Bruce Varsava

Wolf: The original message did state that I am willing to pick up and ship Bid on(-: If bidding doesn't get real high, I'll buy it back and use it as a demo. I was getting mixed messages about when the auction was to end but the final answer is: Midnight Thursday BV

Well if anyone is looking for a possible good deal on a softboot carving board this maybe a chance. I donated a 161 BXFR to a local radio station and it is now up for auction. I didn't give them any dimensions so no one really knows what it is and therefore as it stands now the price is $62 cdn. Auction ends this Friday but not sure what time as the radio is saying 5 pm but the auction shows Dec 14 12:00 am whatever that means. I am willing to pick it up and ship for the cause if required. I could possibly even change the topsheet but would have to charge $100 for that operation. Boards specs are : 161 BXFR 26.3 wide sidecut 7.5/9.5/8.5m Adjusted to 180 lbs Hopefully this gets the price up a bit as it is for a kids Xmas fund. Good luck! There is a guy at the station who is bidding on it and he may get surprised if anyone on this forum is interested(-; Link to the auction is below BV https://rock95.com/?page_id=75832?auction_id=51

Now that I'm so far behind schedule I have to be brief. Story goes like this About a month ago I'm pondering how to even start to transfer all my designs to .4 and also realize that some of them may well just not happen. I previously had purchased 150 kgs of the .4 for testing and to start producing if things go well. So I send the good old begging and pleading email to the supplier mentioning that it will be tough if not impossible to build for lightweights like kids, women and even the Para atheletes I deal with may be out of luck. Ten days go by so I figure I'm pretty much not going to see it and then BINGO! I get a message saying the rep pulled a few strings and they now have a 3600 kg coil available but it still need to be anodized so its still a few months before I get it. Possibly have enough left from my last purchase to keep me going till then. How it appeared I didn't ask and don't really need to know. They did up the min order to 1200 kgs so I am purchasing 1500 kg ( about $50 grand cdn) and will split it with others in need. Keeping half for myself which will last me about 4 seasons at which time it may well be retirement for me if I stay healthy enough to work that long. The shelf life issue has some interesting findings. Late last season I remembered I had a few sheets of .4, .5, and .6 sent to me as samples from about 7 years ago. It was in a slightly ripped up cardboard box covered in ripped plastic. In other words certainly not meticulously stored to keep moisture out. So I build 2 x .4 boards last season and they are 100% fine. There was some very slight discoloration near the edges of the sheets which get cut off anyways. After seeing that I'm confident 5 years is easily achievable especially when stored with the desiccant pouches as it is when it is shipped. Its a lot more robust that we all had originally thought. Since the anodizing is somewhat porous as that is how the epoxy sticks to it, that is the concern as you don't want it exposed to the elements as then the metal can start to oxidize. So for now I can relax in regards to the .4 development as no need to rush. I feel it certainly has potential for more aggressive riders who want less twist and more grip. I have a nice new 174 Energy .4 demo sitting beside me waiting for testing which should happen next week as we are finally going to see some winter around here. All in all it has somewhat been a tough season start for me with my printer just being evil. Problem ended up being one bottle of bad ink which had microscopic crystals in it despite being new. Threw me off for sure. Also I was not planning to work so hard this season as the lack of material should have eased my schedule but obviously that plan got changed. OK, I did extend my summer vacation a bit too much also(-: So now looking forward to carrying on with refining the .3 boards even more and getting going on the .4 development. Of course will also be doing hybrids of .3/.4 as that may add just a bit more grip for those who want boards to hang on that little bit more without locking in too hard. So sorry for the delays happening around here but its just going to be a weird season with so much going on. Looking forward to a bit more organized scheduling once things settle down a bit. BTW, its a long shot but I'm considering selling the business if anyone wants to become a rock star snowboard builder . It wouldn't go cheap and has extensive amounts of good build info with excellent potential for someone with more energy than an old dude like myself. Would have to go to the right person though! Given the right situation, it would allow things to carry on after I'm out. BV

Not much progress made yet on the acquisition of .3mm but I'm still busy building and no time to spend on the phone. BTW I did build a metal board in 1999 ish. Used 6061 and the racer using it said it was the best board he rode until we found out it lasted half a day and lost all its camber. No internet yet so didn't know about Titanal. Mark Fawcett was the driving factor behind that build as he was onto me in 1998 to do it. I dropped the project after that. So now you know whey we can't use any inferior alloys. If I would have known about Titanal we most likely would have been on metal boards a lot sooner! Another funny part to the story was I had a set of Fischer Racing Cut 203s sitting in the corner of my shop. I could see they had aluminum in them ( 1.5mm top and 1 mm bottom) and could almost bend the tip at 90 degrees and they would spring right back. Of course I was wondering WTF is that stuff? I first heard about Titanal in 2004 after a race Jasey was in where it was solid ice and all the top positions were on Kesslers using the Titanal stuff. No one else stood a chance. Did make a .4mm board and tested it in rather miserable conditions and I would say it was OK but lacked a few of the characteristics you guys are all spoiled with. Definitely shows potential especially for more aggressive riders. I feel boards for lighter and less aggressive riders and BX boards will be a bit tough to sort out though. As of now it looks like an order of .4mm will be split among the Cdn builders so we can get to work with it. As mentioned, Prior has used this in their alpine boards but not BX boards. So it may work out quite well with a bit of testing and development. Its not like starting from scratch as the trick will be to come up with a transition formula to take the designs from .3 to .4 and I feel that would take me all of about a week or two to sort out satisfactorily. I'll be working on that next winter and slowing production down due to the lack of .3mm ( only about 70 boards of material not accounted for) BV

