Broken carbon pole

[John Canfield]

First post here, thanks for the wealth of information thus far.

Okay, so I have a pair of Atomic "Daddy" carbon ski poles. They are extraordinarily light, and lasted me the better part of a season skiing with them before I wiped out and snapped one of them in two.

Recently, I stopped by Fiberlay in Seattle to pick up some carbon fiber and resin to patch the thing up, fixed it, made the mistake of skiing with them and broke it again. Now I have a mess of carbon on my pole and I am thinking of replacing the whole lower.

I am quite attached to the poles because of the fiscal consequences of replacing them. Before I dive into another round or laying up carbon…

Does anyone have any other bright ideas?

[Sam Farrington]

John,

There is a lot of good info about repairing broken carbon tubes on the fishing rod sites. Try the article at:

http://www.rodbuilding.org/library/repair-oquinn.html

To sum up, they say that repairing carbon with carbon just leads to another break, and to use fiberglass because it is more elastic. Many details in the article.

If you can find strong fiberglass tube that will fit snugly inside the broken ends of your carbon pole, that might be the simplest and best approach. Goodwinds.com has glass tubes in many diameters.

But you will be adding quite a bit more weight to one pole. Not so good.

Also, I have had epoxy hardeners weaken the resins in carbon tent poles in the past, so only use urethane to glue ferrules now; but the Fiberlay people probably can provide good advice about what materials are compatible.

Good luck.

[John Canfield]

Thanks for the information/link. I am (nearly) resigned to purchasing a pair or building a pair from scratch. We'll see.

Thanks!

[Author]

Posts