbon and aramid in both directions). In terms of performance what does this mean? Usually you can feel an extra "kick" when you hit hard with those blades, here you you will get more of a "holding" sensation. Basically it behaves similarly to outer fiber blades, but at lower speeds.

Available FS.

- Framiré / Ayous / AxC / Ayous / AxC / Ayous / Framiré

- 90.1g

- 6.0mm

- 158x152mm

- ST(102x28.0x23.0mm)

- 1335Hz

- Balance: 3.0cm (Med)

Keeping with the inner fiber concept for maximum feeling and touch, I tried to make this one even faster than the previous blade I posted. That can easily be done by thickening the core, the problem is that the composition was already on the heavy side, so I switched from Ayous to Kiri which is lighter. That allowed me to use a thicker core while having a lower weight. I must say that this blade is one of my recent favorites, it has an exceptional feel, with "outer fiber" type speed.

Available FS.

- Limba / Ayous / S-AxC / Kiri / S-AxC / Ayous / Limba

- 89.0g

- 6.4mm

- 158x152mm

- ST(102x28.0x23.0mm)

- 1421Hz

- Balance: 3.2cm (Med)

I often get asked about the fastest blade possible, but not so much about the slowest one. Well, I decided to build it anyway... This is the slowest (still playable) blade I've ever built. Honestly, I don't even know how this will perform, there is almost no bounce! But if you do get the ball to cross to the other side of the table, you will surely annoy the hell out of your opponent 😅.

Available FS.

- Ayous / Balsa / Balsa / Balsa / Ayous

- 56.0g

- 5.2mm

- 161x155mm

- ST(102x28.0x23.0mm)

- 840Hz

- Balance: 2.4cm (Low)

A very thick, stiff and light Balsa core blade with a compact head size and Hinoki outer layers. The main characteristic of this blade is that it doesn't feel as bouncy as expected from this type of construction. Instead, due to the 3 carbon layers, it gets progressively faster with harder shots, and despite not being a speed monster, it provides a better balance between passive/active shots, than some Balsa blades out there.

Available FS.

- Hinoki / Soft-Carbon / Balsa / Soft-Carbon / Balsa / Soft-Carbon / Hinoki

- 76.4g

- 8.25mm

- 154x148mm

- FL (101x25mm)

- 1765Hz

- Balance: 1.8cm (Very Low)

I read the specs of your Waldner Senso Carbon and the thickness is 6.4 mm?

The real WSC is about 5.6 - 5.7 mm, so 6.4 mm is way too thick, I guess.

I think the ideal WSC will be around 5.8 to 6.0 mm at max. (if the goal is to retain similar feel and characteristics while making it suitable for 40+ plastic ball)

Maybe I didn't explain myself well, but the goal was not to retain the original feeling, it was just to see how Limba would do in this composition and push it as far as possible (while still having a playable blade). And how Stiltt already explained, since Limba is fairly softer than Anigre, it allowed me to push it a bit further.

But still, I'm not sure if I agree with you, I've had a few in my hands and they vary quite a bit, my first one was 5.9mm, the last one I measured was 5.5mm. The frequency range was from 1100 to about 1250Hz. The core is roughly 3.8mm, and I didn't mess with that, but if you want a real, palpable increase in speed, having a thickness of 5.8-6.0 would barely make a dent, especially with the softer Limba medial. I would say that 6.2mm would be the minimum to have a clear difference, there will always be compromises, you gain something you lose something, but if we're just looking to keep the same exact feeling and characteristics, then don't change anything...