Tag: composite

PreCycle Your Hockey Stick

We’ve noted the trend in materials being used in the construction of hockey sticks. Composites are being used more and more and the advantage for players is clear, but so is the cost. Likewise, composite materials have a problem in that these are not easily recycled.

HockeyGreen is one company that has stepped up to offer a solution before it is a problem. It actually offers buyers the opportunity to “precycle” their sticks. With each new stick sold through Total Hockey retail stores or website buyers will receive a free return shipping label and can earn a $10 coupon towards a new stick. This is a good way to keep the broken composite sticks out of a landfill, and more importantly can be used by HockeyGreen for research in how to capture and extract some of the materials. Continue reading PreCycle Your Hockey Stick

Hockey Stick Tech

The times are changing in hockey, and as we’ve noted previously so are the materials used in making sticks. This week TheStar.com noted that even peewee players are taking to the ice with high-tech hockey sticks:

A generation ago… an elite team of 12-year-olds might have been lucky to have two players who could give a goalie pause when they pulled the trigger… Those days, when players carried sticks hewn largely from the forests of Ontario and Quebec, are gone. Today, sticks are made in factories from Mexico to China to Vietnam. Constructed of high-tech composite materials and bearing price tags that can reach $300, the sticks can now put dents in both goalie masks and in wallets. Continue reading Hockey Stick Tech

Holiday Gift Idea: Branching Off

Plenty of companies make canoe and kayak paddles, but this holiday season consider the paddles from Bending Branches of Osceola, Wis. Their products have been made in the USA since the company was founded nearly 30 years ago. Bending Branches worked to revolutionize the paddle industry by introducing composite tips to canoe paddles and the company has been designing and creating some of the most innovative paddles ever sense.

The Rockgard proprietary technology, which is derived from the same material as inline skate wheels, will ensure that the integrity of paddle is maintained even after extensive use. This helps seal the paddle against moisture and protects the most vulnerable areas including the tips and edges, and the company claims this will help the paddles last six times longer.

Don’t find yourself up the creek without a paddle, find yourself up the creek with a Bending Branches paddle!

Bending Branches Official Website

Easton Sports Swings With Power Brigade Bat and HIT LAB

Easton Sports is supplying its Power Brigade bat, along with other equipment, to players in the Little League Baseball World Series taking place August 16 through 26 in Williamsport, PA. This is the first time the new bat will be swung in competition.

The Power Brigade Series is a line of six bats that offer different advantages. The composite and aluminum bats replicate the wood patterns used in the pros, so you can get more speed, more power, and less sting with each swing. Continue reading Easton Sports Swings With Power Brigade Bat and HIT LAB

CCM and TaylorMade Collaborate on Hockey Stick

The golf club and the hockey stick have a similar L-shaped bend, but that may be the extent of the similarities. That is until now. Hockey equipment manufacturer CCM just announced a partnership with TaylorMade to create a line of hockey sticks that will be ‘best in sport.’ Continue reading CCM and TaylorMade Collaborate on Hockey Stick

Is Plywood the Next Big Bicycle Material?

Bonobo Bicycle

This year we’ve seen bikes that have simulated wood grain and even bikes made of bamboo in a variety of form factors. Now words comes that a couple of manufacturers are working with plywood, a very odd choice for frame building at first thought, but isn’t plywood technically a composite material?

Well, it isn’t carbon fiber but plywood has advantages in that it is strong, can be made into shapes that typical wood boards can’t, and it has a springiness as well. Polish designer Stanislaw Poloski has created a one-of-a-kind bike called the Bonobo, which is made of curved, laminated layers of plywood. The bike, which weighs about 16 kilograms, is fitted with a single-speed drivetrain and disc brakes. Continue reading Is Plywood the Next Big Bicycle Material?

Stick it To ‘em

It might be easy to dismiss all hockey sticks as one and the same, but nothing could be further from the truth. Last month we reported that wooden sticks have completely vanished from the NHL, and last week The Wall Street Journal offered an interesting take on how hockey sticks are becoming as unique as “fingerprints.”

Seriously, the days of taking a stick off the rack, putting your own custom brand of tape on it and hitting the ice it seems is long over. With many materials now allowing for ever so slight adjustments hockey sticks have gone high tech – in low sort of ways. Players had traditionally made small tweaks back in the day of wooden sticks, but now players can adjust their composite and graphite sticks – and even have the manufacturer run off a batch.

However, notes the WSJ, the sky is not the limit on what tinkering can be done:

“Of course, there are limits to how much tinkering the players can do. The NHL stipulates that no stick may be longer than 63 inches from knob to heel, unless the player is taller than 6-foot-6. And, more importantly, the blade may not be curved more than three-quarters of an inch—a number that refers to the distance between the top of the curve and an imaginary line drawn between the heel and toe of the stick.”

But even with simple tools like a blow torch and a sander, hockey sticks are truly become custom tools for the game on the ice.

[Via The Wall Street Journal: Fiddling With Their Sticks]