Sweep wrote:Mm, i'm not in the habit of taking a hair dryer camping, let alone a paint stripper.
where's your initiative? there's plenty of people with a special hair drier compartment in the hanging shelving system in a wing of their tent , they'd just love to lend theirs out and watch the fun. Or you could use one of those planet destroying hand driers in a loo if you could manoeuver the poles under it. Or a bbq.
More to the point, broken poles hold up fine IME, they're just a pain to use. The one I've just fixed suffered a terrible incompetexxx misfortune last summer but carried on regardless for some days of touring and high winds with one section split end to end, another almost as bad and most of the rest starting to split. It's fiddly to get all the fibres into place so the cord can run in its groove, but once the split end is stuffed into its mating ferrule its all good.