Having threatened to drop skis off for at least the last two seasons Roger finally walked the 20 metres from his house to the Cave to drop off his sons’ Atomics. His cunning plan is to use them himself so he brought a boot for setting up the bindings too.
As is so often the case they looked OK on a quick once over in the living room but the bright lights of the Cave often highlight defects that have been missed.
First the good news: even though they’re Atomics (a pair of newish Redsters and a pair of slightly more mature D2s) the bases were reasonably flat, so no need to plane them down as is so often the case with the Austrian planks.
However the D2s had a little secret: at some point one of the edges had split. 
Hard to see any peripheral damage to explain what insult actually caused the split; usually there is a gouge or bulge from the rock but I can’t really see any smoking gun here. What you can see, for technical interest, is a little burr at the bottom of the side edge to the left of the crack. These are the very devil to photograph and it’s good to see I snapped this one by accident.
Anyway, regular readers will know the pragmatic response to this type of damage comes in three steps:
- Pour some warm Araldite into the crack and leave for 48 hours
- File to approved angles
- Mark the ski, in this case left, to make sure the crack will always be on an outside edge in future.
Here’s the repaired crack, all sorted and shiny:
So once the D2s were organised the Redsters had a wee tale of their own to tell. Not quite so impressive but they had endured a little bump at some point, and this time the stone had left a bit of base damage too. See the way the light only reflects off half of this little section of edge:
That’s because the light is reflecting of the left hand side of the ding. It’s not massive but again, once it’s been filed into submission we need to mark up this ski so that the ding stays on an outside edge from now on.
Once the bindings are set up for Roger’s snazzy boots they’re all ready for collection. John’s wavey Factions and Myles’s Armadas are in the shot too but they were soooo easy to fettle, having been through the Cave already, that there’s really nowt to say about them.
