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Oldtimer refurbishment (RX6/X-Wing/L9)


ArdeFIN

Which is first  

3 members have voted

  1. 1. The first of the three gloves to be refurbished

    • Bauer RX6LE
      1
    • Itech X-Wing
      1
    • Reebok Larceny L9
      2

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  • Poll closed on 12/18/2020 at 05:00 PM

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SO while we are without playing ice hockey and try figure out what to do to stay in the game.

I gathered up a collection of oldtimer catchers to refurbish and maybe give some boost as two of the three are SR models, RX6LE being the lowest price point if I got that right. X-Wing is a pro glove that has been modified terribly.

Two out of three are fingers to palm closure which I haven't been into too much before but I'm eager to dig in.

So the question for you fellow Goalnetters is, give me an order to process these? Which one is the first? 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

All of them 4 votes got in so Larceny it is then. And X-wing right after that with the Bauer left in the last position. But not the least. Bauer will get the RX10 blocker in within too.

I'm getting quite a lot of gloves to do, just got a deal of a Sherwood by Pallas pair and probably getting a pair of Pallas gloves too. But with Corona over us I have a good time to work with these.

Edit: changed the order a bit and took the Bauer as a second with Itech still waiting.

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Now with Christmas and all I took my time to go by myself to a peaceful place and do something of my own.

Reebok Larceny L9SR is now in pieces and here's something I found out breaking it. 🤪

First the wrist/cuff plate. It's made of a bunch of foam pieces glued together and that's it. Those foam plastics being very rejectant to many or any of the glues so had this structure been split from three places. Some contact glue and pressure and few wood blocks to keep it in shape for that while  and it should be good again. I'm thinking of adding a 2mm PE sheet here to give some extra rigidity. Then I might lace the pack through from side to side to keep the sheets together to support the glue.

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The pocket is laced interestingly. I've beeen thinking of something like this but never bothered after all. But here it is and I think it's factory made. Sort of a Brian's style but webbing is cut in two halfs. It seems that the laces rub quite a lot on the loops that join the halves together so maybe this isn't the best way to do it.

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The palm area was mentioned in one review I looked about Larceny, noting how it pushed out at the break line. And so it is doing here too which leads to some design problem. Break area is critical as this would spoil the whole closure of the glove if it got worse with more use.

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And the plastic seems to be the reason. Original sheet here and the break line seems to have that shape and it's made to be like that, not a bend from use. This will reguire some thinking before getting the whole glove back together. Should I do a new plastic here or just modify the existing. It's quite simple design so I just might save the original...

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Then to the inside of the glove and palm-finger area. The review mentioned the glove had moderate protection at fisrt but a while of use it became almost unusable protectionvise.

And I have to say I don't wonder why. There is this normal felt layer for protection and for the best I could measure it's 6mm thick. And gets worse as it is so densely sewed to the plastic and supporting leather that the thickest parts I measured from there are 8mm. That is including 2,5mm plastic and the leather layer too. And it feels like thin HD foam as a whole. Well it's very easy to add extra layer here but it's very little of protection even when this is a SR gear and not PRO.

Plastic is very strongly curled in also, and because of sewing it'll need some pressure and careful heating to not destroy any materials but get it back to original state. Atleast what I think it should've been.

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Same part from the other side.

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There is a very thin sheet of foam between the palm jenpro and nylon backing.

Then there is a pocket for a foam sheet just under the palm area which requires protection. Here Brian's gloves have a gel foam and Bauer inserts XRD foam atleast on pro level gear.

This pocket is empty, just the nylon is there 😂 They took the design and time to sew this fabric here but that's it. This fabric isn't for wear protection as this isn't a high wear area. I just might add a sheet of foam in there...

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The glove hasn't seen very much of use and is pretty clean all over. But as it is dismantled I'll take the opportunity and wash it throughly. 

 

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So the plastic job is done and I can save the original plastic for some other time. Might never be needed but it's not that big of a thing.

You can tell that there are some differences right? Remains to be seen how it works out. The new plastic is a sort of todays model and the original is like they were in those days.

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Then the palm area, I added the poron layer here to enhance the protection. Also some minor modifications for closure, cutting some of the useless felt away at the pinky finger area of the break. Sewing holes can still be seen there. The plastic was cut about 5mm also to give a bit more free space for break area to work.

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The other side. After this picture I made an extra cut for the break and added some sewing to anchor the poron better. And also some holes were punched for lacing.

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One last picture of the washing. This glove was quite clean and not smelling at all bad. And still with only winegar, some hand rubbing and 24h of time...

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And after drying the parts out they feel like never been used, soft and nice! Really worth the effort I think.

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Here's a better comparison for the small cutout modification. Left is the original where you can see the second layer of felt is reaching the break area heavily. Plastic isn't a real problem but adds up to the felt. And on the right the problem is minimized.

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The T is a normal construction only this time the thumb side is very wide. And as usual it's cut at where it bends when glove is opened. Break in for this glove would very likely include breaking that plastic in two. The longer plastic from the finger side isn't bent that much while opening the glove and it is not even bent over time. Very decent shape here too indicating glove hasn't seen lots of use.

