jrsands66 – Page 4 – ManCave Services

Jonny’s bump

Jonny dropped off his K2 board along with his lady friend’s Salomon. Both of them had seen some base ripping action:

Jonny’s base is pretty mashed but most gouges are longitudinal. The photo doesn’t really show the washed out, scratchy white effect that he has managed to achieve. Take it from me it looks very tired.

Ms Jonny’s board just has slashes all over it in every direction. As you’ll know by now there are few things more likely to cheer up a tech’s day than having to fill gouges in a black/white/colour repeating base. Here it is with a kilo of repair P-tex in it:

And the next photo shows the base once it has been scraped flat. For once I nailed all the gouges first time and and the base didn’t need a second bite of the base iron to get it sorted:

Still looks dull because the base hasn’t been restructured and there’s no wax yet. However it’s nice & smooth to the touch. And I’m knee deep in P-tex shavings.

Jonny’s board mainly had longways scratches, which normally I leave as they just become part of the structure. However some of them were just too deep to leave so they got some clear & colourless P-Tex:

But Jonny’s main issue is at the end of the board, not the middle. Who knows what the impact looked like but the outcome was a comedy duck bill. Hard to photograph but check out the reflected light on the first snap to get a feel for the degree of bentness:

Now this poses a problem as it is only slightly delaminated and not falling to pieces. If it was more knackered it would be a case of cutting out the P-Tex, bending the edge back, reassembling and gluing. However, it’s not too bad so let’s see if we can just apply Araldite, brute force & wishful thinking:

In order to encourage the edge to roll back into a better angle the top sheet former is actually a spade handle.

It all seemed to be holding at first – here’s the excess epoxy waiting to be cut off:

However the snow gods weren’t smiling on this occasion and the edge managed to pull the scoop back open again, so the edge had to be taught a lesson. Edges are really easy to bend when they’re sitting on the bench – you can easily curl them up if you need to send a few metres to Aberdeen from the factory in Central Europe – but once an edge is glued into a sandwich of four or five layers of wonder material to make a board it all gets a bit harder. Finally the deed was done and the scoop re-glued, but the teeth marks from the various gripping tools can be made out by a discerning eye:

However it is pretty straight, tightly glued up and should withstand all but the roughest handling. As well as having slick, flat, waxed bases & lovely sharp edges, the bases have recovered the original colours that they had in the shop instead of the washed out look:

Priors

Ali dropped off her Rossis and brought Mr. Ali along to hand over his Priors in person. I’ve read about Priors (hand made in Whistler) but these are the first ones I’ve had my gloves on.

First impressions: they share some DNA with DPS skis – nice uncluttered tops & bases, thin, light. Flat. The bases are hard and don’t melt as soon as they see the base doc iron. However, obviously, they could have used proper black P-Tex for the bases instead of wishy-washy blue.

Also, DPS make sure the owner doesn’t need to shave his sidewalls. And they tune the edge by hand before selling them. Prior hand over rather wiggly edges, which resisted all attempts to photograph. They’re sorted now though.

Ali’s Rossi’s were pretty nice but had some existing ham fisted base repairs from a P-Tex candle. Did my best but really it’s best to avoid putting that low boiling point mince into your bases if you can.

Staggering to the exit

Julian dropped off a family of skis before his Easter ski trip. Here they are all shined up:

They look great and Julian can hold his head high in the baggage reclaim area as he drags them to the transfer bus with his wife & kids racing ahead, not offering any support whatsoever (maybe that’s just my family).

However closer inspection reveals that the daddy Völkls are actually on their last legs.

Take a quick look at the base when it arrived at the Cave:

That wee nick only had to dig down about half a millimetre to reach the wooden core. It looks like the Völkl design team cut weight by using skinny P-Tex. The edges are also skinny.

So once the holes are filled and scraped we get a chance to step back and…

Oof! See the black tabs from the edges shining through the P-Tex? You can feel the lumps along the edge. Not much life left there.

Sadly the edges are already disappearing down the side so although we would normally prescribe a base grind to bring everything down then reset the edges there simply ain’t no base left to play with. Tricky.

So I carried on and finished the job but there’s only one more holiday left in these puppies I’m afraid.

Finally, and I’m not pointing the finger here, Julian mentioned that he has an edging guide & file that he swipes over the edges from time to time. All I’m going to say is that you really, really need to spend an extra few quid on a sidewall planer. And you need to use it, at least once per edge. Just sayin’…

Weekly round up

In between the snowy weather and my recurring trips away from Aberdeen it’s all been a bit hectic and taking photos tends to be the first thing that is cut when it’s getting frantic. So I was pleased to see that I did remember to take a couple of snaps of things that caught my eye.

