zoltan

I really have a hard time believing the yellow springs are too stiff for fully softened Head boots. I'm a slight guy, and I even moved up to blue springs after finishing the mods. If you think the yellow are too soft, then there might be further modifications you still need to make to the boots.

You should check with Sean, but I'm pretty sure they're not needed on a new metal Donek with TD3s.

I'd say just go with Intuition or Thermoflex liners. They're cheaper, easier to mold, can be remolded, work great, and have worked very well for me and others.

If the OP pays a similar amount, I think a Coiler would very much be in play. In you think about it, a comparable Donek costs $1,000 USD, so a Coiler to the UK would only cost about $150 USD more shipped. That's really not that bad. OP, if the costs are similar, I think you should very strongly consider a Coiler. They're built custom for you, with the latest in material and shaping. In my opinion, a custom board will always ride better for you than an off-the-shelf board.

How much would customs be on an $850 USD board?

Do yourself, and your feet, and huge favor and put heat moldable liners in there. The stock liners are, in my opinion, extremely deficient. The heat moldables will fit better, be more comfortable, and be warmer.

In my opinion, you'll do a lot better modifying the boot to flex freely, and then relying on the BTS to control the flex.

The Heads are wider in the forefoot, but narrower in the heel than Deeluxe. A size 27 Head has the same width heel as a size 26 Deeluxe.

Is there any way you can just have two boards?

Remember that when you order a Coiler from Bruce, that it's custom made for you, how you ride, and how you want the board to feel. If you want a board with more pop, he can easily do that for you. I'd highly recommend emailing him and getting a conversation going.

In my experience, and the experience of all my friends, you need an insole. The heat moldable liner just that, a liner. It does not, and is not designed to, work as an insole.

Did you have a chance to ride the Silberpfeil this season? How was it?

I've managed to get a couple days on the boots now, and am quite happy with them now. In fact, I've stepped up to the blue BTS springs. The modifications were well worth it to me.

I wish I looked as good :(. How did the Axis break? I appreciate the offer, but due to not being very good, I'm always hesitant to ride with other people. Yeah, it's kind of a chick reason not to, but there you go. Saturday morning was surprisingly good, and once I switched over to my alpine setup I sent the rest of the day on Silver Streak. I wasn't planning on driving out there this weekend, since it looks like it'll be straight slush.

I saw you riding at Timberline last Saturday...

Word. Exact same here. It's when I get low that good things happen. I think it's a lot easier and natural to angulate when your knees are really bent. One of my jobs for this summer is doing a lot of squats and chairs against the wall to build up those muscles.

I originally owned an Incline, and then went to the Razor. I found the Razor could do everything the Incline could do, but I could just cruise on the Razor if I wanted to, while it seemed like I always needed to be on top of the Incline. The Razor also doesn't beat me up as much as the Incline in chop. The Razor's pointy nose and flat tail are cool. I'd say definitely go for the Razor. I have no experience with the Saber.

So? They're just one standard, and not one I've heard about before now. I know my Giro, for example, meets ASTM and CE standards (and I've heard of ASTM and CE), so that's good enough for me. It costs money to test and certify a helmet, so manufacturers usually pick the certifications which matter the most.

And you know they provide minimal protection how? You've been wrong about pretty much everything else regarding helmets, so where's your information coming from on this? One anecdotal claim about a 10 year old on a blue slope? If you want to say that you don't like current helmets and choose not to wear one, that's fine, that's your opinion. But I take exception to you giving bad information as fact, especially on something like helmets. I see that a lot as well, the most common one being the helmet kicked way back on the head, exposing the forehead (you see this with bike helmets all the time as well), which doesn't help you if you pitch forward. In my experience, most parents also aren't aware that once a helmet takes a hard impact, it's ability to protect from another hard impact in the same location is greatly diminished.

The fact is, you don't have enough information to determine what actually happened there. There are a lot of variables which can't be accounted for, and the forces acting on someone head even in a small fall can become quite large. Remember, two years ago Natasha Richardson died from head trauma after a fall on the bunny slope during a ski lesson. I think a better question would be, if that was damage happened with the use of a helmet, would she have even been alive without one?

Where does the energy go? Into the crushed foam. Energy is energy, and having something absorb it, other than your head, is the key. The foam is hard to crush, therefore it absorbs more energy. Soft padding is easy to crush, therefore it absorbs much less energy. In an impact all the soft padding is rapidly compressed, absorbing almost no energy, and then your head impact the hard shell, and virtually all the energy is transfered directly to your head. This point isn't really open for debate. It's fact, proven by years of testing and product development across various industries. Your problem is you're vastly under estimating the how much energy the foam can absorb, and vastly over estimating how much energy your soft padding can absorb. B the way, your example is useless, as the weights and energies are so far off.

Do they even make UPM SBX boards?

That's not always a good thing. How much energy a helmet is capable of absorbing needs to be matched to the activity it's involved in. For example, my motorcycle helmet is capable of absorbing a lot more energy than my bicycle helmet, but because of that, it also transfer more energy to my head in lower impact situations. Because of that, if I go over the bars of my bike with my motorcycle helmet, it's going to hurt me more than with a bicycle helmet. With a higher impact helmet, you're usually buying ability to keep you alive at higher impacts at the cost of more injury and pain at lower ones. This was illustrated nicely in 2005 when a Snell vs. DOT comparison article was released: http://www.motorcyclistonline.com/gearbox/motorcycle_helmet_review/index.html For the record, I keep riding a Snell helmet because I'd rather be more hurt than more dead.

What a bunch of crap. Aside from snowboarding I ride bicycles and motorcycles, and both of those sports have good helmet standards in place. My snowboard helmet shares its basic design with them, with an exterior shell with a thick expanded polystyrene foam interior. That "very rigid foam" is designed to compress on impact, absorbing the energy. It has to be rigid and thick because there's a lot of energy to absorb in a big impact. A cushioned lining isn't going to absorb much impact energy, it's simply going to rapidly compress, and then transfer the impact energy to the head. The soft lining is more comfortable though. Snow sport helmets are primarily designed to absorb energy, not to prevent punctures. If that was the goal, they'd be using a thicker shell, and a lot less foam.

Oh man, are you in for a treat! :)