Removing cork grips

I would like to remove the cork grips from a pair of Swix CT-2 poles
so that I can shorten them. I've been told that immersing them in hot
water will do the trick. If anyone has experience with this or another
method I'd be glad to hear about it.
Thanks
Martin

On Feb 5, 8:36 pm, "martin" wrote:
I would like to remove the cork grips from a pair of Swix CT-2 poles
I've been told that immersing them in hot water will do the trick.


You have your choice of hot water or hot air from a heat gun. I've
used both, but never liked the hot water method. If memory serves me,
the cork on the CT-2 grip is glued onto a plastic "frame"; there is
not a full length sleeve under it like the Toko grips. When gluing
back on, be careful so you do not glue the cork to the pole shaft.

On Feb 6, 6:17 am, "highpeaksnordic"
wrote:
On Feb 5, 8:36 pm, "martin" wrote:

I would like to remove the cork grips from a pair of Swix CT-2 poles
I've been told that immersing them in hot water will do the trick.

You have your choice of hot water or hot air from a heat gun. I've
used both, but never liked the hot water method. If memory serves me,
the cork on the CT-2 grip is glued onto a plastic "frame"; there is
not a full length sleeve under it like the Toko grips. When gluing
back on, be careful so you do not glue the cork to the pole shaft.

Ditto what he said about technique and the structure of the grip
itself.

Me, I'd use a hair dryer rather than hot water. If you use a heat gun
instead of a hair dryer, be careful to heat but not burn the cork.
Easy does it, rotate, take your time and it will eventually come off.

If the cork comes off the plastic 'frame' (which is likely), just use
a conventional hot glue gun to reattach it.

In fact, If I recall, last time I took off swix cork grips, the cork
layer came off first, then it was easy to heat up the plastic frame to
loosen the glue which attached it to the pole itself. After
reattaching the plastic frame, I just reattached the cork to it (see
below).

I have a few Swix cork grip sets. I love the grips and the straps,
but the cork and attachment of the cork is pure crap. Before I
figured it out, I actually lost cork from the grips because ot the
crappy glue job. Now, when I get a new set of Swix cork grips, I take
the hot glue gun and glue the bejeebers out of them - along every
loose corner, seam, etc - so they don't come off.

On 6 Feb 2007 07:17:26 -0800, "highpeaksnordic"
wrote:

On Feb 5, 8:36 pm, "martin" wrote:
I would like to remove the cork grips from a pair of Swix CT-2 poles
I've been told that immersing them in hot water will do the trick.


You have your choice of hot water or hot air from a heat gun. I've
used both, but never liked the hot water method. If memory serves me,
the cork on the CT-2 grip is glued onto a plastic "frame"; there is
not a full length sleeve under it like the Toko grips. When gluing
back on, be careful so you do not glue the cork to the pole shaft.

I think I just made that miskate of gluing the cork to the pole with
my wifes KV2 poles. We'll see -- she just aske me to cut another
centimeter off....

I got kind of scared with the heat gun on cork so I went to a big pot
of boiling water.

--
JT
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Don't know if they've changed in the past year or two, but Swix cork
grips were cheaply made and tended to disintegrate from use of hot
water. I don't know about cork quality itself, but a big problem was
that they were glued on with two seams, unlike all the others that
were single units. Ski shops were at wit's end to figure out how to
change them w/o ruining grips. The best method I heard of was to do it
in a sauna. Two methods I've used with mixed luck are a hair dryer and
running it under the hot water tap. Either way, I direct the heat to
the pole below the cork rather than onto the cork itself. When
reinserting, heat the pole well and run hot water or air inside the
grip very briefly.



"martin" wrote:

I would like to remove the cork grips from a pair of Swix CT-2 poles
so that I can shorten them. I've been told that immersing them in hot
water will do the trick. If anyone has experience with this or another
method I'd be glad to hear about it.
Thanks
Martin

Originally Posted by martin

I would like to remove the cork grips from a pair of Swix CT-2 poles
so that I can shorten them. I've been told that immersing them in hot
water will do the trick. If anyone has experience with this or another
method I'd be glad to hear about it.
Thanks
Martin

Hi, I just switched over some cork grips last night. I soaked pole ends/grips in hot water
then slid off grips (one was kinda hard had to use a little extra real hot water pored on)
from the old poles.
Then I dried the inside with a hair dryer before reapplying them to another set of poles using some hot glue (I previously prepared new poles by removing remnants of old glue by scraping with a putty knife and a light sanding) They went on fine. The cork split slightly near the bottem, along the seams where it was attatched to the sleeve that goes over pole. So I glued cork back together using regular houshold glue.
I used rubber bands to hold cork in position until the glue set. So their done now and they look and function good. Water didn't seem to hurt them!
Good luck, Ed

If the cork split, how the conclusion that water didn't hurt?

Ed Miller wrote:


martin Wrote:
I would like to remove the cork grips from a pair of Swix CT-2 poles
so that I can shorten them. I've been told that immersing them in hot
water will do the trick. If anyone has experience with this or
another method I'd be glad to hear about it.
Thanks
Martin

Hi, I just switched over some cork grips last night. I soaked pole
ends/grips in hot water
then slid off grips (one was kinda hard had to use a little extra real
hot water pored on)
from the old poles.
Then I dried the inside with a hair dryer before reapplying them to
another set of poles using some hot glue (I previously prepared new
poles by removing remnants of old glue by scraping with a putty knife
and a light sanding) They went on fine. The cork split slightly near
the bottem, along the seams where it was attatched to the sleeve that
goes over pole. So I glued cork back together using regular houshold
glue.
I used rubber bands to hold cork in position until the glue set. So
their done now and they look and function good. Water didn't seem to
hurt them!
Good luck, Ed




--
Ed Miller

On Feb 14, 4:50 am, wrote:
If the cork split, how the conclusion that water didn't hurt?

I'm not the poster you're asking, but if they were Swix cork grips, if
you look cross-eyed at them, the cork will split on the seam. They
are very poorly glued (IMHO, having owned several pair). I do know
that I've had brand new ones start to separate at the seams and have
also seen it happen when mild/moderate heat is applied with heat gun
to remove. So, I would think that slight splittage at the seams on
those grips would indeed indicate that the water didn't really hurt
them, it's almost inevitable even without hot water in my experience.

The last two sets of Swix cork grips I've owned, I've just gone
ahead glue the hell out of each seam and joint with my hot glue gun,
then remove any overflow. Before I did this, I've lost entire chunks
of the cork while on the trail (some recovered, some not) and haven't
had the problem since. I think it's a manufacturing defect and if I
did't like the straps so much, wold never buy them.

I stick the grip end into a sturdy plastic bag, then dip it into the
hot water. The bag keeps the cork from ever getting wet, but it still
heats up nicely.

Camilo wrote:
The last two sets of Swix cork grips I've owned, I've just gone
ahead glue the hell out of each seam and joint with my hot glue gun,
then remove any overflow. Before I did this, I've lost entire chunks
of the cork while on the trail (some recovered, some not) and haven't
had the problem since. I think it's a manufacturing defect and if I
did't like the straps so much, wold never buy them.

I think it's a design defect and prefer the plastic PC grips for that reason
(plus they are about $10 vs. several times that). The cork ones may look a
bit nicer when new, but not after chunks start coming off. The function is
the same, and they work with the same straps.

Note, however, that the pole height changes because there is a difference in
length between the strap exit point and where the shaft end bottoms out in
the grip. I think the pole gets slightly longer if you swap out the cork
grips with the PC grips, so you would need to trim the pole length a bit if
you do that swap. (I might have that backwards though...)