Mistral carbon fiber paddle snapped as I paddled for wave.

[LB Surper]

Was it my super human strength or is something else going on?

Sent from my A0001 using Tapatalk

[TallDude]

That particular CF weave looks cool, but is not good for a paddle shaft. The early Hobie paddles had that weave and a lot of them cracked under heavy use. Even with an oval section, they cracked.

[Wetstuff]

LB S, A big, strong fireman friend is going to bring me the remains of three paddles (not seen yet to know mfgr/s.) he's busted this summer. Said he did them all stroking for a wave.  I fell on an oval shafted, Kialoa and had to splice it.  ..'gotta keep a spare in the truck.

Jim

[PonoBill]

All it takes is a deep knick, but yeah, that's not a great weave pattern for a CF paddle. And you might take a look at the wall of the shaft and see if you see color change, and how much. Lots of manufacturers use a fiberglass core and wrap with CF. Perfectly legit way to make a paddle if the outer wrap is the right stuff, particularly if you're tuning flex--the Ke Nalu xTufs are made that way, but the outer wrap is unidirectional CF which puts ALL the fibers perpendicular to flex. If they made that shaft with 100% CF it would rip my shoulders off. As I recall the xTuf(S) is three wraps of Uni, and that shaft locks up like it was made out of crome moly.

That diamond weave direction has fibers cutting across each other under tension. Doesn't happen with square weave or uni.

[TallDude]

My brother-in-laws Hoe Nalu Shaft snapped just like yours. Here's a picture of my speed repair. It's not pretty, but it's smooth, straight, and it didn't cost him anything to have me fix it. I let him borrow my old Werner Ottertail while I was repairing it.
The second picture is a side by side shaft comparison of most of my paddles.   

[mik911]

Talldude--where'd you get the Carbon Fiber tube for the repair? Isn't the Hoe Nalu shaft oval?---is your CF tube oval?

[LB Surper]

Thank Tall Dude. I had no idea it was repairable. Good think I didn't toss it.

[TallDude]

Talldude--where'd you get the Carbon Fiber tube for the repair? Isn't the Hoe Nalu shaft oval?---is your CF tube oval?

The oval tubing on the Hoe-Nalu was surprisingly thin. No wonder it broke so easily. I have a bunch of shaft cut-offs laying around from repairs to initial cut-to-lengths for people's new paddles. I was able to coat a round piece of narrower shaft with epoxy and jam it into the oval shaft. The oval shaft is now round for the length of the insert. It'll probably break again seeing how thin it is.