- G'day folks, Ben from Snowys here.
Today, I wanna talk to you
about composite pole upgrades for your swag.
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So composite poles are different
than the fibreglass or the alloy poles
that we've seen in the past.
They offer excellent tensile strength
and they're the perfect upgrade for your swag poles.
Now, these composite poles
have actually been around for a little while.
This green one here is from a brand called Jolly Swag,
and they've been using it for many, many years.
And recently Darche have brought out
replacement pole swag kits for all of their swags.
They did have alloy poles with all their kits,
but they've now got specific ones to replace the poles
in all of their swags.
So this one here's for the Dusk to Dawn 1400,
and it's got all the swag pole sections
you would need in there,
three for each,
for both the foot and the end section of the swag.
And before we jump into just what composite poles are,
I wanna just run through
what the poles have been in the past,
starting with what was generally the most affordable option,
which was these fibreglass ones.
And traditionally they're black.
These are sort of the cheapest ones, I suppose.
Sometimes they'd have a wrap around the outside
to give 'em a little bit more life,
but generally these black ones are found
in really affordable tents or price-pointed swags.
Now, the issue with fibreglass
was lots of fibres running sort of lengthwise.
Along a lot of these, when they start to split,
like you can just see in the end here,
I'll try and pull that apart a bit,
that once that starts to split like that,
it runs right along the length of the pole and it weakens.
And then it becomes a weak spot in the pole,
and there's potential for the whole thing to fail.
Now, the second type of pole, these ones here,
now these are an alloy or an aluminium,
and sometimes these came pre-bent
in order to sort of allow for the flex required
for the span of the pole.
And these are hollow as well,
as are the fibreglass ones here.
There's a hole down the middle of the fibreglass ones,
and they're generally all shock-corded together,
so that pole becomes one section.
Now these are really good for lightweight scenarios,
hiking tents, we're using lightweight materials,
and where you've got a long span
between each end of the pole.
They become an issue with swags,
in that the span between the poles was quite short,
and they ended up flexing a lot.
There was a lot of pressure on the joins of the pole,
and the issues occurred mainly when the ferrule of the pole
wasn't seated correctly inside each part.
They'd sit out partly like this,
then you'd flex it
and you'd end up breaking it like this end here.
So the ferrule's actually broken off, this end here.
And you can also split the poles,
like you can see in the alloy section here.
There's just a break there.
Once that happens, the poles are useless.
You've gotta replace that section,
which can be a pain in the bum in the field.
Now I'm not talking these down by any means.
These have a perfect use case in hike tents
where the fabrics are lightweight,
but they're probably a little bit lightweight
for the heavy-duty materials of a swag.
Now that's where these composite poles enter.
Now, these poles, they look like the fibreglass poles,
they've got the same metal ferrules as the fibreglass poles,
but if we have a look at the ends here,
we can see it's not hollow.
Now, it's not obvious anywhere,
or no one seems to state exactly what they're made of,
but it's most likely there's a combination
of an epoxy or a polyester resin in here,
combined with a bunch of other materials.
I can sort of see a few little fibres
sticking out the end of this one here.
So there's probably some fibreglass stuff mixed in there.
And these have really excellent strength
along the span of the pole.
Now, I wanna do a bit of a comparison
on the flex of these
to demo to you
just how much extra flex the composite poles have got.
So I've got two poles here, fibreglass and composite.
So you can see this has got a hole down the middle,
so that's fibreglass,
and on this ferrule it actually has a split in it,
so I've gotta be careful with how I put this together.
But the concept here is,
what I wanna do is flex two poles, two different materials,
across the same span.
So you can see that
that composite pole is flexing a heck of a lot more
than the fibreglass equivalent is.
I've got another diameter pole here
that I can do that with as well.
So this one here is a fibreglass pole,
and I'll grab the composite pole here.
So two different types there.
We'll put these together,
and hold 'em about the same distance apart,
and flex them as well.
And you can see that composite pole in my right hand,
this one here is the composite,
is flexing much more than the fibreglass one
on the left-hand side.
So far more give.
Now, comparing those to alloy poles,
now these, a bit hard to make a comparison here,
because this doesn't really fit well inside here.
I did actually try and bend this before,
it actually bends this a bit more,
so as these bend, they don't flex back nice and straight.
You can see these ones go back straight all the time.
And these poles actually come pre-bent
in order to sort of allow the flex in the pole.
And in order to allow the amount of flex in a swag,
because it's across a short distance,
they had to have quite a bend in them,
so that won't flex quite as far.
I will put this in here and give it a go.
I'm just concerned
that I might break the alloy pole by doing this.
We'll see. Oh, there we go.
So you can see that
it's actually bending the alloy pole there,
but the composite poles flex right back.
So the alloy pole's got a bit of a bend in it now.
So this one probably bent as much as that one did,
and that started off bent already.
So that's even easier to pack in your swag,
'cause it doesn't have that flex in it.
So that means
when you use this in a swag and put it in place,
and if you're not careful with how you set it up,
what ends up happening is
the poles sit in a dome sort of shape like this.
And if you start to clip up one side first,
the poles start to push across like this,
and you get one sort of point on the other side
that bends a lot.
And this was the point at which the poles fail.
You got around that by making sure
you clipped one side, then the other,
and you did it evenly all the way up the pole.
But these ones still recommend
that you set up the composite poles in the same manner.
So clip it evenly, one side then the other side.
But I'll show you the total flex.
Now, this is across a 1.4-meter wide double swag pole.
So it's quite long, but if I give you an idea,
I'll try and get the ends here,
just how much this flexes.
You can see that's an awful lot more
than what the swag needs.
It's gonna actually sit more like this,
but it feels like it's got tonnes,
like it's not straining at all at this point here,
and I can touch the ends, loop it right around.
Now, as I do this, I can't hear any noise,
any cracking sounds or anything in the pole.
It's just flexing,
and it feels like it's flexing comfortably.
I don't feel like I'm forcing it beyond its limits.
So it makes perfect sense in a swag
when the swags that weigh,
well, 10 kilos is probably a light swag now,
but probably more like 14 kilos plus for a swag nowadays,
with the heavy-duty materials.
It makes perfect sense to use a slightly heavier-duty pole.
In a hiking scenario, not so much,
because probably the trade-off
of having a lighter-weight alloy pole like this
is a better thing,
and just to take a bit of care with it,
plus you're not trying to flex it quite so much
over a short distance.
But for swags, they're a perfect upgrade.
So as I mentioned,
these green ones have been around for quite a while now.
Darche now are bringing out
replacement swag pole kits for all of their swags
in this composite material.
So if your swag poles are breaking,
if you're having trouble with your swag poles,
have a look for a composite pole upgrade,
they're gonna probably be
the best investment you make in your swag,
and you won't find yourself
having to replace the swag poles, hopefully ever again.
You can check these new Darche ones out online,
and a whole bunch of poles and things
as new ones become available.
We'll make sure we've got 'em available
on our website at snowys.com.au
where you'll find all of these replacement parts
at our lowest prices every day.
But if you've got any questions,
let us know down in the comments below.
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