Shortening my paddle

Hi All,

When I got my first fixed length carbon paddle I made it a bit longer than I thought I would need so that I could shorten it later if required.

For this reason I glued it with 5 minute Araldite, as I was led to believe that I could heat it up and take it apart later.

Has anyone had experience with this operation that they could share please?

Hillsy

I use 5 min araldite and I've never managed to get a handle off using the DJ method, except on Kialoas that have the foam insert (t-handle that goes over the shaft rather than a handle that goes in the shaft). A friend of mine has also not been able to. But one other has succeeded. So I think it depends on how good a job you have made of gluing it. There was no way in hell my handles were coming off- I boiled them for over an hour and two people tried to get the handle off, and we used specialist grips. The only way was to cut the handle off and then destroy the shaft by prising it off bit by bit and then sanding it down. Much easier to buy a new handle...

Well there must be something different about the composition of 5 min Araldite in the UK vs. Australia then because even after an hour of boiling, or the use of a heat gun to the point that the handle was starting to delam, the Araldite remained as solid as a rock. No rubberiness whatsoever.

Yeah yeah yeah done all that and still no joy. A friend who is a craftsman also tried boiling on his after using the same glue and had no luck. But as I say, one other has managed fine but I don't know if it was the same formulation glue. It's going to matter a lot what the melting point of the glue is. So the best I can say is give it a go and maybe you'll succeed, maybe not. If you don't, then buy a new handle and hope that you like your new paddle 2-3" shorter (if you are using a typical handle that goes into the shaft).

I always hot glue my handles on now. But you have to do it right and keep water from getting in the seam (no matter what you might read elsewhere). Strangely, the friend of mine who manages to unglue his handles has never had any success with hot glue. So we are clearly doing different things and/or using different glues. He apparently left his Araldited paddle in his car in Hawaii and the handle unglued itself in the heat. But I can't get my Araldited handles off even with a heat gun never mind boiling, and my hot glued handles don't come off if I leave them in the sun. Go figure.

I tried heating the handle using the above advice, I guess I just used to much good glue so I came up with a more drastic solution. I have taken some pics of what turned out to be a quick easy job.
1, Cut shaft to correct length, if your shortening the length only a small amount the tongue of the handle inside the shaft will also be cut through also.
2, Use a dremel or similar to grind a slot in the the excess shaft on the handle, lever the remaining piece of shaft off the handle, comes off easy.
3, Use dremel to grind another slot in the excess handle tongue located inside the shortened shaft. Lever the remaining piece of handle out of the shaft.

The attached pictures will hopefully make more sense.









Note, if your only shortening by a small amount, say 1 centimeter then your handle tongue wont have much of an overlap inside the paddle shaft. I wouldn't use this method unless I was shortening the paddle by at least 20mm, preferably more

why are you blokes using heaps of glue
if the handle (or anything ) has a snug fit… all you are doing is pushing glue down the shaft.
then the extra glue can brake off and rattle around in the shaft.

like i said in the other post..the clear epoxies are easy to come off..the solid colour epoxy is a lot harder to come apart.