ArdeFIN

Thumb is short compared to fingerside and the T is folding in on the finger side like Brian's do, though only partly and not the whole lip. The structural lacing is very similar on the thumb for each of the pictures. The Capitals one has some very custom setup too.

Can you do a bit of research about the shipping (to Finland)? It could be reasonable but most likely it won't be.

Premier cuff but not as much angle there. Narrow thumb area and strong curve and concave to the break. T boot is awkwardly looking offset. Fingerside is longer and in different angle than 590 closing finger tips to thumb. Corner next to T is not cut and T sort of bends over the plate and not on side of it. T is angled towards shooter and not as an extension to the glove. Custom so it still can be mix and match of anything maybe. Definitely 580 before 590 and not 600.

I would want to do that refurb but the shipping....

580 yes.

While I've been secure behind my Rey Swiss CK mask I've been looking for a new one. Rey while fitting pretty well is made to fit with extra layer of padding so the size is too big for me. And partilly from that but also the super thick structure makes it a heavy weight mask. That added to a non fitting size which makes the balance go off a bit. So I thought security and joy of playing is worth investing a bit: A brand new NME VTX S18. So it's been on the shelves for a long time waiting for a use. -50% sale was good enough for me. I've used NME model so I knew it would fit really well. The color was a surprise as the online offer was only for white ones but I asked if they had the dark model available. They had so I chose that over the white. I actually thought it might be the carbon with varnish and not a painted dark grey. But I do have to say that this color is a beauty to me. And the carbon pattern does a really nice finish. Only concern is that if there will be any paint damage in the future I believe it's not really repairable without painting the whole mask.

Good old topic to add this short modification. Begins from few months back when I finally found a RGT2Pro C/A for myself. I had been eyeballing for one for a long time but seemingly nobody isn't really wanting to part with theirs and I do understand that. Looking the unit through I liked what I saw and got it pretty well setup too. Only spot I was really worried about was the top portion of the arms. Above bicep protection and next to or actually under the shoulder floater. There is only a pitiful flap of less than 10mm thickness, propably made of thin foam and aired plastic that is hard but not like basic plastic sheet is. Here's the plate and you can see the webbing material behind it. Lifting my hand to the side there is an opening barely covered by that nearly nonexistent plate. So it took about 10 ice times before I caught one there. Not bad but enough for me to take some action. Made me wonder as I use a VE8 padded shirt under the C/A and there is a padding sheet on that area. The shot was just a crisp snap shot from a close distance. So I digged into my "spare" parts boxes and found a leftover from an old Reebok 6K hand. It had the side plates on the elbow that were pretty much spot on in size, shape, material and also looking good enough to be added to my almost new C/A. Here they are cut off, edges shaped and the binding replaced as good as possible. Not perfect but will do very well. About 10mm thickness, 5mm soft foam on bottom and 5mm harder foam on top. Almost the same as the original plate on the C/A. I first thought that I would just sew there to the sleeves but then I realised that I had the hands on the wider setup on the C/A which reveals a nice line of holes where I could attach these addon pads with lace. So no modification done that couldn't be removed or changed if needed. Didn't get any decent picture of the attachment and I'll add one later. Here's how it came out. The cover thickness is doubled and all three flaps on shoulder do move regardless of each other which seems to help with mobility. I didn't notice any change on hand movements. This picture is a bit bulged as the arms are pulled forward so that the shoulders push ahead too. For a comparison here's a picture from internet. This mod doesn't really popout a lot. Testing this mod protectionvise will propably take a lot of time if I even notice anything anymore. Mobility will be tested anyways and hopefully no problems will occur.

Did you check this out already, no need for a new T but just a few modifications that can be made with some sharp cutter like snap off knife or exacto knife.

Very similar findings on the stiffness that I found on the Premier P2.9 earlier. The T and especially the lip and plastics inside are the major problem.

It is sort of positive thing that Vaughn is making the 1-piece and 2-piece gloves so much different in feel too. You basically have four different gloves to choose from. Ofcourse it's not an advantage if you don't have all of them available to try the feel side by side. Aleast CCM/LeFebvre were doing the same thing, 2-piece EF3 was a whole different glove than EF3 1-piece. I have a hold on a Brians Subzero 1-piece and 2-piece so I can make a comparison of those too.

Is it already 2023 when we see a full line of Konekts starting from the hobby level and up? I have no real problems with my S29 skates except for the flex on the ankle. That I could see an improvement for me having some ankle pain at times which possibly comes from the limited ankle flex. It's not terrible so I'm not looking to spend lots of money for an experiment.

I thought I'd get a chance to try different angles on Warrior and bought a -50% G3 liner in 90 degree. My G4 has 75 degree. But as you can see from the crappy gif animation, they are the same except for minor details on stiching etc. Strapping is in a different angle too but I don't think that makes any significant difference to the feel. I am disappointed. The G3 liners are sold out but I might still find some G4 in 60 degree or 90 degree to make a comparison between these to see what is going on...