Brian’s F1 Rip’n’Wuds:

Brian bought these very expensive skis on a whim on holiday last season but felt they were a little bit flexy underfoot so he scoured the dark web for someone who could supply a couple of plates of woven carbon fibre. Our favourite tech guru Jon Coster at the Piste Office fitted them for Brian. To be honest it doesn’t really matter if they make any difference to the handling, the plates look gorgeous.

I can’t even remember what brand these skies were, but this comedy whisker of white P-tex cheered me up as I tried to sort out the rest of the base which had been sanded at some point in the past as part of an in-resort service. Sanding P-tex always results in fur on the base which is a pain in the neck to remove, so if you’re ever tempted to try it please don’t. The skis came up quite nicely in the end but I forgot to get the phone out for the “after” picture:

Lesley brought a load of equipment in for a service and all was going well until the edges on her Dynastars were subject to inspection. You can see on the left that the edges were waving in & out a bit. I sometimes wonder if there’s a ski servicing tool that is actually designed to leave this hopeless finish. Anyway it left the edge significantly hardened, and once through the hardening it became clear that the edge was less than one degree:

If the bottom of the edge (side nearer the base) doesn’t get touched by the file in a one degree edge guide then the edge must be less than one degree. You can see the dark strip next to the base bevel in this photo. Again, who knows what the last guy thought he was doing or if he applies any sort of quality assurance to the equipment before it goes out the door. Anyway, loads of elbow grease later the edge looked as its creator intended it to – straight, shiny and one degree all the way along:

Sadly another pair of the skis Lesley dropped off had suffered the same treatment. Not only is is a drag for me to break through the hardening – the first edge alone took 25 minutes to get back to a decent state – it means I have to take off more steel than I want to get back to the proper bevel. Anyway, they should be much better to use now.

Finally, these three boards were dropped off in varying states of wear. They all left in good shape, although Aidan’s Salomon has been “repaired” by someone with a black P-Tex drip candle in the past which has left it streaked with black as though it had been attacked with a sharpie.

I’m really not a fan of drip candles as you can’t warm the base first, the P-tex is extra soft and the person applying the P-tex gets lungfuls of toxic smoke. When you need to repair over an old drip candle repair the candle P-tex will start to boil before the decent quality, stiffer, higher melt point stuff techs use is even melted, which makes getting a good repair a pain in the neck. Apart from that, all three boards had good flat bases and came up very nicely. Tor’s Nitro is a lovely piece of kit, except for the silver foil that they decided would look good on the base but doesn’t make repairing scratches any easier.

That’s it for now, more entries when I’m back from my travels on 26th March.

Busy weekend

It’s that time of year where I’m too busy working to take photos, so if you see your gear in the pictures and would like to leave a comment please do. Just a note to Susan – the 90 minute turnaround on the Gnu was an artifact and not a promise for future performance 🙂

Eddie’s Basic (again)

Eddie dropped off his Yes Basic for a repair recently, then spent about 30 milliseconds riding at Nevis range before yanking some more plastic:

So we’re down to the tabs on the edge here, usually better left inside the board. Nothing too serious, but we’re working with coloured base P-tex rather than sensible old black, so whatever we do is going to look a bit rubbish – rather like someone getting a burn and needing a skin graft, looks OK unless you have a tattoo in the area of interest.

Anyway as we’re down to the metal we need to weld in some clear & colourless metal-grip followed by some clear & colourless P-tex on top – metal-grip doesn’t grab wax worth a damn. Let’s face it clear P-tex repairs always look horrible as you can gaze right into the heart of the board:

I’d finished the repair & waxed the board up before I realised that I actually have a lime green P-tex repair strip lurking in the bottom of the repairs bucket. However, based on recent statistics it will only be a few days before Eddie is back at the door with more eye-watering damage to the board – we’ll get it next time.

It was interesting to see how the previous repair is holding up – pretty well if I say so myself. A tiny strip of Araldite has dropped out, but that’s better replaced with more flexible P-tex anyway:

Looking good despite the bashing the rest of the board has received

Tom’s Volkls

Tom dropped off a pair of used Völkl tourers and some new Rossi Soul 7s. Naturally that invites comparisons between the two. I’m a fan of Völkls – never seen a pair I wouldn’t be happy to own – but the Soul 7s are gorgeous and like most men I’m a sucker for a pretty face.

So let’s cut to the chase and start scoring.

Flatness – both sets spot on. 1 point each.

Base abuse – Völkls definitely have the edge here as Tom has battered them to death.

Nothing that can’t be fixed but some attention required, including that wee spot where we’re down to the steel.

