Ice house conduit poles stick together.

[Cheetah]

Hey guys, quick question (I hope). My flip over style portable ice house has a square conduit frame. Like other portables of this type, the vertical wall poles slide inside of one another so the house can be collapsed for transport. Some of these poles stick very badly now, which makes it difficult to put up or take down. I am considering swapping out the poles entirely, but am wondering if anyone else has any tips to help fix this?

thanks.

[cam7069]

Try polishing the conduit with 000 steel wool it worked for me.

[Jim Uran]

Are they bent, dented, twisted, etc???

[minneman]

I have an older otter with square poles, I found that L&M fleet had aluminum square tubing that was slightly biger than the larger/lower poles I had so I replaced them and straightened the tops, works great now.

[1DIRTBALL]

Spray the end's of your pole's liberally with silicone spray! You could also try waxing them with the same wax you use on your car. Good luck! 1DIRTBALL

[Fishin4fun_MN]

I have the same problem. Thanks for the Ideas.

[Tom7227]

I did the steel wool thing and also ran a brush down into the opening using a gun cleaning rod and brush. Silicon seemed to help a bit.

[Cheetah]

Hi guys, thanks for the ideas. I pulled the poles from one side of my ice house. They are all square poles, and I found that the ones that stick the worst when you look down the larger pole (bottom half) it is obvious that it has rubbed badly on the corners. Mine uses square poles, smaller pole is 13/16" outside width, and the bigger bottom poles are 13/16" inside width... There is very little difference, so this seems to be why the tolerance between poles is different enough to cause the rubbing and over time it now binds badly on some of them. I ran a 12ga bore brush down the inside of the bigger poles, plus some silicone and a paper towel to get any excess. I also used some fine grit sand paper on the smaller poles to try to get them to run better. All in all, on the ones that bind the most it didn't help at all.

Rather than trying to brush the poles enough to make the widths work better, I am going to see about switching the bottom poles to round 1/2" conduit that will slide inside the upper sections. That would prevent the corners from catching like they do currently. I will report back after I buy a length and try it, hopefully it will solve the problem for me.