Rene,
The 400 on the Victories is a measure of the stiffness. To make them stiffer, they must use a thicker walled tube, which is therefore quite stronger, based on my break testing. Unless Victory has changed its marking system, the stiffer poles have a lower number (350 & 300), signifying less deflection over a given span. So the 300s tested much stronger in break tests, and are only a grain or two heavier per inch.
There can be confusion about the Victory models and their names – Look for a reference to V Force V6 in the name.
All the above mentioned Victory shafts, including the 300, will fit snugly into the Easton .344″ OD Nanolite alloy tent tube, which can be cut and polished into external ferrules. The tube is available from Quest Outfitters (There are also other options for internal ferrules.) The snug fit is important, because if the poles are allowed to go into an only slightly oval shape when stressed, they break with less pressure.
Quest only has elbows for the .340″ OD poles. They say that they fill fit the .344″, but unless you want wobbly elbows, that is not so. The elbows are also quite heavy, because the ferrules run right through the elbow and protrude from each end. They also do not seem to be suited for boring. They do not fit the Victory poles.
There are elbows sold by Fibraplex, but they can be bent by hand, and do not hold an angle well.
Also, your tent design may require a differently angled elbow than those which Quest offers.
The .344″OD tube can be bent with heat; however, the heat will destroy the high temper of the resulting elbow, and it will not hold the angle. Done that.
So you can see one reason why Roger uses the stainless steel bent exactly to the angle he wants. One other option is to bond plastic end tips into on the V300s, then extremely carefully bend a section of Ti tent peg to your desired angle, and bore the end tips to accept the Ti elbow. This actually worked well for a prototype, and is shown and discussed at:
https://backpackinglight.com/forums/topic/45631/
Another option is to find a less tempered but thicker walled alloy tube from online metals or wherever that fits over the Victories, and bend it with the tube bender shown in your link. Have bent some older A-16 pole tube with heat and they have held their angles, so know it can be done. Don’t know if the bender shown in your link will cold bend less tempered alloy, and how much angle you are looking for. If it is a slight angle, and the alloy is less tempered (6061-T6 can be found on line), you should be able to avoid crimping with your bender using fine sand from big box stores packed tightly in the tube and capped. From my experience, a more expensive bender for 3/8″ OD from Ridgid will hold up better than the one shown in your link.
The final option for me was to order some polypropylene US Plastics equal angle Wyes that project from a small disc, and cut off one Y, leaving a 120 degree elbow that fits over a Gold Tip carbon shaft that is a little stronger but only slightly more flexible than the V300 shaft. The slight flexibility of the polypro elbow should absorb severe wind gusts and return to form in lieu of breaking the carbon. Only problem is must design around the 120 degree angle, which happens to be OK because that was the angle used for the Ti elbows. So moved on to other design issues and explored elbow sourcing no more.
Another option for you might be to use the Easton carbon poles from Quest that fit the alloy elbows for the .340″OD tube. This is a slightly heavier carbon tube than the arrow shafts, but still lighter than the Easton .344′ OD Nanolite tube, which is their lightest alloy tube suitable for tents. And you would probably have a stronger carbon tent pole (with alloy elbows) resulting. But again, the angles are limited, to 125, 145 and 90 degrees.
If you want to bend your own elbows, hope Roger can fill you in on the stainless bending. If you find or develop other options, please post them. Thanks.
P.S. Just read Les W’s post. Awesome!
Please note that some corrections were made to the above, and were not posted until after several hours after the initial post.
So… I’m making a dyneema tent and this is my solution for the short end of the tent. That is 1/4″ woven CF tubing. Wrap shrink-tite around the vertical ‘arrow’, insert high density foam (blue) shaped to fit into both arrows to give desired bend, slip woven CF over both, wet out with epoxy, slip heat shrink tubing over, heat it to compress… a few hours later (or put in a hotbox for an hour). Top tube is 10″ both vertical/side poles are 22″ total weight is 1 oz.
