Tried the new synthetic brush rods and got a nasty surprise

I picked up a set of those poly brush rods last month thinking they'd be lighter and easier on my back. First job out on a 150 year old house in Richmond, the rod flexed and snapped clean in half halfway up the flue. Had to fish pieces out with a magnet on a string for 45 minutes. Anyone else had cheap rods fail on them like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

jana_price18h agoMost Upvoted

Oh goodness, that sounds like a real mess. I had a similar thing happen with a set of those extendable fiberglass poles a few years back. I was cleaning out a chimney on a farmhouse and one of the sections just splintered right in the middle. Ended up having to crawl up on the roof and pull the whole thing apart piece by piece. I think these new materials are just not built for the kind of real work we do with them.

emmajackson17h ago

Ugh, fiberglass is the worst for that. It just gives up all at once with no warning. I swear they make that stuff thinner every year to save a buck. You end up doing three times the work just to fix what should have been a simple job. It's like they forgot people actually have to use these tools for more than hanging a bird feeder.

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