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All American CP? Paint chipping off padding


mbkcoach
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1 hour ago, mbkcoach said:

Ok so I found an AA CP on the net for $40 shipped.  Did they paint the vinyl padding with navy blue paint? Because it is chipping off all over the place.  

My black one had the padding paint chip off really bad, too.

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Why navy blue? We know why navy blue! Ask Dalco and Cliff Keen! Navy blue was the shirt color (and, more importantly, the plate coat color back in the 80's and 90's)!!

Look at the carapace design / planform @mbkcoach... where have you seen that before? Yup... Wilson Golds, Champros, Champions, Riddell Powers, heck even Schutts... they all use a similar planform. In fact, if you didn't have the All-American stickers on it, I'd tell you that was a Champion CP. Wilson's dependence on open-cell sofa cushion foam and nylon has to do with cost vs. durability. Memory foam is expensive. Sofa cushion foam is cheap and readily plentiful, especially when you source it from an upholstery company, and don't tell them it's headed for use in sporting goods (which drives the cost up, because the sports industry is perceived to have lots of money to throw around). Oh sure, memory foam has become / is becoming less expensive and more plentiful due to the increased competition in the mattress industry. All-American was, at one time, one of the Big Names in football equipment, specifically helmets and shoulder pads. Helmets started to use memory foams, while shoulder pads followed soon after once players demanded a lower-profile silhouette, and one that retained less heat and promoted breathability.

Each year, though, there is a fresh crop of youngsters who need new (or refurbished / reconditioned) shoulder pads and helmets. Thus, there is a dependable, captive purchasing market (often in the form of HS and College AD purchasing agents). How often do baseball umpires buy new gear?

This is why we're in the odd predicament we're in. We need football's more progressive technological advancements and much greater capital resources to drive our own gear development, but we need a company that actually caters to us primarily – not as an afterthought, token, or line-item on a corporate financial report – to actually design it.

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  • 4 months later...

After 3 washes, this is the best the coating came off. I made numerous calls to try and come up with a solution to fix this, but to no avail. But then.....

I reached out to a local upholstery shop. Purchased 2 yards of 90/10 Polyester Spandex swimwear lining from JOANN https://www.joann.com/swimwear-lining/xprd728506.html .

The shop will remove the velcro that holds the plates into place with a seam ripper, which that is how the Velcro is secured. She will then sew and cover the spandex onto the padding, restitch velrcro.

Really excited to make this look good again. More pix to come. She is charging me $50 to do this, along with the $13 and change I paid for the 2 yards of fabric.

 

 

 

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4 hours ago, jwclubbie said:

After 3 washes, this is the best the coating came off. I made numerous calls to try and come up with a solution to fix this, but to no avail. But then.....

I reached out to a local upholstery shop. Purchased 2 yards of 90/10 Polyester Spandex swimwear lining. The shop will remove the velcro that holds the plates into place with a seam ripper, which that is how the Velcro is secured. She will then sew and cover the spandex onto the padding, restitch velrcro.

Really excited to make this look look again. More pix to come. She is charging me $50 to do this, along with the $13 and change I paid for the 2 yards of fabric.

IMG_4906.JPG

IMG_4905.JPG

IMG_4904.JPG

Interested to see how this turns out... 

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  • 1 month later...

Finally received my All-American 15" CP that @catsbackr graciously gifted to me. Attached are the pictures of the results from a local upholstery shop that agreed to repair the foam cover. I am beyond floored. The only thing changed was she added new Velcro, and used 3/4" wide instead of the original "1 wide Velcro strips. I will be taking @catsbackr AA CP to them next to redo his padding cover.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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That looks great! @mbkcoach and I were talking about this very thing last summer, and I was pretty sure at that time that an upholstery shop is the way to go to get pads replaced or refurbished when you can't get the original manufacturer to do it. This is proof positive. 

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