The thumb side length is interesting as over half of that is inside the glove and only from triangle and dot marked holes it is in the open. Extra weight there atleast with nothing really to do. Grams yes, but they do count up.

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Some things I'm struggling with. First the pinky loop. Is it really meant to come through the plastic loop for finger strap or just an oops? I think it's oops. It'll work nicely though so not a real problem here. 

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Then more of a problem. The holes for the lacing. Outer layer and padding are matched to each other and I made some new holes there for the padding where needed and they do match nicely. But the palm (or inside fabric) side is very much off. There's nearly 30mm offset for worst spots. New holes aren't actually a going to fix the problem but I need to let the wrist side and the cuff seam a bit loose to get more fabric here. 

Here you can see the extra cut on poron to add some give to the break.

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This is the next problem, where I hope to get some fabric with the cuff seam loosening too.

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The plastic is tight against the jenpro and very nice fit there. Only the top layer is missing by 10mm inwards. First I thought adding some jenpro there to fill the gap but those holes would stay there and it would look like crap. And it's not in a very high position of a list of solutions to replace that whole thumb fabric. 

These are things that make some gloves fail badly. Just a slight miss on material or design and it doesn't work as intended. Those people fabricating these just don't know what they are doing but putting these gloves together and get their payment for that day.

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So it came to an end with this little project. As said in the beginning this one was in very good shape to start with. Some sewings and an extra job for a new thumb plastic. And added some padding to the palm area and that's about it.

I really don't like the shape of the glove and the pocket. I just can't get my mind set for that angle. But that's my problem, the glove is very good now. I'll take it to rink some day we get back there and try it out to see how I can catch some real shots.

Some pictures about. If you have any questions please do ask, here or PM.

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Next up is the Bauer RX6LE. It's also in pretty good shape atleast from outside view, what's inside will be seen very soon.

And today I got two more pairs to work with, Vaughn V6 and Bauer Total One.

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So the RX is dismantled and awashed and now in a drying process. The cuff part already dried out so I got to make a little mod there.

The wrist strap is attached back up to the wrist, and while I'm quite a big handed it was still getting over my wrist and hindering mobility. Also the nylon strap goes a weird curved route to the lacing between cuffa and palm, this mod should make it more straight and easier to tighten. And maybe it feels better tightened up as it won't pull towards palm that much.

The same thing was on the Larceny too, but it was sewn together differently from factory which would've made it a lot more work to change.

The Bauer construcion is simple so it's a quick job to enhance, first picture about how it was.

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As said it's simply sewn to the fabric so dismantle, open the binding, cut a slight piece off the edge and replace binding and attach to a new position on the cuff.

I did also move the strap a bit to center line of the cuff for my personal liking, should give some protection for wrist where I've gotten some pucks. In most gloves the cuff is much offset and hand on the edge and unprotected in some positions. Later we'll find out if this has any effect on anything after all.

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The nylon strap goes down to the lacing and is only for pictorial reasons going up in the pictures. Just to mention it.

While this RX6 is the cheapest model of the RX, I can't actually tell it from the glove. Atleast without comparing side by side to the more expensive models. And with some added padding this one will do fine with slapshots too.

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Some repairs done, and slight modding at the same time.

First the finger protection which was torn off the backhand as it usually is. Some jenpro added with sewing and it should be fine for some time again.

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Then I fitted the padding over and found that while the finger area is fine the thumb padding is lined strangely. There had been some overlaying which might have had some effect on operating the glove. When I get the glove back together I'll try to fix this a bit.

Also I cutted out the padding next to pinky  as it was over the edge a lot. Again some useless material taken off.

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And as I had the machine on I took an edge off from where the lip of the T attaches to the fingerside. It was useless material that was against the lip when trying to open the glove. Might not have any effect but now it looks smoother and won't roll over itself. The binding was a bit off also and that got better now.

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The old finger plastic sheet was cracked at multiple positions and took my time to make a new one straight without even try to plastic weld it together.

Very simple shape to do, 3mm plastic used the old plate was a good model after I pressed it flat with some heat and a clamp.

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Then some drilling and hand sewing and I had a new padding ready for the glove. Added some 4mm foam for extra protection while the original felt was still feeling very thick and airy.

The sewing is a bit off as the holes I drilled weren't matching exactly to the fabric and it is some sort of rubbery material which my blunt headed needle couldn't penetrate. But It is just visual thing and operationally it's good.

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Few spots just to write some more text. First there was a slight crack on the thumb plastic which I welded and added some plastic I cut away from the thumb end of the sheet. Should be rigid enough to handle the abuse. It's messy as the welder wasn't clean and  I'm really not a good plastic welder. Getting better with it but I have good tools.

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Then the lip of the T. It had been repaired at some time before me so there's nothing really to do. The plastics are interesting though and I wonder why Bauer got rid of this. It should make the lip a lot easier to break in. Well this composition has it's problems from the sewing ahead. That's not working and it has been ripped since. I'll have to figure out what to do here or just go with the usual solution of plastic and thick leather. Leather from the original parts is useable but all the plastics are curled and bent all over. Part of why the T wasn't looking very sharp anymore.

