Alternate title: Broken Brooms, Shattered Lives

Last year midway through the curling season, I upgraded from a wood handled broom to a fiberglass Reactor 2 by Olson Curling Supplies. It is a great broom– it is very light and quick, and the narrow head makes it easy to brush right next to the rock. The best part of this broom though is the handle: Instead of being round, it has flat edges, more like a hockey stick than a traditional broom handle. This makes the broom much easier to grip tightly and put muscle into the sweep.

My Reactor2 in happier times

I was very happy with this broom. I think it made me a much more effective sweeper, and it was reasonably priced (purchased on Amazon.com for ~$65). Prior to sunday night, I would have given the fiberglass Reactor 2 a solid B+.

What happened sunday night? In about the fifth end, while delivering a stone, the business end of my broom broke off. Yes, broke off. I was watching my shot and didn’t notice it, until a player on the opposing team picked the broom head off the ice and handed it to me. I was shocked, obviously. Why would the broom snap during a delivery? There must be a lot more force on it while sweeping. I pondered this as I grabbed a club broom from the barrel to continue the game (we lost).

Broken brooms, shattered lives. The broken end of the screw is visible at the end of the handle. It was screwed in to the deep nut connected to the swivel. The whole connection was encased in hard plastic.

I took a closer look at the busted broom after the game. There is a threaded rod which secures the handle into the the swiveling head, and a hard plastic cowling around the connection. It looks like the threaded rod snapped one or two threads deep, leaving only the plastic to hold it together. I probably broke the rod while sweeping, and then side loaded the fracture during my delivery, resulting in broom decapitation.

I don’t think I’m particularly tough on brooms, so I’m attributing this catastrophic failure to either a design flaw or a defect in the steel threaded rod. Either way it knocks my grading of the Olson Fiberglass Reactor2 down to a B-. This was a great broom that never let me down, until it did, and then it did big time.