Ping Pong Project
Woodwork, Finishing, Adobe Illustrator
In the Summer after university had finished, my housemates and I got very into Ping Pong. This gave me an opportunity to start making all the equipment we needed; starting with a table top and then moving on my own bat and a bat rack.
The table top was a simple make using two large pieces of MDF. I painted the top red, carefully marked out the white lines and voilà, a playable ping pong surface for our Ping Pong arena (the garden).
The making of the bat was a little more advanced. For this I needed to create a ply of different woods to create a strong, but lightweight material. This was a 5 ply bat with the chosen woods being Balsa wood (core), Basswood (inner layer) and Black Walnut (outer layer). The layers were glued together with wood glue and lot of pressured. I then made an MDF template of the bat shape to cut around when cutting the ply.
Next up was the handle, which I wanted make out of a mix of interesting woods. Again, The woods were layered together with glue and then shaped with a file. I then created an Ash veneer binding for the edge of the bat. This was shaped by soaking the strip of Ash in water before wrapping it around the edge, holding it in place with elastic bands and leaving to dry. Finally a cap for the bottom of the handle was made before the finishing the bat with a coat of varnish. The last step was to add the rubber to each side.
At this point I realised there was one thing missing from the Ping Pong arena: a bat and ball rack. I drew up a simple net shape on Adobe Illustrator and had it laser cut out of plywood. The pieces fitted together perfectly and were glued in place.
