CORINTH — “One small step for man, one giant paddle for Texas pride,” is inscribed on the bottom of what could be the world’s largest pingpong paddle.

At nearly 9 feet tall, 6 feet wide, and too cumbersome to weigh, it dwarfs everything around it.

“I probably wouldn’t be able to play with it in a tournament, though,” said Todd Thomas, a Corinth medical staffer and creator of the prodigious paddle.

Thomas, 27, built the monstrosity to get his name in the Guinness Book of World Records. If his attempt is accepted, he would be the first person to be recognized for building the largest pingpong paddle.

To do so, his enlarged replica had to retain the proportions of a U.S. Table Tennis Association-approved paddle, down to the density of pimples on the rubber.

Originally, Thomas wanted to build something out of wood that would break an existing world record.

DRC/Al Key

Corinth resident Todd Thomas stands beside his giant pingpong paddle, which he’s seeking to register as the world’s largest, at nearly 9 feet.

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A dedicated carpenter for five years, he built a swinging bench for his brother’s wedding. Now, half of the furniture in his house is handmade, Thomas said.

According to his wife, Megan Thomas, he has always been the type of person to take on unusual projects.

“When he first told me about this, I thought he was crazy,” she said. “But that’s why I love him.”

This inclination for eccentricity runs in the family, Todd Thomas said.

For Halloween one year, his father constructed a 12-foot-tall Tyrannosaurus rex out of plaster of Paris and papier-mache, complete with glowing eyes and a microphone so he could scare trick-or-treaters, he said.

“He didn’t know it, but he actually had the world record for that. He just never thought to look for it,” Thomas said.

His original idea was to build a set of oversized wooden dominos, but Guinness did not approve.

“Whatever you build has to be made out of the original material, otherwise Guinness won’t accept it,” Thomas said.

Then he arrived at the pingpong paddle, the only other object he could think of to make with wood. Before he began his project, he never played in a table tennis tournament and he didn’t know any of the terminology, he said.

His first step in this Herculean quest was to visit his local hardware store, where he bought $500 of wood and six gallons of liquid latex.

With a garage full of building materials, he was ready to begin his mission.

Thomas spent at least two hours per day over the winter braving freezing temperatures in his garage.

He started by using an overhead projector to trace the outline of the frame and, after many hours of cutting and nailing, the basic shape had come together.

Next, he created the blade — the hitting surface under the rubber — by incorporating plywood 2 3/4 inches thick into the frame. After crafting the handle, he was ready to paint.

At this point, his project was beginning to attract some neighborhood attention.

“People would walk by and stare, but no one had the guts to say anything,” Thomas said.

With the handle and blade assembled, Thomas’ final step was to create the rubber and the pimples, the small bumps on the surface that give the rubber texture.

According to the U.S. Table Tennis Association, there must be no fewer than 10 and no greater than 30 pimples per square centimeter on a standard-size paddle.

His first step was to enlist the help of Donna Chen, president of the Dallas-Fort Worth Table Tennis association.

When Chen found out what he was doing, she was shocked.

“My first thought was, ‘Are we going to use it to play?’” she said.

Chen donated about 100 used rubber pads approved by the International Table Tennis Federation so Thomas could create the pips.

“We’re glad to help,” she said. “It’s great to see someone create something different and new, and it will make people pay attention to the sport.”

Thomas’ original plan was to glue each piece of rubber individually to the paddle, but the result didn’t look good.

“Using the individual pieces of sandwich rubber caused the paddle to look like a soccer ball because you could see the seams between each piece,” Thomas said.

He decided larger, nickel-sized pips would look better.

For each pip, he had to trace nickels, cut the shape out of the unused rubber pads and glue the pieces together.

After cutting out several pieces, he placed them in a tray and poured liquid rubber into it. The resulting mold would create up to 25 pips.

The finished paddle has 4,682 pips.

After the final coat of paint, Thomas’ three-month journey was complete. When he looked at the final product, he felt a great sense of pride and accomplishment, as well as some impatience, he said.

“I couldn’t wait to tell my friends and the rest of my family about it,” he said.

He avoided informing his friends about his project because he didn’t want the word to spread and someone else to take his idea before he got into the record book, Thomas said.

Now that he’s finished, he isn’t sure of what to do with the paddle.

“I’m hoping a sports bar buys it from me,” Thomas said.

“If not, I’m taking offers.”

Thomas’ next project is a deck for his backyard. In the interest of preserving his marriage, he has no plans to build another oversized pingpong paddle or a matching ball.

“I wouldn’t leave him,” Megan Thomas said.

“I would probably make him sleep on the couch for a while, though.”