This story begins in Gorham, New Hampshire. A pair of slightly damaged Black Diamond Alpine Carbon Cork trekking poles fall down the hiker grapevine into my possession. After they were damaged the owner trade got a new pair warranted from BD, and these got hiker boxed. I taped up the damaged cork handle and used them for the remainder of my thru and beat the mess out of them. When I finally reached Katahdin, one tip had been ground off completely and the other was bent and nearing dis-functionality.
A few months pass and its summer 2015. I decide I'd like to bring the poles back into service. The poles disassemble into three shaft sections and the metal flick-locks come off. I cleaned and wiped everything down and removed one handle to assess the situation. The cork handles had dried out completely underneath the athletic tape. The bottom sections were both pretty far beyond repair.
Fortunately, Black Diamond supplies replacement bottom sections with tips at $14.95 a hit, so a pair was an easy get for $36.85 shipped. big ups to user serviceability.
Many products these day are designed and built with a fixed product lifetime. To be broken and replaced. Complex molded plastic parts and micro components make the products of today better. These components also make it nearly impossible for the user to service and repair them. Trekking poles are fairly simple by nature, but are being slightly corrupted by non-removable tips, bonded grips, and integrated locking mechanisms.
Gossamer Gear is a cottage industry lightweight backpacking manufacturer. They produce their own trekking poles, but they also supply aftermarket replacement cork grips (kork-o-lon?). $31. This was the only replacement grip I found. The alternative for me was to buy cork fishing pole grip blanks and machine a more hiking pole shape into them. This could've been cheaper, but would have upped the time and tooling costs.
The other half of the restoration, crosses over from user serviceability into DIY/fabrication a bit.
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