Primorac Carbon Restoration - SDC

Firstly I just wanna say sorry for the watermark, it seems that there are some people who like to steal my repair pics and claim them as their own.

A friend of mine asked me to fix his old Primorac Carbon that was in storage for some time. The blade was in pretty bad shape with some severe damage in the top ply and edges, besides the normal dirty. It was also very heavy at 104g, I must have absorbed some moisture during this time.



The first thing I did was to remove the handles, it was no surprise that they came out fairly easily. I would need to sand the top plies in order to fix them, this meant that the original lettering would disappear. I discussed it with the owner and he didn't mind so I went ahead.

The edges were so banged up that the only way to save them was to re-rout the shape of the blade. This meant that the blade was going to loose about 1mm all around, which was also ok with the owner. After this I removed the most damaged parts of the top ply and replaced them with new ones. I used Hinoki for this, although it's impossible to match 20 year old wood, but because these areas were near the edges they won't affect playing. The smaller gaps were filled with wood putty. At this time I also decided to do some minor weight relief in order to make the blade more manageable.



To finalize the repair I cleaned and re-attached the handles, gave the blade a light sealing to prevent further splintering, and voilá! This one is ready for some more battles, and with 93g it will be a lot easier on the wrist.

yogi_bear said:

Amazing restoration. Any balance changes due to a smaller head size or it is not noticeable?

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I didn't measure the balance before but on of the reasons I made the weight relief was to compensate for the loss of mass in the head and keep the original balance. The balance after the fix is 3.2cm which is common for commercial blades.

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Lazer said:

I got the same Blade, mine is 25 years old and has actually been unused the whole time. It has not been exposed to humidity in any way, size, shape or form... It’s weight is still a hefty 100 grams. In my experience wood dries with time unless exposed to humidity. So I’m wondering if the old Primorac’s are different than new ones.
Do you know if this is the case?

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"In my experience wood dries with time unless exposed to humidity." This is a very vague observation, it will depend on the original moisture content and environmental humidity. It doesn't have to be a sauna, any environmental change will cause wood to gain/loose moisture. That's why wood is dried to different degrees depending on the application. If the moisture content is really low to begin with and humidity levels are high, the wood will actually gain weight. It also depends if the wood was naturally dried or in a vacuum chamber. The type of wood is also important, Kiri or example dries fairly quickly and remains relatively stable throughout it's life.

You say the blade hasn't been exposed to humidity, but then you say it has been used the whole time. If you sweat, some of that water will be absorbed by the handles. This can justify a few grams increase, maybe 3-5g, but I doubt it will be more than that. I think the main culprit here is the core. The Kiri they used back then was older and denser, maybe even from a different origin. You can also see this in newer Viscarias which tend to be lighter. Moreover, this core is made of 9 pieces glued together, the glue in those joints also accounts for some extra weight.

Lazer said:

It says unused... actually never dressed...
I have done quite a lot of woodwork in my days, and the finer wood mostly mahogany in this case was stored outside, to prevent it from drying. The blade has never been outside...
Ok, but you just confirmed that they not identical. I actually thought the core was balsa.

Thank you
L-zr

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Oh, ok, read it wrong, I'm sorry.

It doesn't need to be outside, I shipped a blade to Singapore and it gained 4g just due to different conditions. It was made in the summer during hot and dry weather, and Singapore is very humid. But that one had a Padauk handle, it soaks water like a sponge.

But I still think that humidity is not the main factor here, but the core.

thomas.pong said:

Wow awesome restoration job!

Thank you for showing us and explaining some of the process.

What technique did you use to remove the handle? And how did you glue it back? Which type of glue did you use for the handle and handle pieces?

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Thanks!

I removed the handle pieces using a heat gun and thin knife, same way I normally do. In this case it was relatively easy because the glue was soft. I just glued them back using ordinary wood glue (PVA).

thomas.pong said:

Thank you for the details.

Did you also use PVA to reglue the plastic branded handle caps?

What did you do/use to clean the handle?

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I never removed those, just polished them in the end. The handle was just given a very light sanding with a fine grit sandpaper.

PVA won't bond to plastic so it's not appropriate. You can try superglue or contact glue, the kind made specifically for plastics.

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