So we’ll call that Völkls 1, Rossis 0

Edges. Tricky. Let’s start with the Rossis. Brand new, so like a lot of skis they have a shabby grinder job on the edges:

Looks a bit rubbish? That’s because it is

Now I understand that if you’re competing against “race to the bottom” Decathlon skis you need to cut a few corners, but Rossi have pretty much stopped European production for all but their very top skis so they’re paying someone in China or Vietnam a dollar a day to chuck the skis through the grinder, so perhaps they could go crazy and teach that guy to change the wheels when they’re worn out? You can actually see not just the striations on the edge but the bumps right on the very edge. Run your thumb down the very edge and it goes “zizz”. It can be fixed – here is the same edge after a bit of TLC:

Sadly the Völkls were a bit rubbish as well, with lumpy grinder marks but also one edge on each ski sitting at about two degrees and the other sitting at about three degrees. Not only does this waste my time but I have to decide where to leave them for the client. In this case three degrees won, despite the Völkl standard being 2 degrees. Less steel was sacrificed getting to 3.

So the score for edges is -2 for both skis.

Weight: Völkls are bigger in all dimensions but weigh less so 2 points.

Waxing was a doddle for both with their lovely flat bases, and it’s hard to tell new from old once they’re finished:

Völkl left, Rossi right

So the winner is definitely Tom for having these great skis in his quiver. I’d take the Völkls if pushed.

Colin again

Colin was my first customer and has probably been the most loyal with various sets of skis coming through the shop and plenty of recommendations to his mates.

One thing I really like about Colin is that fact that, despite spending the sort of money on skis and bindings that could buy you a flat in Torry, he’s not frightened to ski the nuts off his kit. Naturally that leads to a few minor dings:

But fear not, DPS know a thing or two about skis and use rufty-tutfy P-tex, probably 7200 or higher, if it exists. So while that means the repair P-tex takes a while to weld in, it also means it’s staying there for good. You just need to remember that there isn’t really anywhere for excess heat to go on these super lightweight carbon fibre skis so be vigilant.

DPS are the only people I know who hand-tune skis at the factory, which makes tuning them an absolute breeze. Like most manufacturers they’ve parted company with stainless edges, so even if the edges are worse for wear you can get them back in shape fairly easily without wearing out all your files. They even cut back the sidewall polythene above the steel edges so that your overworked local tech doesn’t need to do it himself.

It goes without saying that the bases are perfectly flat and, despite the very thin skis there’s no “pull through” of binding screws. Unlike half the snowboards I see that have “wax wells” under the bindings…

So it’s the same old story – you can have as much fun on your Decathlon skis as Colin has on his DPSs – they’re only a bit heavier, and a bit softer, and a bit more flexi – but you won’t have the feeling of innate superiority as you pile out of the chopper into the unknown…

Neil’s stable of skis

Spurred on by Ally’s recent shop full of skis, Neil thought he’d go one better and bring in five pairs for attention. And attention is what they sorely needed – have a look at this typical gouge:

Or this rusty edge (blending into the wooden plank for the vice so it looks a bit odd):

At the risk of sounding like I’m giving a lecture, please try to dry off your gear after a day out. You can see in the snap above the water staining from the binding sneaking down to the edge – this is where the water was hiding when Neil left the skis to stew in his roofbox. Even without getting the entire edge back to bright metal, see how much steel had to come off a single edge:

You’ve paid for all that metal and it won’t last forever, so please try to get busy with the tissues once you leave the slopes. I know all your mates with their rental gear just dump it and head to the bar but sometimes you have to suffer a little for the gear you love – just ask anyone who’s had a classic car.

One wee point to make if you find yourself surrounded by budding skiers and are tempted to buy everyone their own planks – you might want to consider getting skis with the same base & edge bevels. Neil’s planning to return for a lesson and he’ll be finding out then that the Dynastars are 1,1 the K2s 1,2 and the Atomics 1,3 so he’ll be buying three edge guides to keep on top of everything. Don’t bother buying a variable edging tool – they fill up with swarf from the bastard file and water from the diamond files and you can probably guess what happens after that. Get the edge guides the pros use – simple aluminium ones.

Here is the line up after the base wax has been scraped, patiently waiting with the rest of the backlog for their top coat then the finished article ready for collection:

Martin’s NeverSummer

As noted earlier, Martin handed in his good board (“Alpine Board” rather than “Scottish Board”) a few days ago. It was interesting in that it’s a banana board, all rocker rather than camber:

All rocker?

Or is it? Maybe a bit of hybrid going on there? Very hard to see/photograph:

Or a bit of hybrid going on?

Anyway it was a pleasure to work on, with very few little base nicks that were sorted in a few seconds. The edges had been either hand tuned at the factory or else someone had done them properly sometime, so they just required a bit of diamond filing and gummi stone to bring them to (nearly) mirror finish. Very satisfying. Even the bases just took a polite sip of base wax, rather than gulping down gallons of the stuff, indicating that the board might even have been waxed sometime.

Here it is after a good polish. And Martin explained when he picked it up that it is hybrid rocker, not pure banana. Lovely piece of kit.