Cafrbon fiber/aluminum poles

"armor"

For my ski poles, I got a length of tough plastic spiral. It is intended to wrap around a bundle of wires to make a wiring harness in the field. I got some of the right diameter to apply to the bottom eight inches or so of each pole, just above the snow basket. That's been on for over 15 years now without any breaks, so it must be doing something right.

I found it at an electronics parts store in the same aisle as heat-shrink tubing.

–B.G.–

Eric,
Thanks for the heads up. Have been using Komperdell CF poles hikng and snowshoeing for several years now with no problem, yet. Used to use a chrome-moly fixed length pole for snowshoeing/ledge climbing for the strength, and hadn't thought about this possibility of breakage with the CF.

If they are sporting goods store fixed length poles, you might try buying something with better quality CF tubing. Or, you could lay up some kevlar or fiberglass cloth with the best canoe/kayak repair epoxy over the outside of the bottom of the pole. This wouldn't look so good, but if you know how to do FG repairs, should make a strong reinforcement. Or, you could ask a cottage boat builder to do it for you. If you were really lucky, the basket will come off and allow you to slip and bond a carbon tube over the area above the basket (see below).

If they are telescoping poles, it would involve determining the inside diameter of the lowest section in the area just above the basket. Hopefully, this would be relatively constant for some distance. A length of thicker CF tubing from one of the kite companies (try goodwinds.com) would need to fit snugly into the lower pole section, as much as 12" if possible without too much taper. Elmer's urethane glue applied to the outside of the plug, which would then be sunk into the section. When the glue expands, it will be a tight and very strong reinforcement, with the lower section reassembled into the pole.

How to determine the inside diameter, which is critical to ordering the right diameter plug? Maybe repeated rolling up of long paper strips sideways until you have a size that fits snugly. Would probe it first with metal rods to get a rough idea of the inside diameter.

Good luck.

I usually do a single layer wrap of light nylon line, followed by a layer of epoxy.
Adding about 3# pull will add an overall ~300# of pressure (think strength) to the lower ~8". I have been checking into Dynema cord (highly abrasion resistant) and graphite cord and have used pack cloth. Dynema is usually just pack cloth. A 1/2" strip spiral wrapped, down the 8", then epoxied will work. Graphite is available, but not as abrasion resistant.

Mountain King from the UK (http://www.mountainking.co.uk/) produce some nice telescopic poles that are aluminium wrapped in carbon fibre. Sadly nothing in a length that's usable for cross-country skiing. The Carbon Compacts offer a good strength v weight option when hiking and replace my GG Lightrek 4s when I need to take poles on a plane. If I need an adjustable pole for skiing/snowshoeing I just use Black Diamond Traverse poles that are just long enough for me to cross-country ski on.

Eric,
Looked at some CF fixed length and telescoping poles, and saw that for various reasons there is no simple way to do a neat reinforcement from inside. From outside, the fly rod sites suggest that fiberglass is better to repair carbon poles because it has a better "modulus of elasticity." This makes sense to me, and would seem to apply to reinforcement as well as repair. Fiberglass tape is fairly thin and comes in widths up to at least a foot. "West System" is regarded as a superior epoxy.