Ping Pong Tables That Kill!!

Sounds like a scary story, but it is true. Ping pong tables are like most other manufactured products, some are better than others. However there are some things to consider when it comes to safety. Make not mistake, people have been killed by ping pong tables. Those warnings that are plastered all over the box, instructions and tables are there for a reason, many companies have been sued over what people believe to be faulty equipment. But most of the time, the equipment is not to blame.

People are people and they tend to do stupid things sometimes. Dance on ping pong tables. Using ping pong tables for storage, placing hundreds of pounds of material on top of them. The fact is that most ping pong tables do have a limit as to how much weight they can hold. Some hold more than others, but there is a finite amount that you can stack on top of them. People should keep in mind what a product is made for and try to limit its use to that task. There was a story about a lady who used her toaster to dry her hair. When her hair caught on fore, she sued the manufacturer. The court found that since the toaster company did NOT list the fact that hair could not be dried in the toaster that they were liable for damages. To this day toasters are made so that the bread must be loaded from the top, not from the sides as it was before the court ruling. The point here is that if most people would use a product for the purpose in which it was intended to be used, there would not be many problems.

The picture above is on the line. The customer placed too much weight on the table while playing. By placing his hand on the table he was in violation of the use of the table. During normal play on a ping pong table, you cannot place your hand on the table. Therefore when he did put his hand on the ping pong table and pushed down with his weight, the table collapsed.

Ping Pong Table Nets

What is a ping pong table without a net? Not much more than a table! When it comes to ping pong, the net is perhaps the most important part. In fact the object of the game revolves around it. But when you consider the net on a ping pong table, there is more that you might imagine to look at.

The dimensions of all regulation ping pong table nets is the same. However there are many variations to material that makes up the net. Quality and long lasting function are usually linked to price. The higher the price of the net the higher the quality. The two main type of nets are synthetic, such as nylon, or plastic and fabric, which are mostly cotton. The colors vary, but green with a white border on the top is the most common.

Synthetic nets are very light weight. They have a distinct advantage in the fact that they can be drawn very tight to maximize the level at the top of the ping pong table net. This makes for a uniform obstacle which is highly desirable. The tension needed for a synthetic net is much lower than that of a cotton net. This is one of the reasons they are so prevalent in the market. They last a long time and are cheap to make.

Cotton nets on the other hand are more expensive to make and require much more tension to create a uniform height. However the fact is that cotton nets are more desirable when considering top notch playing. The high quality material is painstakingly put together in a web of intricate patterns. These nets are strong and some can even last the entire life of the ping pong table.

So when push comes to shove it really does not make that much difference what type of net you use on your ping pong table as long as it works.

Ping Pong Table Storage

As you can see by the picture, one of the things most often considered when buying a ping pong table is if it can be folded up and store in a smaller area. The idea behind this desire is fairly easy to see, if you have a ping pong table that is taking up a lot of room in your living room or basement, you would like to have the ability to fold it up and store it out of the way for later use. Being that ping pong tables take up so much room, this is not an unreasonable request. However, not all ping pong tables are created equal when it comes to the ability to fold up and store away.

The trend with manufacturing has been to build tables that do fold up. However there have been road-blocks. The most dogging has been safety. Early ping pong tables that offered the ability to be folded and stored, had a design flaw. They would not stay secured in the folded position. When moved one half of the ping pong table came crashing down on top of the person trying to move the table.

To address this problem, manufacturers started to add safety catches to all of their folding ping pong tables. This one action prevented acidental injury due to the table becoming un-folded. However one problem remained.

Even though the ping pong tables were staying folded, when one would try to move it, it tended to fall over in its entirety. The folded ping pong tables were top heavy with narrow bases, providing a very unstable platform to roll around. The fix for this problem was to simply widen the base and the wheel span while lowering the center of gravity. Manufactures also added larger wheel, which rolled better on different surfaces such as carpeting.

Ping Pong Tables Halloween Style

Well it is that spooky time of year. When the leaves start to turn and the wind blows cold, you can bet that Halloween is almost here. We tend to be home-bodies and with that in mind we turn to alternative activities to celebrate good times and holidays. We like to use our ping pong table to center some of our more social activities around.

Most people enjoy ping pong tables and the hours of fun that they provide. This year we did something a bit different and unusual. Normally the top of our ping pong table is green, like most. However we wanted to add a little spice to our Halloween party this year. So as a center piece for are get-together we centered our ping pong table in the room and painted the table with water soluble paint.

What a great idea! The ping pong table looked like something out of a Steven King book! There was plenty of room on the ping pong table top to have a witch, several pumpkins, a black cat, a giant spider, a mummy, a vampire and a ghost. What a sight, color everywhere. I was worried about the ability to play on the ping pong table, but my mind was put at ease the second we began to play. The ball was flying around the spooks and colorful images we had placed on the table. Everyone was trilled to participate and the ping pong table was the talk of the party!

Ping Pong Table Colors

Have you ever noticed that the colors used on ping pong table tops has started to grow? There are tops in just about every color under the rainbow. The traditional color of course has always been green, but why?

Funny you should ask. There is a very logical reason that the tops of ping pong tables have traditionally been green, tennis. Tennis? That's right tennis. You see ping pong or table tennis as it is known around the world is strikingly similar to...you guessed it tennis! Yes tennis which too has a traditional green court or playing surface, gets its color from grass. That is correct, green grass. You see in the old days before asphalt and concrete, tennis courts were made from grass. Hard lawns of very low cut green grass. So when people decided that having a tennis court in your back yard was too expensive and space intensive, table tennis tables or ping pong tables as they are better known here in the United States, were born. Now people could enjoy a nice game of tennis right in their very home.

But as we all know, status quo is rarely every good enough. So as is usual in the evolution of man, change enhancement and innovation lead to change, and in this case change in the color that is placed on ping pong tables. Now you can find blue, red and just about any color that you would like on a ping pong table. But as you might imagine this creates a whole new set of concerns, the main one being ball viability...a topic for another day.