Could've made some comparison at local shop but I was more interested in the G6 catcher. The pocket appeared optically massive. Like MASSIVE. Which I consider an achievement since the G4 which I have for comparison isn't really small and has all of the 114cm circumference in use. On G4 there really isn't a lot of surface that they could've replaced with pocket. And Warrior still managed to do it. I don't know if it is a real benefit to have more pocket area but atleast it should help catching the pucks inside the pocket and give a few popouts less. Off the shelf all of the samples they had were pretty easy to close but opening wide was not possible. But knowing that Warrior has been easy to break in it should be manageale.

Yes you could. And that is where I see Warrior has used some time. The plate has that slope towards the face of the pad which I would say is really difficult to heat mold back to flat which is what most other brands pads are. Second shaped thing are the long radius curves on the other end of the plates. I don't think any other brand has anything even close. This put together, if you are able to do that modifying, you make your own a lot easier. And they will be better than modifying those Warrior ones.

I can confirm this. For me Vapor is a no go, Supreme (Total one and US for me) is delighful. CCM Premier with 590 is good and the 600 Eflex is terrbile. Vaughn VE8 is one of my favourites, SLR I'm yet to test but some recall from SLR predecessor is I didn't get into it at all. Which only tells that when we try to explain the assortment with too limited choises it's not working. For CCM and their famous numbers it works as they make only gloves that resemble the figures. But so many things change in glove design that when some other manufacturers gloves are taken those famous numbers cannot be used to describe as it just isn't the same in any measure.

Looking at how detailed the shapes are and sort of made to fit G6 I doubt there is a huge chance of making the Warrior plates to fit anything else in easy way. From marketing viewpoint it is obvious that the plates won't fit other pads and Warrior has used some time to make sure the plates are shaped so that it is somewhat difficult to make them fit. This slideplate thing is something others don't offer. Yet.

@insertnamehere Here's the most clear and explaining picture of what I've made. A lot more complicated solution than @jerd31 with the edges bent in instead of straight sheet. This plate is for Vaughn LT88 pads (and similar) which you can tell from the slight curve on one edge. The knee wing on those pads is attached to the pad through curved joint area. Material is 2mm thick PE which I have in storage for all gear purposes anyway. It's thick enough to hold the shape properly and still very easy and quick to mold with heat gun. Even 1mm would work but I'm not really confident to try it and then again I don't really have a reason as the 2mm is doing fine. I've made one set from 3mm thick sheet but that was a nightmare to mold compared to 2mm thick. Polycarbonate (PC) is the next thing I'll try out as I have some available at work to make sample pieces. This is more of test between materials as in all videos the Warrior plates are sliding like butter on a hot pan and my PE made plates slide easy but not really effortless. Here's a picture of my G5 implementation. A more complicated desing than Warriors and covering the whole knee wing and not just the knee stack. This is after a few ice times when I sent the pads to Kova Repairs for the core change. While the plates don't really have space to move around they still have the knee wing drawn into them. I like to use the lace as an attachment, it's easy to drill four holes on proper spots and then route the lace through the knee stack. Doesn't have to be tight but just enough that the plate stays on the right place. Why I like the edges turned in atleast a few mm? It makes the plate just that much more rigid while it doesn't have much of an effect except holding the plate better on place. And it propably prevents the plate edges from catching any roughness on the ice. I really don't know if that would ever be an issue though. Some videos of my butterfly slides where I have PE plates on (GT pads but similar knee wing cover). Nothing to compare those to though but you get the idea of slide. Looking at these now makes me wonder even more that the PC might be sliding a lot more than PE.

Can't help but thinking I had a bisnes idea worth of a few bucks on my hands when I first made my PE sliders about three years ago. Should've just invited it a bit more to make it as universal as possible and sell them to every second goalie out there. But then again remembering that whenever I've shown my plates and telling how nice it is to slide around effortlessly nobody wasn't interested. Before now that Warrior has these out. Yet following these conversations in many places there's a lot of people who don't believe in the idea at all and try to take it down with "you'll slide over" or "how can you stop" or "you don't need to slide that much" or the classic "don't skip the leg day and you don't need these"... The basic thing why anything innovative or new is so hard to bring into the business is that many of us are so sceptical as long as nobody (good enough) tries and proofs it to be good. Konekt is similar example, remember the first comments? And still there are comments like why are so many people selling them after a few ice times, there has to be something wrong with them. Get them plates to try them out at least, I think they are kind of game changers at least from jenpro. I can't compare to Bauer as haven't tried them, Vaughn has good slide on their Quick slide material (same as Brians' Primo) but I would still wrap the knee block with plastic sheet on them too because of the stabile sliding from beginning to end that @CJ Boiss mentioned. Actually I've found the slide to be best when you shuffle your crease in the beginning to have a little snow to start from. Snow on crease is a constant thing after that and no surprises on the slide.

