aside from skiing the hell out of a ski, what's the best way to decamber one? i've been storing them base to base with 2 straps keeping them flat. should i be laying them on the floor and placing weights on them? heat/moisture? any ideas?
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aside from skiing the hell out of a ski, what's the best way to decamber one? i've been storing them base to base with 2 straps keeping them flat. should i be laying them on the floor and placing weights on them? heat/moisture? any ideas?
how about storing base to base with a block of wood at tips, block of wood at tails, and clamping them together in the middle (forcing into a reverse camber)?
As a guy that just bent a GS ski back to straight...... It takes ALOT to change the shape permanently. The idea about the blocks at the tips and tail might work, but you would need big blocks. Seriously like 10 inches thick. Stapping them together base to base will do nothing. Ever. If you leave them like that for 5 years and take the stap off, they still be like new.
I play with composite (carbon & fiberglass) toy airplanes, and when a wing or a fuselage gets a twist, we fix it by the following procedure:
- wet a towel and heat in the microwave until you can barely handle it
- quickly wrap the hot towel around the offending part
- twist the part back into shape or a little past
- allow to cool while holding in position
I believe that the heat allows the epoxy resin in the composite to creep, and it then re-sets when it cools.
I'm guessing that ski construction is similar enough that a similar procedure could work for you. Ski construction is definitely heavier and more robust, so you may not be able to dump enough heat into the ski with a hot, wet towel. A heat gun or a waxing iron might do the job. You probably ought to err on the side of too little heat rather than too much while you're figuring it out.
I was removed the camber (accidently) to a pair of GS skis by waxing them with a very hot iron.
Man...How hot was it?Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr.Evil
thanks for the ideas. i think i'll start with the reverse camber clamp and see how that goes. maybe i'll put a radiant hearter underneith to speed it up. i'll take measurements and report back the change relative to time clamped for those interested.
huge camber bros?
go out east - find resort with those nasty little tight ass bumps, get out of shape, land in canyon between two bumps - VIOLA! Decamber.
Then junk your carvers cause they are now useless.
thanks for the trip down expensive memory lane.
try heat and alot of bending
heat with heat gun 6" away and heat untill the heat comes thru the other side
Sell em and get some skis you like?
:biggrin: Sounds just right!Quote:
Originally Posted by phUnk
along phUnk's line of suggestion...
What ski on the market has too much camber? most skis seem to have NO camber nowadays.
how are they in pow?
De-cambering a ski is a bad idea. As you will decrease the skis strength dramatically.
Heat can be used to soften the ski, however skis are made with epoxy wich is a thermoset meaning that it can not be simply re-heated and remolded. All that heat does is increase the chance for creep in the composite wich will seriously weaken the ski, and it will not cause it to permantly take on a new shape, but just make it more flexible. Secondly you are very likely to damage the base material in the process.
Normal wood-core, fiberglass ski breaks in from it's original camber a fair amount and then "settles" to a point where it will remain for a long time. Anyone designing a ski they want to last a long time will take that into account and make a ski that's overcambered when new. Anyone that wants a ski to feel great from day 1 will design it with the right amount of camber, but it will feel dead after it settles. I personally wouldn't do the heat and bending, because that effectively resets the starting point (at best, and risks damaging the ski at worst), rather than settling the ski faster. On the other hand if you break them in from repeated flexing (uh, de-cambering...) they'll settle with a decent amount of camber and stay there for a long long time.
Burton actually purposefully builds their boards with too much camber, then cycles them a few thousand times to settle them to the proper amount of camber, where they stay. If you start at the optimum, you end up with a dead board after a season or so.
Just decambering them and holding them there also won't do anything... they need to be cycled. You can either rig up some kind of robot-machinery thing like Burton, or you could just get out and ski a lot of bumps and powder.
thanks flip,
i'm actually only expecting a season out of any ski that i own. i ski a lot of different conditions and expect my skis to react predictably to the unpredictable. if my skis have a speed limit in pow, that's not good. i can't afford to take a digger, in pow of all things, above a cliff band or on a slide path. the decambering is just a way to give the ski a head start on being a good all around ski for the rest of this season.
