CCM Eflex3 Pro 2-piece catcher and blocker

[ArdeFIN]

Next refurbish please! Coming right up.

So this one is interesting project as I get to compare the two different types of EFlex3 line, 1 and 2 piece. First thought is that there's nothing much, only the cuff area is split in two.

Also this glove is custom made for Antti Lehtonen (Finnish league level goalie) with Pro palm as compared to the earlier Eflex3 glove that was with game ready palm. And to mention it is game worn atleast, maybe also used in practise and it is a very used glove. But because of jenpro it is still very much refurbishable.

So to the project there are few spots that need new jenpro, palm and thumb areas need new stiching and all the plastics except for the thumb protector are broken. One strap loop is broken and most of the lacing needs to be changed. And the usual wash is to be done. I think the glove has never been cleaned, the insides feel like it is greased with some sort of hand cream or so. But one positive thing to say is that the inside fabrics still are almost like new. It's quite a contrast to the outside of the glove.

Some pictures from a scratch of it, one should always have a person with camera when doing something  Would get atleast some pictures of a project.

First one is the palm padding, hand signed by manufacturing, custom spec palm and hand made probably.

Few pictures of the broken plastics.

First time for me to see a finger plastic broken like this. Partly because of the padding stiching but it still needs some weird sort of abuse to break it that way.

 

[ArdeFIN]

Then a picture of one of the things I once again wonder, why the heck they design things like this?

The wood stick is to represent the break line if it was to meet the boot of palm. The other end is lined to the actual break line which goes within the plastic edge. There was some complain about a new Eflex glove that it needed some plastic crushing to make it close properly. Indeed that is the case but why it is designed like that and still goes on with Eflex4? Why make it bad intentionally? Annoying it is as the glove would be even better with just a little bit of adjusting there. And I'm yet to discover the idea behind this design.

Next we get to the brak angle. This golve is with 2 piece cuff and 600 angle as it's only option in the customizer. Pro customer might get what they want though.

The plastic is injection molded I think and they really have made a mold for these plastics too. Maybe there are quite a lot of 2 piece Eflex gloves out there? The mold isn't very cheap to make, though the plastics with it are then.

The mold digit tell that it is blahblah V2, 600 (angle) and 2015 made. Nothing much to be interested here. But when we take the one piece cuff plastic of the Eflex3 and put over each other with the break edges lined up it starts to get interesting. The cuff area is about 20mm offset, it is even more than the Eflex2 was. And really has an effect on the feeling of the glove. This is the thing why I got interested with this glove so much. I didn't like the Eflex3 one piece at all, I just couldn't adjust to it easily enough. But this glove felt very familiar right away. Familiar as the Vaughn 1100, 7500, 7000 for example. 

But for the glove, this is not all about the Eflex3 and 2 piece cuff. Here's one more custom 2 piece, this one takes it to the next edge atleast.

Edit: this green one seems to be 2-piece Premier / Premier 2 with Eflex3 "graphics" on shell.

For comparison here's a Premier 2 2-piece, these are custom order always I think.

[ArdeFIN]

Some of the jenpro work already done and some halfway there.

First the cuff which had only ripped edge and worn out corner. Should last the rest of the life this glove has. There are also small wear spots on the outer corners but those are difficult and take a lot of time to repair properly so I'll let them be for now.

Then the biggest part of this project. Most of the cuts and wear spots were near the cuff area and after some thinking I took the whole part off from the palm. The seam there is a double style to create a rounded and smooth edge and while it looks nice it's almost impossible to properly repair anything next to it. And as there were more than one spot to repair this way it was done easiest.

There are three added repair pieces, one of them is recycled. I actually hate these graphic bits and pieces. The edges are always a wear spot and there are certain places in a catcher where there should be no edges to wear out.

Positively the palm area needs only one slice of jenpro to re-enforce the T attaching area. And there is a lot of re-sewing to do. I kind of like the idea of completely black glove with white sewing thread.

