Removing LEKI Trigger Grips from Carbon Poles

[Tony S]

Nordic shops do this in their sleep. Very common to buy xc poles as a "kit." You get a long shaft with the grips not yet attached. Cut the shaft to size and on go the grips.

 

[hbear]

Same as golf clubs, lots of graphite and now various composite carbon fibre, boron, Kevlar, etc. weaves.

Cut off wheel does wonders, fine for chop saws or even dremels. The key is cut and not crush....so no pipe cutter or anything that uses pressure.

 

[DonC]

I just did this a couple months ago. Worked fine. You just have to be more patient with the boiling and the inner sleeve will come off too, eventually.

People cut down carbon mtb bars all the time. No biggie. Wrap tightly with masking tape over the cut area. Then cut with fine sharp hacksaw. Sand smooth. Reverse to reassemble. Use low temp hot glue gun.

Edit: It did take a bit of force to get the grips and inserts all the way back on. Put pole tip on scrap 2x4 and pound grip gently with mallet while glue is still hot.

Thanks for the Info. I'll take a stab at it next week.

 

[Eleeski]

Cut off wheel on a grinder is big enough to accurately chop the whole pole shaft.

You did the hard part, getting the grip off.

Quick set epoxy worked perfectly when I shortened my Goode poles and replaced the grips with strapless saber style grips. Epoxy will keep the grips on nicely. Epoxy does mean you are done adjusting. But I've used the heat gun to soften epoxy (quick epoxy is even more sensitive to heat).

So maybe I can salvage my grips if I break my poles or decide to go with a normal size pole. (I broke the ends getting the grips off so they ended up very short. But I liked them short.)

Go ahead and fix your poles. At worst, you might have to buy new ones. Or you will get the poles you want.

Eric

 

[markojp]

Warm up grips with hot water (soak). Slide/twist grips off. Tape area where you plan to cut. Mark and cut with a sharp hack saw. Remove tape. Use spray adhesive in the grips. Place grip on pole (line up all the graphics, etc... properly). Turn pole upside down and rap it on the floor until fully seated. Done.

 

[Primoz]

I spoke to my cohorts in the shop. One recommended never attempting to shorten CF poles. They aren't designed for it. The other said that a dremel cut off disc was the best way to cut the CF, DO NOT use the traditional pipe cutting tool you'd use on an AL pole.

I don't know if they were designed for this or not, but fact is, everyone are doing this. In my career I have been cutting 100s of poles, both xc and alpine, and never had issue with this. Even today, most of poles for racing service are cut by hand by company's tech, as every racer has it's own "ideal size" and they got to 0.5cm (I actually had racer for which i needed to cut them to 162.3cm (for xc of course) ), while most of alpine poles for race service come in 5cm steps and for xc in 2.5cm steps. Everyone are using normal handsaw for cutting metal. Believe it or not, I had to cut pair of poles once, when not having anything else with me, so kitchen knife for cutting bread did job just fine, but that was xc pole, which is thinner then alpine so it went easier, but it can be done also for alpine poles
As far as OP goes, I have never been cutting LEKI poles, as we were always on Swix and Exel, and there grip is one piece only, without anything else under/between grip and pole. So I have no idea about this part left on your pole once you took "top" part of grip off.

 

[Nobody]

Two years ago I asked a shop to do that for me (cut 5 cm off my CF LEKI poles) the tech said, sure, no problem, come back in 10-15 minutes. Half an hour later... I was exiting the shop with...two broken beyond repair carbon poles (grips, tips and even the shafts, everything had been damaged, in both poles) , still in their original length, and two brand new LEKI poles, offered for free by the shop in reparation (not CF though) in the desired length...piece of cake...so to speak.

Speaking of LEKI grip removal, I keep hearing "rumors" ("my friend had it, I saw it with my eyes last year" and something such) of a grip removal tool from LEKI...but I find no information anywhere (LEKI hasn't answered my direct inquiries, yet, and the one LEKI rep I asked through a shop denied it).
Has anyone heard about that or has solid info on it?

 

[martyg]

LEKI did have a tool - which was essentially a slide hammer - to remove grips on previous generations. I can speak with some authority to this.

I’ve never removed grips on full carbon LEKIs, but on alloy shafts it is simply a meter of heating in hot water and twisting off.

A call to LEKI should straighten this out. As one poster said, cutting Nordic poles happens daily.

 

[Noodler]

Continuing with more info from the world of golf when dealing with carbon/graphite shafts...

When working with composite fiber shafts (graphite, carbon, etc.), it is recommended that you never twist during the removal of a head since that can damage the fibers and thus weaken the shaft. I would assume the same can be said for carbon ski poles if the grip has been secured by something other than friction. If adhesive is used (as may often be the case due to the narrower diameter of carbon ski poles), you run the risk of damaging the pole fibers by using twisting during grip removal. Better to pull the grip straight off using the door jamb method or vise. In golf, we actually have shaft pullers that are a combination of a vise and pry bar powered by a long screw axle. As the "screw" is turned, it moves the pry bar and pops the head straight off without any twisting. I have one of these tools and hopefully I'll remember to use it the next time I need to pull a ski pole grip. It would be way easier to get the job done using that.

