Repairing a Hockey Stick with West System
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By J. R. Watson
Ice hockey sticks are exposed to cold temperatures
plus high shock forces from contact
with the puck as well as with the ice and skates.
Hockey sticks can be wood/fiberglass laminates
or composites of carbon fiber or aramid. The
stick blades often chip and split with use and
have to be repaired (or else replaced at $50-$150 each).
A customer who repairs and
maintains hockey sticks for a local team had
been using a conventional epoxy for repairs and
found that it often chipped under such use.
To make the repair, he pries open the split and
dries it with a heat gun. While it is still warm,
he injects G/flex® into the split, clamps it together,
and allows it to cure. After removing the
clamps, he wraps the repair area with one layer
of 2" fiberglass tape, wetting it as he proceeds.
The tape is somewhat more difficult to wet out
with G/flex due to its increased viscosity, but no
other finishing is needed.
Using G/flex, the customer has found that the
more flexible epoxy provides a significant improvement
in durability over the epoxy which
he had used previously.
Copyright © 2002, Gougeon Brothers, Inc. All rights reserved.
Last Modified on 10/28/02.
Reproduction in any form, in whole or in part, is expressly forbidden without the consent of the publisher. EPOXYWORKS, Gougeon Brothers, WEST SYSTEM, Episize, Scarffer and Microlight as used throughout this publication, are trademarks of Gougeon Brothers, Inc., Bay City, Michigan, USA.
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