REVIEW: American Hinoki Western Red Cedar 9mm 1-Pl

This is my first in a series of reviews of different single-ply blades from American Hinoki. More to follow! If you wish more information, you can find their website at: http://www.americanhinoki.com/

Kevin is also a member of this forum with a user ID of 'ahinoki', so you can shoot him a PM too. If you do contact him, tell him Glueless sent 'ya! :)

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In this review I am evaluating a western red cedar single ply American Hinoki blade. I will be comparing it to my Butterfly Michael Maze blade. Each will have identical rubber (Butterfly Tackifire C 2.1 mm) so that the comparison can be as accurate as possible.

The western red cedar blade has a burl cork handle and weighs 90 g. With the rubber added it weighs exactly 180 g. The Maze with the same rubber weighs 170 g, so they are not exactly the same but close enough. The western red cedar single ply blade is 9 mm in thickness. The Maze is 5.8 mm.

In general, I found the western red cedar American Hinoki blade to be significantly faster than the Maze. At the same time it produced much less vibration (almost zero) which was quite surprising for me given the Arylate and carbon layers in the Maze. When I switched from my old blade to the Maze I thought I had a blade that was extremely low in vibration already -- trying the American Hinoki blade was a treat! I am not one who likes vibration but prefers a very solid feeling blade. This 9 mm western red cedar blade from American Hinoki is certainly that!

And additionally, I also found that the western red cedar blade offers significantly more control and spin than the Maze, even though it was significantly faster. When I did some initial testing with this blade with my robot it appeared to me that it was producing more spin than the Maze, but I wasn't sure until I played with my training partner. He confirmed that the western red cedar blade was producing significantly more spin than the Maze. We confirmed this by doing a blocking drill in which he blocked back some light loop drives that I was stroking toward him. He found that he had to close his racket angle much more when I was playing with the western red cedar blade than when I was playing with the Maze.

Finally, I did find that the western red cedar blade was a bit higher throw than the Maze which surprised me quite a bit because I thought with the added speed that the single ply blade would be a lower throw blade. But these single ply blades seemed to defy all of the rules that apply to multi-ply blades. They actually appear to be much more versatile and seem to expand into what ever role you need it for. They do this much better than a multi-ply blade which seems to be more of an expert at one or two things only.

One of the most common forms of feedback on the western red cedar blade, for those who have tried or used the Butterfly Schlager Carbon blade, is that the single ply blade is just as fast as the carbon blade, but offers much more control. While I have never tried the Schlager Carbon blade, I can tell you that in general this single ply blade offers more control than my Maze -- which is a more controlled blade than the Schlager Carbon. So I believe that feedback to be correct.

In performing this evaluation I used the western red cedar blade back to back with the Maze blade in performing identical strokes to see how the performance of each blade differed. Here's what I found:

Counter Driving

When hitting light counter drives I found that the western red cedar had much less vibration, which surprised me given the Arylate in the Maze. I also found that the western red cedar blade was a bit higher throw and therefore required a slightly more closed racket angle to keep the ball low over the net. The western red cedar was also significantly faster even when hitting fairly light counter driving strokes.

The feel of the western red cedar blade is also significantly softer than the Butterfly blade. Perhaps it is just the lack of vibration with the single ply blade that is causing this, but I found that the very soft touch this blade exhibited (even while hitting the ball much faster than the Maze at the same time) was very pleasant and made the blade feel much more solid and "real" than its Butterfly counterpart. The Maze blade almost felt flimsy after using the western red cedar blade for a few minutes.

From the backhand side I found the blade again faster and softer but this time I found it to actually have less control. I think part of this was simply the fact that I hit through the ball a little bit more on my backhand side when hitting topspin than I do on my forehand side. What I found was that when I concentrated on doing more of a brushing stroke my control increased significantly. This is probably simply a matter of adjusting to the added thickness of the new blade after playing with a blade that is less than 6 mm thick for quite some time.

Light Loop Drive

Again I found the western red cedar blade significantly faster and more solid feeling than the Maze. At the same time I also found it appearing to be significantly spinnier and offering significantly better control on my shots. One additional thing that I did find was that the added speed of the single ply blade forced me to adopt better stroke technique to keep the ball on the table. The slower speed of the Maze allowed me to get away with some "slop" in my form that the single ply blade would not. Once I kept my elbow in and kept in good form on my stroke I found that the western red cedar blade rewarded me with significantly more spin and better control than I could get with the Butterfly blade.

