… Welcome to another Bowman Handles, Inc. tutorial. My name is Colyn Bowman and I'm here to talk to you today about how to replace a fiberglass handle. So for demonstration purposes, I have a four pound sledgehammer and I have a replacement handle like you would find here at Bowman Handles or your local hardware store. And what we're looking at is first of all the core length and how do we need to modify that to make sure that it fits into your particular hammer because depending on the make of your head, the openings can be a lot different.
The size of the head, even though it may be still a four-pound, can vary dramatically between brands. So when you go to the store or order a handle from us, what you'll see is the core is basically just a generic length, okay. And it comes with a retainer clip as well. So what you're gonna wanna do is I usually just go ahead and remove the clip so you can just press that off. You may need to tap it with a hammer or maybe some pliers if it's kinda on there tight and what you're gonna do is you're gonna take the shoulder, which is this part of your handle here, and you're going to put that at the base of your head and just kinda look at where does the course stop. So you can see here that the core is actually a little too long for this head. So that tells me that I need to trim this down. I like to have around a quarter of an inch gap between the top of my core and the top of the head because that gives me enough epoxy over the top to make sure that it's really sealed in there.
You're gonna need to cut fiberglass because fiberglass is incredibly difficult to cut, okay. You're gonna want something that's like a reinforced, kinda like a grinder blade like something that you might see on like a chop saw or maybe a reinforced dremel wheel that's made for cutting fiberglass and things like that. You really don't wanna try to just use a regular saw because it will dull your blade very very quickly. And you can't cut it with like a regular knife or something like that. Plus that wouldn't be safe, okay. So what I've done here is I've went ahead and trimmed a handle. And I went ahead and put the clip back on it, but you'll see here that now there's about a quarter inch gap between the top of the core and the handle or the head and so what I'm gonna do is most heads are designed where the stamp where the country of origin and your the size of your head are, will face up when you have it on the table and you will drive the handle into it that way.
Now, depending on the style of head depends on certain things… like most of your hammer handles tend to be an oval shape, so it doesn't really matter which direction the handle is facing. but if you're doing an axe or things like that, they tend to have very strange shapes and you'll have to make sure you turn your handle the right way before you drive it in or you'll have
problems. Now this one also has a foam ring around it, which is used to help seal the base of the head against the handle, which is very important when you go to seal the epoxy. So I'm just gonna drive this in and you can use a regular shop hammer or ball-peen or whatever, and you don't have to hit it real real
hard.
Now, sometimes you do, it depends on the make and the shape. But you kinda wanna watch and make sure that you're not askew too much with your handle when you put it in. And you kinda wanna make that as nice and flush as perpendicular as you can, okay. Now like I said, depending on how your head is made or how old it is and why not it may not be perfect, but you wanna get as close as you can because that just makes a more rigid tool makes a little bit more stable. And then after you've done that what I like to do…these come… this is an epoxy kit that we sell here at Bowman Handles and it comes with a strip of putty.
You can kinda knead that out and you just take and stretch it around here and press it into the seam. If there is one. Some have foam that seals it, some like axes and stuff tend to not have that. So you're gonna need to make sure that you dam up the bottom, otherwise when you pour your epoxy, as this starts to set it gets really hot and runny, and if there is a gap, it will find that gap and it will spill all over everything and make a mess. Now if that does happen to you, which sometimes even no matter how much experience you have or how well you think you've sealed it up it will leak, okay. If that happens do not try to clean the handle. Let it cure and then after it is cured you can literally just kinda pop up the stream and it will just peel right off the handle. No mess at all if you try to clean it while it's leaking it will smear and get everywhere and you'll never get it clean.
It's a nightmare. Okay, so you can use putty to seal that. Since I tend to use a lot of bulk stuff when I'm doing my fiberglass, I like to use hot glue because it's a little faster. So what I do is I just put a bead of hot glue around right here and you can just kinda watch and see because certain handles may need a little bit more or a little bit less. You can also do the putty and the hot glue if you have an oddly shaped head.
And then once you have that sealed up kinda let that cool for a second, which doesn't take long, especially in this kind of weather. And then I'm just going to turn that side down. Don't don't grab it by the handle because that'll jar that seal loose. And then you need to have a level surface or as close to level as you can get and you just wanna place your head in there like that, okay. And then you're gonna take your two part epoxy… Now, this is a little bit different epoxy than what you would see if you're gonna be doing like furniture or something like that so if you've used say like EnviroTex or something like that that tends to be really thin epoxy. It's both parts are clear and they mix very easily and very rapidly and they're very very runny. This stuff is very viscous. The hardener is kinda hard to work with so I've already poured that out so you could see what that looks like and you can see.
