Second Homemade Table Tennis Racket Complete

I put a couple coats of wipe on poly to seal the blade and prevent the handle from soaking up skin grease too fast.  I'm not a genius at table tennis but I have a feeling this would be classed as a very, very rigid blade.  Could be wrong.  OFF, certainly, I'd bet.  With 7 plies, two of them bias plies and two of them glass, and epoxy for the adhesive, it's definitely a beast.

I followed some instructions on the intertubes to apply the rubber to the blade using rubber cement.  I got some thinner for the cement, and I probably should have used it, but working quickly with the un-thinned cement went okay.  Apply one coat to the blade, two to the rubber sheets, let dry to tacky, apply, roll, put under a big book, trim.

It was the trimming that went horribly.  I used a fresh razor blade and it kept catching in the foam and the rubber.  I ended up using a pair of shears, going an eight inch at a time - and still, it's crap.  Functional, yes!  But ragged and crap looking.  I supposed I might get better with practice.

See?  Also this thing weighs about 10,000 pounds.  I figure the blade started out heavy because I chose maple for the core.

I'll let you know how it plays.  I expect to bring a lot more spin to our little table at work than anybody else, and I expect a lot of people to be irritated by it, including me.  I plan on visiting a TT club an hour away sometime in the next month to play some folks who are above my level, and maybe get their opinions on my racket.