Blocking

One of the things that Kevin states on the American Hinoki website is that single ply blades in general do not do well with smashes or with blocking, but do extremely well with looping, serving and service return. While I do not do a lot of smashing (I tend to stick to fast loop drives instead) I did find that blocking was actually a bit better with the single ply blade then with the Maze.

In transitioning between the two blades I did find that I needed to block much closer to the bounce with the western red cedar blade then with the Maze. The blocks were faster with the single ply blade if I stayed back a little more, like I did with the Butterfly blade, and tried to block further off the bounce. I found however that if I stayed close to the table and blocked the ball back right off the bounce I actually had more control with the single ply blade than with the Maze.

Again, I found the blade much softer and a bit higher throw than its multi-ply counterpart, so I did have to close the racket angle a little bit more and let the rubber do a little bit more work, but other than that I found the blocking capability of the western red cedar blade to be quite good.

Wrist Lift

This is a shot that I often find myself doing whenever an opponent places a drop shot at a steep angle off the side of the table on my forehand side. I often respond by simply doing a soft brush loop using only wrist to put the ball back up on the table. I thought it would be something good to analyze for the purpose of this review since it is a very low impact stroke that involves mostly spin. I thought it might be valuable because one of the strengths that I often hear about single ply blades is that when you hit very gently with them they behave like all-around blades but when you hit harder they behave like very fast blades. I am finding this to be pretty accurate.

Compared to the Maze I found the western red cedar blade to be much softer and much less stiff. I'm not sure if it was all of the added vibration from the Maze or not but I found the Maze to feel very stiff in this maneuver whereas the single ply blade felt very soft and controllable. Aside from having more control I also felt like the western red cedar blade offered more spin and again a higher throw.

Push

The western red cedar was definitely faster than the multi-ply blade with this shot, even though the strokes were fairly light. This surprised me a little as I was expecting the single ply blade to offer a little bit more softness. Honestly, this may have simply been the result of my using a fairly thick sponge and rubber combination that also has a fairly thick and heavy top sheet. The rubber may have played a more important role than the blade in this. But still, I found the single ply blade to be softer, faster, yet offer more control even with the added speed.

Looping Underspin

I tried this from both the forehand and the backhand side and found them to be pretty much identical: I found the western red cedar blade to be softer and faster as always but I also found it to offer more control. I felt like I could hit the ball harder and with more confidence than I could with the Maze.

One of the interesting things that I found during this test was that the single ply blade actually taught me to hit the stroke a little bit better. I started this particular test with the Maze and actually found myself having control problems. When I then switched back to the western red cedar, I found that I had much more control I was able to hit the shots with much more accuracy and much more consistency. When I switched back to the Maze I was able to hit the shots much more successfully with that blade! Yet again the single ply blade taught me how to hit the stroke more cleanly -- I may have to keep this blade if for no other reason than to be my coach...

Serves

Unfortunately at the time of this review I was having a slight tendon flareup in my knee so could not do any of my normal serves which require a knee bend. But I did find that for my short, spinny serves there did not seem to be a whole lot of difference in the spin being produced by the western red cedar blade over the Butterfly blade. Faster serves, not surprisingly, were a bit faster. But I did not notice any less control.

Service Return

As always the western red cedar blade was significantly faster than the Maze, and I also experienced a bit less control with service returns. Again this may simply have been the need to adjust to the added thickness of the blade when reaching over the table to pick up short serves. I found that with long serves I was able to respond with the loop just as easy as I could with the Maze -- if not even a little easier. There may actually have been more control here than I was getting with the Butterfly blade.

In conclusion, I really like this blade. As I said, I'm a person who likes a very solid feeling blade with minimal vibration. This is not everyone's cup of tea, and neither will a single ply blade be. But I think I will be keeping a single ply blade in my arsenal for some time to come! And Kevin at American Hinoki hand makes a quality blade!

P.S. I would like to make clear that I have no financial ties with Kevin or American Hinoki of any kind and will not make a penny off this review.

Glueless, thanks for the review and welcome to the WR-9 club. It is good to see that you came more or less to the same conclusions as I did - see my review here http://mytabletennis.net/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=17994

that program exists with ping-pong.com

There is a lot about all of  them at http://www.americanhinoki.com