Ping Pong Paddles

Growing up I have always played a lot of Ping Pong. Whether it be with my grandparents, siblings, or friends Ive always enjoyed playing ping pong and I have gotten pretty good at it too. Therefore when I saw that the ping pong table at our school did not have any paddles I decided to take it upon myself to create new ones. I wanted to make two ping pong paddles that could be used for the table but I challenged myself to only use materials from the class. This meant that I could not order any rubber paddle surfaces from online and instead would have to find materials in the class that have have a lot of friction and could put spin on the ball.

• 1/2cm thick sheet of wood
• 1in thick sheet of wood
• scroll saw
• sander wheel
• Lightweight flexible foam (I think its Polyethylene but I could be wrong)
• 120 grit sandpaper
• Wood glue
• spray on adhesive
• mesh
• duct tape
• clear tape
• exacto knife
• sponge foam

Using the dimensions from the first photo, sketch the outline of the ping pong paddle onto a sheet of 1-1/2cm thick wood. Once you have traced the ping pong paddle outline onto the wood, use the scroll saw top cut it out. Once you have cut out the frame of the paddle, take it to the wheel sander to smooth out any imperfections and to make it smooth.

On a 1in thick piece of wood trace two boxes that are slightly bigger than the dimensions of the handle. Use the scroll saw to cut these out. Briefly sand them down to similar sizes of the actual handle from the frame and then glue them on either side of the handle. Once the glue has dried use the wheel sander to make the handle rounded and smooth.

Once you’ve created the frame of the paddle with a handle, the only thing left to do is to add the surfaces. In this project I added and experimented with numerous different surfaces types to see which ones worked the best for my ping pong game. It’s a total personal preference what you use. Some examples of materials I experimented are in the photos above: 120 and 360 grit sandpaper, mesh, duct tape, spray on adhesive, three types of foam and latex gloves. Whichever materials you use, spray on the spray on adhesive to the wood and materials and then use clamps to attach the surface material. Once dried, use an exacto knife to cut around the paddle and shave off any excess/overhanging surface material.