Repairing bars

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The bars in my facility have been scraped repeatedly by the Team girls with a metal wire scraper. The bars are now totally trashed and scratched, and it is destroying all the girls hands to the point where even team girls are saying they can't do bars because it hurts too bad. Another coach for the facility said the girls just need to develop their calluses more, and this won't be a problem. However I have swung on them, and I disagree with the other coach. The bars are bad. You can see the grooves into the wood from the metal scraper, and I don't think all the calluses in the world are going to save their poor hands. Has anyone else encountered this problem? Is there much I can do to fix it, or even slightly improve it? Thanks.
 
not a good idea. if something happens, and many things can with a rail, forget the manufacturers warranty. the liability carrier would not honor the claim because the rail was repaired by someone other than the manufacturer. it's called "modifying" the original manufacturers equipment. now if the repair is in such a place where the hands will never be, then it might be safe. eventually and over time, that patch you see in the above picture will break away due to the extreme loads and flexion that the rails are under. most club owners and the manufacturer would replace the rail. there is no repair by them that i know of. this might be the perfect example where the internet could be wrong and dangerous. agree?

as for the wire brush, they're used all the time. but you're not supposed to brush so hard that you groove the laminate. that's plain stupid and needs to be brought to the attention of the coach or owner.
 
That thought crossed my mind, dunno; but Jason makes a pretty reasonable point as well on this:
Negligence requires a breach of duty. In this instance, the gym has a duty to provide a safe and well-maintained facility. If the damage to a piece of equipment is superficial and non-structural, and the cost of replacement is excessive, then it wouldn’t be considered negligent to not replace the equipment (the risk is low and the expense is high). In this instance, the bar is only chipped on the laminate, the internal fiberglass which amounts for the actual load-bearing capacity of the bar isn’t damaged. Therefore, the structural integrity of the bar remains intact. Filling in the laminate is more akin to giving it a paint job than anything else.

Furthermore, industry standard and common practice in the community would reveal that equipment is often repaired by experienced coaches. There isn’t a single gym in the world that doesn’t have some home-made equipment, whether parallettes or other floor bars, or a raised platform, etc. If you’ve ever anchored a bar into the ground yourself (as opposed to by the manufacturer delivering it) then you’ve “modifiedâ€￾ the equipment yourself.


Bottom line, if you read the passage on the original blog, this repair was done with careful consideration for the safety of the athletes (taking into consideration a child-safe sealant, sanding for evenness along the rail, etc.) which would hold up as being a reasonably prudent and justified repair.
Factoring in all this together, the gym could prove they did not breach their duty because they took reasonable precautions and assumed an appropriately low risk.


That said, I'm inclined to agree with dunno that the liability carrier could make a case.
 
what i read in most of what he wrote is him drawing a legal conclusion in defense if what he has done. but, what happens in the real world of law and courtrooms and what liability carriers might do are another animal.:)
 

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