Alex,
It does not affect the rigidity, only the price from your manufacturer to you. What you have come out with above is a classic load of nonsense a manufacturer will give you because he knows that the aggravation will put the price to a level you would not be prepared to pay.
This black hand thing should not happen, you do not get it with fishing rods and they are made in the same way and the same raw materials.
Hi Nick
Carbon fishing poles cannot really be compared with telescoping window cleaning carbon poles in relation to production of carbon dust as they operate in such a different way. Fishing poles use push-joints and simply do not attract anywhere near the levels of abrasion or wear as an internally sliding telescopic pole.
Users of our Super-Lite modular poles do not get any problems with carbon dust – this is because they work in the same way as a fishing pole with non-telescoping sections. They also use external pole hose which is another reason that poles wear from the inside from the dirt that the pole hose pulls in.
This is why we recommend that pole hose is wiped down after each job as it greatly reduces the wear inside the sections on the telescopic pole.
We do not just make the poles that you see on our window-cleaning website – we also make poles with many different finishes for different markets and industries. We currently make a telescopic pole for one commercial client that does have a high-gloss finish. In our long-term testing this pole does not last or perform as well as those with our more usual matt carbon finish. They do look good to start with though and this is what the client wants 😊
A gloss finish is not more expensive for us to manufacture - It would be easier for our factory processes for us to make all poles with a gloss finish as we would not have to be so precise with the final layup of outer layers. Each section could then be made more quickly and with less care, have the final finish ground back down to correct tolerances and then coated with the gloss finish. The current process is more time consuming, needs more precision and results in a certain amount of rejected sections as there is ‘nowhere to hide’ with the finish.
Who knows though with the price of carbon fibre going up, it may be that we decide to go down this route to save some costs in the future and keep our prices competitive for the end user?