One interesting notice about the glove is that there is no D3O? No tab in the cuff and I wasn't able to find the sheets anywhere. Pro palm it is atleast by the tab in the cuff. I did actually just checked out one Eflex4 glove that was also custom with 600 break and game ready palm and that glove didn't have D3O either.

Well I'm not a huge fan of the whole D3O thing, it's nice to have but so many gloves have succeeded without too.

[ArdeFIN]

That was some hefty lots of sewing but it's done and it's looking ok. 

Then last finishing touch with binding. It's recycled one, turned upsidedown and moved halfway around the perimeter. Not new but atleast like one.

Now I'll have to get myself to those plastic things, then sew the padding together with fingerplate and T needs some attention too. 

[ArdeFIN]

Didn't take any start point pictures but it's hopefully quite selfexplanatory. Both end of the lip were broken at flex point, thumb side was because of the lip plastic was cut and the sharp edge had worked it's way through. Finger end had a similar cut/break but there was some sort of damage from skate or puck/stick hit. The plastic was only halfway cut which is sort of amazing regarding the amount of use for the glove and that spot being one of the crusial open-close spots in a catcher.

Hopefully the sewing on the thumb side will last, it shouldn't get into heavy contact with anything but it is a bit risky to fix it like this. Better way would've been replacing the whole part but I don't have such a big jenpro in black. And with this glove anything goes as long as it's black colored. 

Oh but the stiching.

[ArdeFIN]

Then I had the pleasure of sawing those plastic sheets, 2mm for the finger part and 3mm for the thumb. That dust is so awful as gets static and sticks to anything and everything. Now it's time to get things heated up!

[saitagoalie]

The glove you have is pretty much a Rbk Premier II glove reskinned as a CCM glove. 590 break   with a double T of course.

I have a Rbk Premier II glove at home. We can compare again  

[ArdeFIN]

You mean that nicely green and purple Glove above which is very much RBK genesis. I don't own that one and not intented to do so. Nordman is selling it as a kit with equal colored blocker 

This black one is 600 "basic" 2-piece Eflex3 with single T.

Only the Cuff angle is very much Eflex2 ish. Possibly the internals are direct reproduce from there with Eflex3 outers only.

Now with a lot of everything in the weekeng and so on, I've run to a situation where the glove is almost laced ready. And now I'm in a problem I've been waiting to happen.

There has been many different kinds of problems before and all of them have been solved some way or the other. This problem is a bit different as so far I've only made new plastics be the shape from the broken ones and renewed the jenpros with original shape and so on. Nothing added and nothing taken away which should have effect for the issue.

Here's a picture of what I have now. The thumb side is still to laced as it's single lace through the perimeter. A bit difficult when problems occur but otherwise nothing special.

So the problem is that the glove looks very good while open as in the picture. Break works as a charm, soft butter does what it should and nothing else. And as said earlier the glove should be 600 break and from what I remember before taking it apart it did work as one should. Heavily used but that considered still doing what it should with no real issues.

Now with the T added there as in the picture, all lacing goes through original holes and so on for what should lead to zero problems and like original operating. It doesn't. It closes like a 580 glove with the T folding to thumb very heavily. If I had made changes it would just need to redo the lip to finger and thumb parts to equal those lenghts. As said everything is laced as originally so the problem is something else and while I had just a short time to sort it out I noticed that the spine of the T is too short. While glove open it looks ok it is very streched when glove closes and the lip is pulled outwards. And here we have the major problem, why is this happening? Everything is like original except for the repair bits that didn't affect any dimensions. Plastics are new and they fit in like originals with no extra stretch or anything. 

Easy fix is that I just add inch or two to the spine of the T and problem is solved but as an engineer I'm also interested in the mechanics behind this change. I hope I can learn something with figuring out what the heck has happened. 

[ArdeFIN]

Well I didn't get to learn about this one, just couldn't figure out what would be the reason here. So I went ahead to solve the problem instead.

Here's how the closure was, it was actually even worse and this is just a slight vision of it.

 

So I untied the thumb end of the T and tried to pull that end outwards to see if the break would straighten with that.

No it didn't do enough so I pulled the lip plastics out and moved the break point towards the other end so that it's in the mid of the spine, 10-15mm of a shift. 

