For any of you professionals that use the lightweight Arbormax carbon fiber pole saws I'm sure you have encountered this here issue: After regular usage the single rivet that holds the spring clip that locks in one pole to another starts to eat into the carbon fiber....and eventually what was originally just a hole turns into an elongated oval and the ferrule (female) starts jiggling all over the place making it impossible to use. Same thing happens on the male side. My tree guy brought over 15 poles, some of which had been repaired previously but to no avail as the same thing kept happening. I did a little research and ended up buying some 3m Scotch Weld DP420NS 2-part epoxy. This stuff is the real deal holy moly. I saw a video where it was used to lift a steel container filled up that weighed over 14,000lbs. That's just nuts. What I did was cut off any broken ends or super elongated holes. Keeping the length is important but not if it's going to affect the durability. Then I applied the epoxy, and twisted the ferrules in back and forth multiple times to make sure I got 100% coverage. There's a 20 minute working time on the epoxy. They sell longer working times as well. I used blue tape to hold the male part inside the female part so I got the right depth. After I let the glue set for a few minutes I gingerly took the tape off and wiped off any excess epoxy that might have touched the tip of the male ferrule. If I didn't do that, I would have been screwed because even a drop of epoxy might have gotten it super stuck. After it was completely dry I drilled through the existing rivet hole as I had rotated the ferrules 90 degrees if I left the old holes in there. Then I put in new #10-24 round head machined screws, a drop of red loctite, and installed the spring clip. After that I drilled 4 new holes (3/16") for some 1/8" deep 3/16" rivets. Installed those 90 degrees to the machined screw and did them in pairs. Used an angle grinder and a cut off wheel and chopped off the excess part of the machined screws. Came out pretty nice and 15 of those poles cost over $100 each so that's over $1500 of poles that were completely unusable that are now back in service. The applicator gun for the epoxy was $45. The epoxy 200ml cartridge was $70. I bought 2 just in case. Didn't quite finish one for 15 poles x 2 ferrules each. The tips for the cartridge was $20. Not cheap but when you add it up for $150 + labor it's still very worth it to bring those poles back into service. There were a few fiberglass poles that are not as light as the carbon fiber ones but the exact same problem. It was an absolute pleasure using the machinist vise and the bench vise that I restored. So nice to be able to have an extra pair of hands.
I didn’t know there was carbon poles. Does his crew do a bunch of utility right of way clearance? Why all the poles?
Here all the electrical and cable wires are above ground and since the houses are literally on top of each other packed like sardines they tend to get all tangled with the trees. Sometimes they are on the bucket and don't want to move the truck to reach a dangler or a dead branch or something so they use the poles. The carbon fiber ones are super light and strong, so much easier on the arms to work with. That said, note that carbon fiber conducts electricity so they are not shock proof! He had a lot of poles that had previously been "repaired" but basically the same issue happened so he just put those aside and bought new ones. Now with the 3m epoxy I don't think he's going to have the same problem any more.
Nice repair job. Those holes really should have been reinforced to begin with. Epoxy is the new chewing gum in the famous repair trio.
Thanks. Yeah another example of squeezing some extra money out of something and I would even go as far as to say not even meeting the minimum requirement of this tool. Do the right thing and charge a fair price.
So you're not a fan of the "do a poor job to keep margins high and product life short" either. I especially dislike that with tools.
Great fix! Yeah, Carbon Fiber is light and strong, but not durable. That's why I'm not a fan of it for things like wheels on a motorcycle or frames of any kind. Something like this, it's acceptable, but you need to watch and look for wear.