It's like a really thick honey almost, okay. So this is mixed in a one to one ratio. We just squirt out our bottle of hardener first. And then we just pour. See how runny that part is? We just pour that in there too, you can just use the tray that it comes in. Pretty much every brand of epoxy if it's a small pack like this will come with a plastic tray and then you can use a popsicle stick or in this case these little paddles that come with it and try to scrape from the bottom to get that real thick epoxy off and just kinda swirl it together. And you'll notice that the color starts to change it goes from a really dark amber to almost like a warm golden honey. It looks very pretty. It also will smell so I recommend that you wear a mask like an N95 mask or something like that to keep the vapors out. But for demonstration purposes in this video, I'm not wearing one 'cause I'm just doing a small batch.
And ifyou have some gloves definitely do that because this stuff canbe very difficult to clean off. It's kinda messy sometimes. You just wanna let it get where it turns into this kind of almost like a golden white and you have that consistency throughout the entire portion, size that you're making. Now,this is a little bit too much for this head, but just for demonstration purposes I just poured out the entire thing. The longer you mix it, it will start to set and we'll get runnier as it goes. It will almost start to turn clear again and then you can pour it very quickly, but you can see how it pours much faster than it did originally as just the the hardener. Now if you're doing a small batch like this, you can just pour out of here. You can also use the bottom of a coke can or old water bottle, but you just kinda make a funnel and you just pour that in there. Now you wanna kinda go in a ring around the core and then let it fill up.
And you're gonna watch, and now you're gonna feel like at first if you've never done this before you're gonna be like "Wow, that didn't take much! Like it's beautiful. It's nice and flush and everything's good." But as soon as that air bubble down there comes up to the top as you can see here, the amount of oxygen dramatically reduce and it will sink and you'll have to keep babysitting it for a little while and watching how that works. So I'm just gonna watch this for a while. And I'm just gonna keep adding some more to it every time. And then as those start to bubble up, I'll just keep doing that until the bubbles stop. You can take a toothpick or something like that and kinda drag through it to kinda help aerate the epoxy a little faster. And you just kinda give it time. You can't be in a hurry because this stuff is a little bit thicker than your furniture epoxy so it doesn't come to the surface quite as fast sometimes.
So give it a few minutes, come back, pour a little bit more in there. Give it a minute pour a little bit more in there and then eventually right towards the end, you'll know that it's really full and you'll still have these little bubbles on the top and you just gonna kinda take your toothpick or something or even you know you can use your little paddle and you're just gonna very gently kinda drag through and pop all those bubbles that are on the top.
And then you'll let that sit overnight and it will cure and you can paint that to match your head if you want to. Whatever you need to do and it will be flawless and hard as a rock. Now, one other thing that tends to come up a lot is when you go to replace a fiberglass handle the handle that broke off originally because they tend to people leave them out in the sun and the fiberglass gets brittle and it ends up breaking sometime when you're using it, the hardest thing about replacing a fiberglass handle is actually getting the old handle out of the head. So what I recommend you do, what I think is the easiest way in my experience is to basically drill pilot holes. So if you have a drill… drill, a bunch of little holes all through the head as much as you can. Now keep in mind there probably is a metal clip in there so you don't wanna go too far because you might mess up your drill bit.
So try to keep to the the middle parts you're gonna drill out and then once you think you have enough holes drilled you can use a punch or something like that and start trying to just hammer little chunks out at a time. Okay, put it in a device or whatever you need to do and you're just gonna get a little piece out at a time and you'll notice that as that starts going eventually, the big chunk will come out. If you have an older head, you might have rust inside of it. Maybe it's left outside or you got it at a flea market or something like that. You will want to take a wire brush and just kinda cleanout the inside of the eye to make sure that you get good adhesion with the epoxy, And then once you've ensured that that's clean, you might take a little rubbing alcohol, something like that, to kinda clean out and make sure you have all the debris out of the eye.
And then your stock handle that you just bought at your store or from Bowman Handles will go right in there and you won't have to worry about it being secure to your head. So check out our website, www.BowmanHandlesInc.com. You can also check us out on Facebook at Bowman Handles Inc.. On Instagram or Twitter @BowmanHandles. Or you can always call us on the telephone at 1800.736.0390. Thank you..