Reading all this hype about these make me wanna try the polycarbonate plastic to see if there is significant difference against my PE plastic ones. The polycarbonate sounds like it would be sliding even more but then again I do know the difference between jenpro and PE which is already huge. Would give one more option to this world of better slide if the plastics had different characteristics on slide. Luckily I have some PC available at work so it's only the molding I have to do. And maybe need some practise before as there might be a bit different behavior between PE and PC. You can't do that as there is not enough friction, you have to learn to use your steels to push. Also if you have ankle mobility, you can steer your slide somewhat with your toes even without touching the ice with steel. Definitely needs some practise, I've been learning this sliding for few years now and develop every time I'm on ice.

Yes, I removed the bumb as I hate how it forces my paddle to turn against my pads or the other choice is to hold the blocker in odd angle.

Actually no, Curv from what I've seen is some sort of plastic infused fibermat, but best of them all so far. It has good flexibility but it still hold up the structural rigidity atleast in the Vapor 2X blocker that I quickly examined a while ago. Hypercomp is more like a normal fiber sheet with resin. In these gloves it is used as a plain sheet and in cathcer it is attached to the plastic in some specific process. That seems to hold very well but the problem is that the plastic that the Hypercomp is added to isn't up to the task. Or maybe it is the Hypercomp that didn't hold. I thought I had some more pictures of it but can't find them or I just didn't take them. One picture from pre-assembly to see that everything fits in and are about in the right shape. There is a bit of an issue with the new finger plastic and the fixed edge. The plastic is pushing towards the break line and I might have to add a lace line to where my fingers end inside to hold the plastic in place. Then a few pictures of the ready gloves together. I'll take them to test round on sunday. I'm not really impressed with the pocket yet as I used the original laces that are the annoying stiff type that has been used by CCM earlier. Too bad that Warrior is possibly using it too. I'll propably redo the pocket later with skate lace or if I can source some black lace then I'll use that. I made the pocket with one loop less than the original to make it a bit more loose or easier to see through. Not that I would ever look through the pocket but. Well yeah. The other thing is the glove angle, I now have the 75 degree palm and it feels just a little off to a way that I think a 90 degree would work better. I have one 90 degree palm for Warrior available locally but not sure of the model so I might have to check it out if the 75 isn't my thingy. And if the Warrior catcher is what I like at all.

Then some pictures of the plates. I have to replace both of them because there is some damage. The Hypercomp again oh well I don't know how much it really does here. The plastic that Warrior uses here is very stiff even without the Hypercomp addition. Maybe it does add something that you can actually notice but it's hard to say from looking the materials and civilized quessing. And if you got to compare Pro and SR you would have to check the internal that the padding is the same too. The thin strip at the break is the usual milky PE plastic though, for some reason no Hypercomp is needed there. Edge if the finger plate. Thumb side plastic is destroyed. The glove propably wasn't really good anymore but it felt as a working one though. And once again without comparison to a new gear you couldn't tell. I would assume that the thumb side of the T was a bit floppy and could let the pucks through. The massive concavity on this plastic makes it really difficult to replace and I'm going to try and make it more straigth and only retain all the shapes that are necessary for the closure to work like it should.

So the glove had some significant wear on the finger edge that had to be dealt with. And from previous gloves I know this is shitty job as my sewing machine isn't just strong enough to penetrate all the layers and there are many. So I had to make some hidden cutouts to help my machine a bit. It's kind of annoying that they have so many zones there and sure it makes the colored glover look nice. But there is a lot of extra sewing job to do. So I took all of the zone pieces out and replaced them with new jenpro. And some artistic added stitching... The binding is worn but I don't have anything to put there and it'll wear out again anyways. Then the part I was worried about was sewing everything together again. I had some from cutting out the stacked layers and went pretty smoothly after all. Some worn sewings were renewed too and I added a piece of jenpro to the boot area of the T as it would fail sooner or later. Gear heads want to see what's inside, here's the padding layer. Cuff is the usual thick board build just like the blocker except no plate. It's meant to be a bit soft? Palm has a layer of some 5mm thick and stiff foam with nylon fabric. (White balance in picture is way off the target) Side view of the cuff plate.

I just yesterday had a chance to check some gear while I had my steels sharpened and there were Axis 2.9 and Axis 2 gloves and yes I tried them first. Cheez they were stiff, like STIFF. And more stiff than that. I wasn't able to close any of the four samples there were. The closest I got was about an inch open. Sure I could close them with a bit of help from my other hand but. Yeah. And that said I don't have to say anything about how much I was able to open them. No I wasn't. Other than that I couldn't say they felt bad or odd. The angles of them and not just break angle were a different story and I might have some trouble getting into that. Not even close to the traditional 590 shape. But I'm not saying it would be bad. Just that it felt and looked a lot more different than I would've expected.

Finally I had all the parts ready and could put everything back together. I might have to add some foam to backhand of the palm as I have to tighten the wrist strap a lot and it still feels a bit wobbly. Only the palm shows some actual wear in these pictures.