Thanks, flip. Nice to hear from someone who knows of this.
APD - you just posted. I'm assuming you're talking about the Bros. I'm making a batch of 188s with less camber this go around and taller tips. Once you get up around 200 degrees, the resin will degrade. Weights on them between tip and tail will expedite the settling best.
flip knows what he's talking about assuming that camber on a powder ski is a good idea to begin with. Seriously, it's the future. I asked the 8-ball.Quote:
Originally Posted by splat
Interesting, I skied with two maggots at canyons and they were both on this years bros, which did seem to have alot of camber, however, both said they kill it in the powder and didn't notice any problems skiing fast through the powder. Not to mention i couldn't keep up with either on the groomers, they were carving, while with the rossi axioms i struggled to get up on edge.
I understand reverse camber, but deliberately taking camber out of a cambered ski has got to be a bad idea. Camber is designed into the ski for a reason ansd turning the boards into flat noodles can't be what you're after.
Fast skiers are fast skiers. Some things just work better... The whole point of a fat ski is to float -- camber inherently causes the tips to dive. When you arc a turn in pow, the tips and tails will flex upwards anyways. With flat camber, you don't have to fight thru the postitive camber. And camber is good on groomers, but if you want to slay the groomers, get some race skis.Quote:
Originally Posted by lph
so even stiff skis with alot of camber will decamber in soft pow? seems like there shouldn't be enough resistance there. I don't know, i am just asking.Quote:
Originally Posted by BakerBoy
but what you are saying about the flat camber is probably why i don't fatigue skiing all day on the spats in powder.
To a point, yes. Everytime you load up a ski in a turn/carve, you are flexing the ski, which is decambering it. But if you aren't strong/heavy enough to properly flex a ski, then that ski will pretty much sink to the bottom. Which is why a super-stiff Bro skis considerably different than a soft Bro. Otherwise, it wouldn't matter how much you weighed, nor how aggressively you skied.Quote:
Originally Posted by lph
Reverse camber skis are the ultimate crud skis because your tips won't dive into the crap so much, and lets you power over the top of it. They are also the ultimate cliff hucking skis since they auto resurface (another problem with excessive positive camber), and I'm claiming that the Pontoon will probably be the BEST ever as of now.
Flat is just as different as postive or negative camber. The Spatula is reverse camber all the way thru - the Pontoon is flat for 2/3rd's of the ski, the reverse towards the shovel. More versatile.
Oh, I'm not making a judgement about what the right amount of camber is... I'm just saying don't start cooking your skis.Quote:
Originally Posted by BakerBoy
Go right ahead.Quote:
Originally Posted by Highway Star
If it's worth anything, a certain K2 sponsored athelete was seen yesterday with a pair of maiden AK's that were bent like Spatulas. He told me he bent them himself.
Like most of you, I read in the SIA thread that 4Front was coming out with a flat ski (no camber). Have any of you laied eyes on, or, better yet, skied this plank?
because wood is incapable of being bent and holding a shape?Quote:
Originally Posted by Highway Star
K2 made a bunch of prototypes of Pontoons out of the Made'n mold.Quote:
Originally Posted by BlurredElevens
APD - A thought: you might try putting a section of 2x4 between the tips & tails and then using a good strap to hold the underfoot section of the bases together
or...cycle them a bunch using 4x4 blocks in your livingroom while watching the tube.