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Some progress again.

First some getting started, I left the wrist side tied up because there was nothing to repair and it didn't affect the washing. So then lace up the thumb area and some edges. In between it is useful to fit in all the parts to see if any problems are appearing, fitment, hole placement or what ever.

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And then to the most interesting part of the putting together a catcher glove. Will it work, is it going to be soft and smooth, is there any problems that need more evaluation? Yes, I've been fighting with the closure that is ok'ish, but I don't like it at all.

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The lip is rolling over while I'd like it being straight. Even CCMs 580 looks tolerable but this isn't. Lot of similarity can be seen compared to the Larceny.

So I cut off some 10mm from the thumb side plastic lip insert which helped a lot. Then I cut off a slice from the pocket side edge of the lip to help it fit better inside the thumb edge and bend more nicely when glove is fully opened.

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These made some difference but not enough and it still was somewhat dependant of the hand motion when closing the glove.

After all turning and trying different setups I had to give up. It is very much tied with the shape of the finger plastic, the corner where the lip is connected and the concavity/curvature of the whole plastic.

So I took the whole finger area open and heated and bended the plastic to what I thought would be the best shape.

It worked pretty well already, right way to go. The next thing then was that the break was a bit off which also affected the finger side as a whole. So I needed to tie the whole thing up and leave it be for over night. Or two...

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Now it's very good, but the break is very "used to" for what it has been and needs a lot of training to work within the new lines.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Then we had the Itech X-wing to be investigated. This particular one is custom made for Jussi Satosaari. Made in Canada by JRZ, some familiarly looking things compared to my Bauer Total One. I can't say if anything is really custom except for the name embroidery, material might be as it's whole white weave.

Two pictures of it before getting started.

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You can notice from the first picture that it had been modded before me and the rebuild was messed up badly with some new lace holes and all.

Got a scale at last, this one weights just about 1000g. Part of the edge lace has already been taken away so that might add some 20g to be exact.

IMG_20210124_174635_12x9.thumb.jpg.1fdf18e77aedde4e22444052b6a8a091.jpg

 

 

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Basic washing procedure while this one wasn't really smelly or dirty, but while there it's just easy and would be stupid to not to.

The extra padding under the index finger knuckle was ripped away for some reason. This similar size&shape of padding is on the Total One. I took the rest of the fabric away and cleaned off the stitching. No need for that anymore.

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The finger plastic was renewed and done pretty well. I just heated it a little to give some concave shape and that's it.

Some autographs there which I didn't recognise. Here you can see those added extra holes by the break line and some markings and moved holes on the thumb side. I ended up moving those ones even more but didn't get any decent picture of. Sorry.

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Then final addition to this padding. The foam is quite dense 6mm thick material from Easton JR players shoulder protection. Used some spray contact glue to attach them but only just that much that the original felt didn't absorb any of it but only a layer of glue on top. The edge of the finger plastic was wrapped with some leather. Some extra weight there for not much of a use but it was really well bonded with some sort of glue.

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A small mod to the shape of the thumb side edge. The inner layer had some extra material which rolled against the T lip when opening the glove fully. 

Here's the piece cut off and binding replaced. Don't look like much but the change was bigger than I thought of.

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Here's comparison with top fabric, the inside layer is still a bit bigger and the top side will give space for everything inside.

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The lip of the T was broken and repaired with speedy for some extra life out of it. Now with ability and materials I repaired it properly.

My weave material isn't the same as original, but it's close enough to be acceptable. And the only choice anyways for the whole glove being weave.

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As you can note from the above picture the holes on the spines aren't matching the plastics inside. They're actually more than whole hole off. Not very impressed with this quality. But the plastics are not broken so I just got cheap through and punched some extra holes to the plastic to get the laces through there.

IMG_20210130_173035_9x12.thumb.jpg.d4b862d7bdaa4af7ebbb96f3d18f7b96.jpg

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With all this done it was time to get the thing back together. This was a bit of struggle as I mentioned it was opened before me and put back together with all kinds of laces and routes.

I also had to make a whole new line holes to the thumb side padding as it and the whole padding was about 15mm off of where it should've been.

It's not that much of a trouble but takes a lot of time to put together, measure and figure out what's happening and take it apart to fix it.

First one with almost ready edge lacing. Setting up the T to make it work well was quite a challenge, especially because the break line had been messed up. And I messed it up a bit more when moving that padding to where it should be. It'll take some time to break in again.

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Then the final picture.

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It's feeling pretty well while the break in process is yet to be done. It's a bit tight to use but I could catch the tennis ball easily so the basic test is cleared.

Extra padding isn't actually feeling a lot if at all. But I think I can take some heavy slapper with this. That is waiting for the Covid to go away.

Next up, might be the VE8 C/A I've had going on in my mind. I also have Vaughn V6 2000 and 2200 gloves (catcher and blocker with both) waiting with nice but heavily used black Pro Custom Bauer Total One gloves. And also a quite new pair of VE8 gloves. Those I'll probably just repair for what's needed and sell them out.

 

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