How is a Carbon Fiber Hockey Stick Made?

Hockey sticks have seen some evolution in the materials used and the capabilities of the sticks. From sticks made of Ash and Hickory to Fiberglass coated wood, aluminum and now Carbon Fiber the hockey stick has become a tool for better performance, lighter weight and increased durability; all thanks t the materials used in it’s composition.

While some advances of the past improved one of the three aspects, it wasn’t until the creation of carbon Fiber composites that all three truly improved on the original wood stick. In this post I want to go through what Carbon Fiber Composites are made of, how they are put together and why they are put together in the way they are.

Let’s get started!

Carbon fiber is literally a fiber made of carbon with the carbon content being around 90% or more for standard carbon fiber, and virtually 100% for carbon fibers with high elasticity. When the carbon Fibers are not pure, Nitrogen is the primary element other than carbon that will exist.

High elasticity and the fiber weave are important components when designing and building a hockey stick. Standard fibers are used build durability into the stick without adding a lot of weight while highly elastic fibers are used to weave a mesh that gives a flexible product and provides the energy return when loading a shot.

Carbon fiber is produced by baking polyacrylonitrile (PAN) fiber, pitch fiber or other organic fiber in an inert atmosphere (Nitrogen) to dissociate elements other than carbon. At least 90% of commercially available carbon fibers are PAN carbon fibers made of PAN fiber, because PAN fiber is better than pitch carbon fiber in terms of the balance of performance, cost and ease of use.

Toray manufactures PAN carbon fibers. In fact, they lead the global carbon fiber industry as the number-one carbon fiber producer in performance, quality and volume and that is why all our sticks are made from Toray carbon fiber.Hockey sticks have seen some evolution in the materials used and the capabilities of the sticks. From sticks made of Ash and Hickory to Fiberglass coated wood, aluminum and now Carbon Fiber the hockey stick has become a tool for better performance, lighter weight and increased durability; all thanks t the materials used in it’s composition.

So let’s get started. Carbon fiber is literally a fiber made of carbon with the carbon content being around 90% or more for standard carbon fiber, and virtually 100% for carbon fibers with high elasticity. When the carbon Fibers are not pure, Nitrogen is the primary element other than carbon that will exist.

What is a Carbon Fiber Weave?

The high elasticity (pure) PAN fibers (called filaments) Toray produces are bundled together to create a weave. The finer the fibers and the tighter the weave the higher the rating.The rating is the number of fibers in the weave with common ratings being 3k, 6k, 12k and 18k. The “k” refers to kilo (or thousand), so a 3k weave is made from a 3,000 carbon filament weave, a 6k weave has 6,000 carbon filaments, etc. The large number of high-strength fibers bundled together is what makes carbon fiber such a strong material and the higher the number, the lighter and more flexible the material will be.

Not considered a weave, you will also see the composition of sticks with UD carbon fiber, UD stands for Undefined, referring to an unstructured composition. UD is used to create durability in a stick and is typically composed of standard carbon fibers, not high elasticity carbon fibers like a weave would be. The core of all hockey sticks is built with UD carbon fiber and then wrapped in a weave.

Construction

When looking at a stick there are really two approaches to construction, two piece and one piece construction. Two piece construction is when the shaft of the stick is created separately from the blade and then the two are combined for the final product. This is cost effective because the shaft of a stick is really a long tube and the manufacturers can make and cut tubes with a simple process. The disadvantage to the two piece construction is you sacrifice weight and durability. Sticks gain weight because the two pieces require more material to connect them, but at the same time are weaker because of the join between the two parts.The one piece design is a slower and more detailed process that creates the entire stick as a single carbon fiber construction, producing a lighter, stronger stick but at a higher cost. All top end sticks (including ours) use a one piece construction.

Manufacturing

The manufacturing of a one piece hockey stick uses a mold, layers of carbon fiber and a resin to bind the layers. As we described previously, the inner layers of the stick are made of UD carbon fiber to build the strength of the stick. Each layer of UD weave is combined with a another and placed in different mold to press and heat the layers with resin to glue them into a stick shape. As layers are added the mold is changed to build them and press them. Once the UD layers have been added, we then add in the highly elastic 18K layers and follow the same process to complete the stick. When completed the stick is then sanded and any imperfections are removed. If there are any flaws in the design the stick is broken down and remade into UD fiber.

Finishing

Once the manufacturing is completed the sticks are ready to brand. In our branding process there are two steps, the base coat and color painting of the stick shaft and labelling of the sticks and then applying the protective coat and finish. The sticks will be painted and logoed using airbrush and layering of the paints and adds about 5 grams of weight to the sticks total weight. Then we apply a protective topcoat to the stick and if a tacky grip coat is desired that is done as the last part of coating the stick. Once these are dry the stick is tested and packaged for shipping. You then get your stick delivered via courier or it is dropped off at a pickup location.