Recently damaged my Harmony Tortuga fiberglass one piece paddle. It is the perfect excuse to upgrade, but I'd like to use this one as a back-up. Is it possible to fix this? Harmony says to contact a local dealer.

weld it back to gather.

There is a shop nearby that does welding, but is it possible with fiberglass right under it?

You could make it into a break down paddle....

Your local dealer may have that piece lying around ... maybe someone else broke that piece on their paddle...

vetbridge wrote:

There is a shop nearby that does welding, but is it possible with fiberglass right under it?

you might want to ask them that question. but i would just put my money into another paddle because welding does cost a pretty penny

thats just my

You could try taking it off the paddle, welding it, then screwing it back on.

Batayak wrote:

You could try taking it off the paddle, welding it, then screwing it back on.

Well, I've tried that. I unscrewed the piece, but can't tell how to get the thing off of the paddle, and I don't wanna f*ck it up.

What part of the paddle are we looking at? I've seen lots of paddles over the past 25 years but don't know what this is. Is it a 2 piece take-apart paddle?

Just so I can try to give a sensible answer, being a handy man with gear

This is a one piece paddle with a \"clamp\" that allows the paddle to be lengthened/shortened or feathered.

If you know a good shop they can heat and remove and replace the adjustment ferrul. I know that we have done it at our shop a number of times. Unfortunately I have seen lots of shops who mess it up as well. They guy we get to do it has been doing these things for about 10 years. If you go into a shop and they don't know this is an option then don't get them to do it. Another option may be to find a local paddle manufacturer and ask them to do it. Most paddle manufacturer's that I have dealt with do that regularly.

Now, this is just guesswork because I have not seen the materials used but perhaps the ferrule is glued on with heat glue. I know paddles like the Kober Active are (I recently found out as I had to shorten and change the feather of a Kober Active paddle).

Here's what I did with the Kober paddle: Use a paintstripper to mildly heat the area where the shaft is mounted inside the blade. Once it was warm I secured one blade under a door and gently started twisting the heated blade. At first it seemed like it had no effect but after a minute or so suddenly the glue melted and I could twist the blade off. The funny thing was that I could heat the shaft (after cutting it) and simply put it back in. After a while the whole paddle set itself and the next day I could not move or twist it, no matter how hard I tried. The entire repair took less than half an hour.

My guess would be that you would be able to replace the ferrule easily, if you can actually buy yourself a new ferrule that is.

Otherwise, if you cannot buy a new ferrule you might be able to remove the ferrule, glue the crack with epoxy glue and see what happens.

If you don't change the paddle length and/or feather very much (or at all) you could assemble the two halves of the paddle by using a take-apart kit. If you don't want the paddle to be a take-apart simply use the piece that goes into the shaft to connect the two halves and don't bother with the rest of the kit. Use slower setting epoxy glue as this is stronger and gives you some margin to correct feather angles (also gives you margins to create feather angles so take your time to do this right).

i am guessing that Harmony would cover this if you called them......looks like a weird break....possible known defect?

Thanks for all the ideas. I had tried contacting Harmony, but their web page gives no contact info. It says to contact a dealer. Anyone have a number/email for Harmony?

Kudos to Harmony!!!!!!

I found a number, called, and the ferule is in the mail, no charge!