After that the closure was quite straight forward as I like it to look and it is also working a lot better now. 

Then a new setup for the thumb end and mark new holes, make a small fixing over the holes that were left outside and visible and lace it up again.

Closure now:

And how the glove looks as a whole to compare to previous.

The lip is very much settled to a certain break line which is now shifted and it just needs to learn new habits.

In this picture you can also see the spine is not overly stretched anymore, short it is still but I'll do with that. This spine length "change" comes from a slightly different angle at the thumb end of lip attaching to the glove.

[ArdeFIN]

As said this 2-piece Eflex3 might be a straight from Eflex2 with new shell so I took my 1-piece Eflex2 to compare. It has sort of similar closure, not as bad but still a bit twisted or pushed. And I happened to look under the thumb end of T and noticed I had made the same 10-15mm outwards shift to the T here too to make the closure work. 

This is how it is now, I think if I'd cut 5-10mm off of the fingerside T plastic it would shift the break a bit and straighten the closure fully. But this glove does catch pucks well so I don't think I'll bother. It still requires quite a lot of de-lace and re-lace to do that.

One from the inside of the glove if anyones interested. Sorry for the knife it just happened to be there and got the opening done. This glove is so sloppy and soft that it closes with it's own weight. I just love such gloves.

 

[ArdeFIN]

Lacing operation was described in the other topic so I'll skip it mostly and only represent the ready pictures. Before it's complete it still needs the finger protection and the cuff parts.

The skate lace pocket goes nicely into the whole black theme and skate lace fills in the pocket creating an optically solid look. Sure it is solid catching the puck too 

 

[saitagoalie]

Oh my bad, thought the green one was yours  you are correct, yours is definitely a 600

Very nice work with fixing the closure.

[Smeds35]

Geez these threads are so fun! Keep it up man!

[ArdeFIN]

7 hours ago, Smeds35 said:

Geez these threads are so fun! Keep it up man!

Thanks! Will do.

 

8 hours ago, saitagoalie said:

Oh my bad, thought the green one was yours  you are correct, yours is definitely a 600

Very nice work with fixing the closure.

Kiitos! (=thanks, in Finnish)  

[ArdeFIN]

Continuing the Eflex3 process with the blocker. As the catcher was very used and worn, so is the blocker. Sewing on the face is worn out in middle area where most puck hit. Some small spots of the jenpro is worn too but that's so minimal that I'll leave it be. It would make a whole lot of extra job to fix those for a very little effect.

So new white sewing and done. I love the black jenpro with white sewing thread scheme more and more. I might take it to a custom setup if I ever get to order one.

You can see the amount of pucks deflected from the originally yellow colored CCM print on the side. I don't know if the internals have been renewed at some point because the plates are in very good shape. Plastic on top has taken the most of the beating and was curled a lot but with heating and then pressurized between flat boards made it almost like new again. 

[creasecollector]

Keep it up! Great thread!

[ArdeFIN]

Project continues with sideplate repairs, there is a normal worn out binding and I thought I should make just a little extra space for the stick to allow for more mobility. This spot is one of the big differences between blockers and how they work with your paddle positioning. I've had Eflex3.5 blocker for example where this side plate is so high that it hinders the paddle a lot and forces it to certain angle and position. It is softened by time but why make it so protruding in the first place? Blocker is a blocker they say, but try some different model in a shop one after other and with stick naturally, you should notice some differencies.

So first picture is when binding is taken off and we can see the structure. Binding was sewn a bit wide here too. I cut the worn out binding away as it will be replaced by jenpro for durability in this high wear area.

After measuring the existing wear marks from inside the plate and some visualisation with other blocker and stick I cut a slice away to make some more room. Maybe I should've cut even more but I can make a bit of a modification with the sideplate positioning later on.

I didn't get any clear quality pictures of process so here's the result too. Weave had to be used as I don't have the black jenpro. But it's not that bad for these wear protectives.

There was some struggle with sewing the slice as jenpro doesn't stretch or shrink and I didn't like the idea of cutting the edge to give a little loose for the bend.

