jbgordon

Is the upgraded holder the X-10 Consumer Holder or the X-12 Tri-Lie Holder? I'm going to buy an X01 in the next couple of days and was going to call about this upgraded holder offer, but wasn't sure if the holder that people were having problems with has been discontinued already and the Consumer Holder is the improved version.

So what I am hearing from you guys is....I should have more of my stores with the FBV sharpening?? Who is on the GTA or Ontario??? I can do London Barrie Brampton Markham (has it already) Concord (has it already) Oakville (has it already) Mississauga (Dundas Location) Cambridge (coming in Feb) Whitby (coming in Feb) And possibly more next year.... Hands up if you want it?? If this is Cambridge, MA then I'm very interested. Which store will have this? Cambridge, Ontario. Damn. Anyone know of a place around Boston that does this?

So what I am hearing from you guys is....I should have more of my stores with the FBV sharpening?? Who is on the GTA or Ontario??? I can do London Barrie Brampton Markham (has it already) Concord (has it already) Oakville (has it already) Mississauga (Dundas Location) Cambridge (coming in Feb) Whitby (coming in Feb) And possibly more next year.... Hands up if you want it?? If this is Cambridge, MA then I'm very interested. Which store will have this?

I trust him, and I am saying the same thing as your father. When you flex a stick in the store like most of us on this board do, it is only a couple of inches, which is not excessive loading. If you get a kid who leans on the stick with all of his/her weight, then I can understand store managers being angry. But, normal flexing of a couple of inches to get the feel for the stick, will not damage it.

The same moment or torque is applied in either case (in the store, or on the ice). That's what causes the stick to flex...torque. You can't flex the stick the same amount in both cases without the torque being the same. Trust me, I'm a graduate student studying Mechanical Engineering at MIT. Flexing the stick in a store a light amount, in order to get a fell for the stick should not damage a stick. And if it does, then there is an obvious manufacturer defect, and why would anyone want to buy it. You guys talk about sticks as if they are weak twigs, when in reality they are very strong and the only reason they may be weak is certain cases is because of material defects.

The reason that wood sticks didn't have flex ratings is because you can't control the properties of wood as well as those of man-made materials. Wood is very inconsistent, as can be seen by looking at the variation among the different wood blades for a particular pattern. I agree that flexing OPS's is pointless because, not only do you not get an idea of what it will feel like until you shoot a puck with it, but composite sticks will loosen up as they are used. I remember getting a second duplicate shaft to one that I had been using for a year, at the same stiffness, and it felt very stiff the first couple times I used it, but after a couple of months there was no noticeable difference between the two. Nevertheless, I do not believe in the claim that OPS's break when they are flexed in the store because they are not able to unload. If they do break, it is because they were loaded past the point they were designed to be loaded to, or because there was a flaw in the materials imposed during manufacturing, that propogated by flexing, and that would have propogated if it was used on the ice as well.

In terms of breaking sticks I do not believe that you all are correct in assuming that loading a stick in the store and not allowing it to also unload will cause it to break versus the loading/unloading that occurs when a shot is taken. While I agree with you about the fact that if an adult flexes a junior stick, or if sticks are flexed "all the way down to the floor" it may very well damage it, because these conditions are not what the stick is designed for. However, if a stick is loaded to a point under it's critical loading limit, it will not make a difference whether or not it is unloaded. This type of loading and unloading evenly is only beneficial in terms of fatigue, which really doesn't come into play until these loading/unloading cycles have reached somwhere on the order of thousands or millions. The reasons that sticks may break quickly is due to flaws which exist in the materials. When a stick is loaded, this flaw will propogate, whether or not, the stick is unloaded. When a stick is loaded, the stress is still lower than that of the yield strength of the material, and therefore the materials do not deform plastically, but will return to their original states the same way a rubber band will return to its original form after it is stretched. Therefore, unloading the stick will not reverse the flaw propogation process. In sum, yes, you should ask people to stop flexing sticks if they are putting their entire weight onto it, or if an adult is flexing a junior stick. But, flexing a stick a normal amount will not decrease the life of the stick.