C-Forum

The carbon fibre is flaking off at the area on top of the aluminum tip. Can anyone chime in the proper way to repair this. I am thinking of filing down the aluminum surface, cleaning up with acetone and epoxy with west epoxy resin. Does this sound right?

The area is small, not worth sending to Mitchell for repair at this time.
n

I think this happens if you let the tip mushroom from hitting rocks. After you fix the delam as you have suggested you can prevent recurrence by periodically filing down the tip.

I see, thanks.

n

My Mitchell goes back over 15 years. It is a curved blade slalom paddle. The aluminum tip insert has worn a little, but I can't detect any mushrooming. The paddle is faced with glass rather than carbon. Today I was varnishing the blade, and I noticed that some small divots had popped out of the glass, over the aluminum. I don't regard this as of much consequence.

Carbon is more brittle than glass, and less "tough". But carbon has great compression strength, and for equivalent weight, carbon makes for a stronger blade.

Think carefully about what you do by way of repair. You might be able to get by with just filling the damage with epoxy. It will be hard to "glass" over the damage without ending up with a lumpy repair. If you do try such a repair, it might be worth getting some S-glass, or some carbon cloth.

My other "slalom" paddles were made by Bailey Johnson of Clinch River Paddles. When I ordered one of them, I had to specify whether I wanted an aluminum or a phenolic tip insert. Bailey commented that aluminum was somewhat stronger and always longer wearing. But he said that adherence of the laminate to aluminum was chancey. Even when surface prep was optimum, sometimes the laminate would tend to break away from the aluminum.

Thanks ezwater.

To repair, the idea is to make a "sandwich" of the pieces listed.
sand the tip area with 120 grit . wipe with acetone.
take a 1 inch strip of carbon fiber cloth and wet it with epoxy. lay it on one side of the tip leaving a little protruding from the edge of the paddle, it can be trimmed later with a razor knife.. here is the tricky part. you need even pressure to press the cloth into the tip so here is what i do.
1 lay the saturated carbon cloth o the tip as described.
2 lay a piece of 2 or better 3 mil plastic over it cut the same size as the cloth
3 put a piece of 2 in minicell on the plastic. also the same size as the cloth
4 put a piece of 1/4 in luan on top the minicell also the same size as the cloth.
5 place the 2 c clamps on the bottom of the paddle and on top of the laun. and
tighten slightly to squeeze the wetted carbon cloth into the tip area.

the idea is to get even pressure with the minicell using the clamps. let dry over night.
then remove everything and trim the excess material even with the razon knife , repeat the procedure on the other side.
using the clamps keeps the tip weight/epoxy amount used as low as possible, believe me a few extra grams of weight on the end of your paddle can be felt. if you do it right, it will look Pro., Good Luck

FWIW, I still have aluminum and stainless steel tips that I used when I was making my own sticks years ago. They are meant to be sandwiched between blade halves.

$5 each, ppd.

Drawing (100% scale): http://www.wwslalom.net/paddling/paddle_tips.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;