Martin has been a loyal client of the Cave for a few years now and regular readers may remember his Capita DOA from a previous post. He dropped off the DOA plus a couple of baby boards for some early-season fettling. It’s always a pleasure to work on gear when it’s still above freezing – hint hint.
The DOA looked pretty good but had some rust and a couple of small nicks in one of the edges so unlike last time when I just gave the (brand new) edges a light once over this time they got a proper seeing to. Capita claim base and side edges are both 1.5 degrees but inspection last time revealed the side edges were 1 degree at the edge and 2 degrees right next to the base – so yes 1.5 degrees on average I suppose. This time it was necessary to clean up the side edges properly so they are a nice shiny 2 degrees now with no sign of the striations that had been left by the grinder that Capita used for the (somewhat peremptory) factory set.
One of the baby boards is a Burton with straightforward 1 degree base & side edges, like almost all snowboards, but the other board (an APO – had to look that one up) had, bizarrely, 1.5 base & side edges, definitely today’s quirky choice. Both the baby boards had noticeably concave bases, not worth fixing for a beginner board, but the APO also had one edge sunk very slightly below the level of the base. In practice this just means that we end up filing some of the base when we file the base edges – nothing critical, just another symptom of banging out low-cost boards as cheaply as possible. As noted previously no-one makes 1.5 degree side edge file guides so the board now boasts shiny 2 degree edges just like quirky uncle Capita.
Finally just a quick note that Andrii, one of my Ukrainian guests, has been training in the Cave and the baby Burton was his first completely solo job. Hopefully the improved flow of equipment after the last 2 wilderness years will give him plenty to get on with while I make some hay in the enhanced oil price environment.