One from the inside of plate too.

Jenpro was first sewn only from inside and then bend over and sew the outside for aesthetics.

The HD foam inside the shell was also cut to fit the foam in. It had shrunk a bit in time but with careful cutting it now fills the pocket tightly again.

[ArdeFIN]

Then the thumb protector with "airbag". The edge of the airbagt that is against stick was worn out too. I did only simple job here, turn the cover inside out and sew a new seam over the intact fabric and that's it. Then I cut the foam to fit in. The new edge is a bit away from the stick now so it should survive without any extra protection.

Here it is back to it's place.

To the thumb protector I did the Warrior palms thumb assembly, jenpro loop and velcro slice. This time I cut the opening a bit inwards to move the tip of my thumb more behind the protection. (compared to the earlier Eflex3 project)

 

After that I cut the worn binding away and replaced it with black weave in a same system as with the side plate.

There's a bit of extra left outside either from error in measurement or misaligned the slice just that much. But I'll leave it be as it doesn't affect anything there and is hardly visible when the blocker is ready.

On picture of the complete part.

Next operation is the finger protection where I need to add the velcros for the Warrior palm.

This blocker is a bit different from the earlier Eflex3 I made as there is no extra Speedskin nor jenpro slices attached to protectors so everything has to be done from zero. But I have it planned already and it will be quite the same as earlier. Afterall, why should I change the working plan?

[ArdeFIN]

Here's a few to describe the Warrior palm attachment, quite the same as in the earlier version except for the finger protectors.

[ArdeFIN]

A bit extrended finger protectors and the thumb area. Stick is very nicely between and feels mobile but still fingers are protected.

The parts (holes missing, did those after sewing the weave extensions on to ensure correct positioning):

And how it came out when fitted:

Lacing gives the possibility to adjust and change the setup easily.

Then to the thumb area where I removed the velcro attachment:

And tried to sew the flap in with a rocker effect so that the flap gives room for the stick when needed.

Works even better than I thought it would. Time will tell how it will change when the materials settle in.

[ArdeFIN]

Nothing special in the last part, just sewing parts back together almost like they were and re-check for crucial flaws. Then some testing with stick and it's ready. I might shift the palm a bit upwards later on but that's only nyances to the big picture.

Then two family pictures of a ready pair. Hopefully I'll get back on ice soon to test these for good.

 

[ArdeFIN]

On ice experience for an hour and a bit over. I have to say that these gloves do rock for me. Fit my hand very well, like the angle of the catcher and the overall feeling of it closed and wide open. So soft and nice. But took a closeby slapshot into palm and almost felt nothing! Just the puck hitting there and that's about it. I added a layer of Poron like material (not XRD!) that is 4mm thick and it seems to work miracles here. Definitely have to add that material to my next projects to see if it is for that or was it just luck. The blocker is a blocker, very balanced right away from the start compared to my Vaughn SLR2 and it was very nice to use. There was a slight problem with that "fingerlike" index finger protector flap when I went to play puck. Returning back I had that flap turning to the wrong side of the stick a few times (below the stick while it should be above). Jsut felt weird when it happened so no problem with that and could make a save with the issue on too. But I'll have to consider some changes there to get it sorted. It does make a distraction anyway.

To put in few words, very nice pair and definitely goes to the keepers list. And I also like the looks of these. Maybe I'll have to start looking for a pair of black pads too. 

[creasecollector]

Nice work! The finished product looks awesome. These all-black CCM glove set really looks nice. Best of luck snagging an all-black set to match!

[itis121]

what plastics did you use for for the catcher? I have a 1s glove id like to do this to, its just taken apart waiting to be rebuilt.

[ArdeFIN]

3mm (HD-)PE usually. It's available and properties are excellent for this use. Good impact strength, cold doesn't affect much, easily cuttable and heat moldable.

4mm is too thick in almost all ways, 2mm is too thin. Blocker plate can be reinforced with 2mm or even 1mm in multilayer setup.

2mm is also very good for padding like in C/A.