If Race Stock wants to delete all his comments that's fine but can we please stop quoting them and responding? thanks
lb,
so far, i've been taking it slow and have only used a 2x4 at tip/tail as pictured (2" side between them). i haven't used any heat with them yet, since i want to take it slow. quick changes don't seem to be very good for normally stiff/strong objects (i just re-read this, no pun intended). they are losing about .5mm of camber per 8-10 hrs. that's about 4mm since i've begun. when base to base, i plan to get them to within .5-1" of camber under foot.
http://www.biglines.com/photos/norma...ines_51684.jpg
i love the ski the way they are on the groomers but want to tweak them for pow. part of the problem is that i'm mounted +6mm due to the freeride binding hole pattern. i opted to move back but then the holes for the heel were in the way.
seen the same at alta on big days this year. They don't seem to be pontoons, didn't seem to have the girth in the tip. But I didn't walk up and fondle them either. These had only had camber (reverse) in the tip.Quote:
Originally Posted by BlurredElevens
I stand corrected... I guess cycling isn't necessary. That's what I get for assuming wood laminates act the same metals and fiber composites alone. Good to know, thanks.Quote:
Originally Posted by AltaPowderDaze
What am I missing on this camber with the Bros? Yeah, I noticed right away that my new Bros had a lot of camber, vs, say, my DPs. But I'm crazy about them in every condition from deep pow to funky North Idaho crud to hard pack getting from point A to point B. My tips aren't diving, I'm not struggling. Shit, they plow through everything. Maybe it's because I remember when people used to worry about their skis decambering and had to store them with the wood blocks under the bindings, but I'm not seeing the camber here as a negative, beyond that it just looks kind of weird. I don't know that I'd be experimenting on brand new Bros to take the camber out of them; I think you'll just tear them up. My $.02.
so far, the inverted snow or breakable crust has been the main problem with excess camber.Quote:
Originally Posted by lingcod
i haven't seen many people with skis wider than 60mm underfoot that are overly concerned about camber. i don't park ski, so i'm not in need of pop for the kickers or boosting out of the pipe. i don't bang gates so again no need to be pushed from edge to edge, though it is nice on the groomers.Quote:
Originally Posted by lingcod
if you'll notice, mine are mounted with a binding that isn't common at resorts. these aren't meant to be my end all quiver of onebut rather a ski that can do perform well in most conditions. powder and survival turns take precedence over maching down the double black corduroy. maybe i just haven't figured out how to ski this stuff they call powder. i figure that if this doesn't work out, i can always attach a couple of these floaties to the tips for the inverted days.Quote:
Originally Posted by lingcod
http://www.thousandoaksracquetclub.c...s/floaties.jpg
Great.
Now you guys have tempted me enough to take some clamps and a heat gun to my favorite pair of skis [madens].
:ass puckers up:
This should be interesting. :(
freakin old skool norida shwister bums...heh.Quote:
Originally Posted by lingcod
thank you for that moment of reminiscence.
bump, APD or anyone else, how did this work out? Are you still skiing them? I thought I might have seen you at the 'bird last week but I was on Germ.
My first gen aspen soft bros are submarines (note to others, the new bros do not have this camber issue), mounted on the line with freerides. I've put 20ish days on them, and they still dive in the low density stuff. On Castle this weekend I never did get them to surface and ended up switching back to Seths. I tried to get them up to speed and flex the ski to surface them, but the powder was just too light.
The camber is awesome for the spring, but not so great right now.
Even thicker powder is alot of work compared to my Seth's. Both have are mounted at about the same point and have close to the same running length, so I think it's mostly the stiffness / camber holding me back.
I got some Nordica Supercharger Blowers and they had a lot of camber, but more importantly, one had way more camber than the other. It was a noticeable difference, and while it didn't cause any problems skiing, it did annoy me.
So I decided to go the home decamber route. I suspended the ski between two boxes and added some weight to the middle. It was enough to create a reverse camber bend in the ski. I left it like this for about 9 hours.
Results were achieved. I reduced the camber by about 1.5mm. They are more even now. So it works. Maybe.
1.5mm of camber is noticeable? I would have a hard time even measuring that...Quote:
Originally Posted by descender