 

[MattFromCanada]

Liberated a pair of LEKI Carbon 14s from the lost and found at the hill I work at (after several months of being unclaimed, the things get donated/tossed) in 135cm. 120cm is more my size, google led me here.

I'd just like to report that the inner sleeve is held on with some glue that responds nicely to hot water and being yanked on in your preferred method, be it door jambs, or pliers or what not. I found a ski tuning vice did wonders for holding the pole in place while I yanked on it...

 

[scday]

Here’s my 2cents. I have a pair of trigger s with aluminum aero shafts and the inner and outer grips. I wanted to transfer the grips to a longer pair of shafts I had. I put a coffee can with h2o and a little dish soap on the burner. When boiling I put the grips in for 5 minutes. Removed them and both inner and outer grips came off together with minimal force.

 

[Noodler]

Bumping this thread to provide some updated info...

I was inspired by Paul Lorenz's article to revisit the correct length for my poles. I decided to chop an inch off my LEKI Carbon 14S poles and did some research on the removal of the grips. As previously noted in this thread, submerging the grips in hot water softens the adhesive enough to slip the grips off. I was able to just use the hot water straight from the tap to accomplish this (no boiling water needed). Of course, I also had the added leverage of using my golf shaft puller (as noted in my previous post).

The grips come off in two pieces. The main grip and an inner plastic sleeve that adapts the grip to the diameter of the carbon pole. Both of these pieces are held on by the same adhesive. It's an interesting kind of hot glue that is of course heat sensitive. At room temp and colder it is solid and gets even stronger with lower the temps. Once warmed up, it releases and becomes more flexible. Fully heated, it is spreadable. After I had the grips off and poles cut down to the new length (using my chop saw), I considered what adhesive to use to put the poles back together. That's when I realized that the old adhesive could easily be reused.

The parts disassembled:

I had pried the old adhesive out of the shaft and the grip. This actually isn't as hard as it might sound. Once the adhesive is slightly warmed it can be peeled right off of the grip and pole surfaces and rolled into small balls. To put everything back together, I held the pole in my shaft vise, heated a glob of the glue using a heat gun (while the glob was held by pliers), and then spread the heated glue on the pole using a large flat blade screwdriver. I then warmed the end of the pole a bit more with the heat gun to get ready to slide the inner sleeve adapter onto the pole. I slid the adapter and spun it a bit to evenly spread the adhesive around the pole.

The glue globs:

The inner sleeve back on the pole:

I basically repeated the process with the grip, this time spreading the adhesive glob on the exterior of the adapter sleeve. I made sure to align the adapter sleeve and the grip with the graphics on the pole. Any extra glue that squeezes out, easily peels off the grip and pole while it is still a bit warm.

The obvious advantage to reusing the same adhesive is that you can make further adjustments using this same exact process. Also, there will be no concern regarding the durability and holding power of the grip to the pole (since you're using the same stuff).

One warning... for some reason when LEKI assembles the poles, they may not be fully seated against the top of the pole and the inner sleeve adapter. When I reassembled my poles, they came out about an 1/8" shorter than I intended because I was able to fully seat all the parts during my reassembly. No maybe there's a reason that the parts weren't originally fully seated, but I won't know for sure until I use my now-shortened poles again.

Hope this is helpful for the next DIY'r.

 

[ARL67]

Great write-up.
I have a pretty well stocked golf work bench with all the requisite tools so dealing with CF shafts / poles is no big deal. I now use a small chop saw, but before used a disc in a dremmel. Some guys even use a wire/rope saw on CF shafts. It is always advisable to put tape on the cut line to keep the fibres from possibly fraying, depending on the weave pattern of the CF.

When I first setup my golf bench, ski tuning was never even on my mind ... but then it was ! So I bought a vice, some base and edge guides, diamond stones, files, iron, wax , brushes, etc, and now LUV to work on my own skis. I wish I got into working on my clubs and skis years ago !

 

[Noodler]

Great write-up.
I have a pretty well stocked golf work bench with all the requisite tools so dealing with CF shafts / poles is no big deal. I now use a small chop saw, but before used a disc in a dremmel. Some guys even use a wire/rope saw on CF shafts. It is always advisable to put tape on the cut line to keep the fibres from possibly fraying, depending on the weave pattern of the CF.

When I first setup my golf bench, ski tuning was never even on my mind ... but then it was ! So I bought a vice, some base and edge guides, diamond stones, files, iron, wax , brushes, etc, and now LUV to work on my own skis. I wish I got into working on my clubs and skis years ago !

Nice. Same here; fully stocked golf workshop that has come in handy for other projects. One interesting fact that I didn't note in the previous reply is that since the carbon shafts are glued into the grip using flexible hot glue, you can twist the pole in and out of the grip with no fear of damaging the carbon fibers. In the golf world we're using epoxy to glue the heads and if you twist a carbon shaft you're asking for big trouble.