I have all the answers(-: Except how to buy .3mm Titanal I'll write up what I know when I get a few minutes but believe it or not, right now I'm about to assemble a 174 Nirvana Energy with .4 I had a few samples sent about 7 or 8 years ago when working on 270cm+ skis for the ice windsurfing crowd. Never did proceed with that and have .4, .5 and .6 thickness , 4 pcs of each. Used some of the thick stuff for tooling but had all 4 sheets of .4. Now I know what you're thinking and yes, it still appears to be plenty good for bonding. It was stored half ass correctly but the bag it was in did have some rips. Very little discoloration compared to the new stuff I have in stock now. This is at least partly good news as I would not be scared to get a 5 or so year supply now. You just need to keep moisture out as it can penetrate the anodized coating and oxidize the metal. Prelim bond test has totally positive results. Should be testing the board on Sunday as after that weatherman says all I will be riding is motorcycles OUCH! BV

Have already built some for overseas markets. Pretty well along on the development and will certainly finalize over this season

Now that I am over the stress of working on that site I can let you know whats up. Had difficulty loading it due to some server issues but its somewhat working now. There are still a few issues with viewing it in different formats, however the info is there and there are a few new things going on. Most of the boards have been around and as always, are under continuous development. The BX and Softboot program is probably the latest project and its finally nice to see that and all other things I have going on in one place. Another new program is I have about 40 boards which are pre built and ready for quick delivery. Hopefully this reduces my workload during peak season as I want more time to ride! Still need to check stiffness on all those boards and post that but they range from about 150 to 200lbs as I tried to make a decent assortment of all the boards I know work very well. Eventually hope to get a new order form on as well but for now I need to get into the shop and do what I do best. If there are any glaring issues with it, please email me to let me know whats up so I can get a few more gray hairs trying to sort things out! Cheers, BV

OK now its getting personal and since we have a night off at ECES I can put in my opinions. Firstly I feel failure due to what can be considered normal usage and failure due to abnormal stresses are not to be put into the same category as some here seem so quickly to do so. Every year I do have a few boards break but under circumstances which this certainly can be expected ( mostly crashes) Boards may be made of wood but if you look closely you may also notice they have other things put onto and into them to reinforce the wood in many ways. I can proudly say that in the last 4 seasons since releasing Titanal boards you could count my number of warranty related replacements on one hand. As a matter of fact, if I screwed up on my bandsaw and cut off all my fingers ( including thumb) you could still count the warranty issues on that hand! Yes ZERO. While I may have walked through a forest and seen a downed tree, I have never seen one properly wrapped in Titanal and glass/carbon have any troubles(-: Failures in the binding areas can and should be able to be eliminated as it is such a small area that reinforcement in that area does not add much weight. Having a set of inserts pull out while riding aggressively is something that we should strive to never let happen as it can happen at bad times and possibly have bad consequences. Fortunately most of the problem are not catastrophic to the rider as the top skin of the board will almost always hold things together. However it is catastrophic to the board and can certainly spoil the day of a rider who figures he did nothing wrong. There is always a bit of friction between board builders and hardware manufacturers as they can bring out a new product which has unknown stresses on the boards and we do not have the time to do long term testing which may be required to get results either one way of the other. As you can imagine, I have seen the inside of most major types of boards and it is a matter of the way they are assembled with associated reinforcement ( or lack thereof) which can greatly affect the longevity of the board under the stresses of high performance riding. IMO these insert related problems are in boards that just do not have enough reinforcement to bring the margin of safety up to where it should be. The plates may be adding additional stresses which were unknown during the time of manufacturing that board so its not really fair to blame the boards since they were not designed to handle the associated stress now being put on them. However if the hardware becomes commonly accepted, its up to the board manufacturer to hopefully come up with a solution to handle the additional stress. The 4x4 system does put a lot of stress on that area while the UPM spreads it out a bit more so the same level of reinforcement in each of those ares can most likely be of different levels. If you open up your failed board and find it just relies on the wood core to hold the inserts with no additional reinforcement, its most likely going to fail as the quoted lumberjack has stated. It somewhat boils down to time and money as doing that additional work can increase production times( $) and some may feel its easier to just replace the odd board which blows up or make excuses and leave the riders out of luck

It has carbon on top of the aluminum and also some inside of the base. Looks like the technology exists to scan it but why doesn't someone just send me a broken one, I'm oldschool. Do you need my health card? I'm still intrigued by the MRI and possible missiles, now that sounds like an exciting test! BV

Good question but it may require an MRI as the layers are tight against each other so a single picture would probably look jumbled. If you can get an MRI that fast, scan my entire body as I have a lot of trouble areas thet need repair.I would think its much easier to get a busted one and just peel away layers. Since the top is see through you can get an idea of what the board is made of. I sanded a bit of the corner of the top plate and can see the carbon but need a bigger piece to see how it is oriented and what type of weave. Not too many questions yet to be answered but a hands on operation would be best. BV

That project is still in the works, If anyone has a broken original send it my way! I now have an original but only had a reissue during the attempt to build the first "trubute" board so my model to work off of was improper to start with. My original is still rideable so I'm not going to butcher it up to see exactly what fabric types they used. Will still need mine in one piece for comparative testing. I have a good idea whats going on in most of it but the reissues plate seems not to be that same as the originals and I can't really get an exact look at it without taking a good chunk out of it. Send any pieces my way boys! BV

Even I have a tough time sorting it out:freak3: Every board, especially nowadays with all the different flex patterns and core lengths has a unique flex measurement. No way I can see to unify it so I just measure each models length and use my data base to adjust to the riders weight through testing experience. If there is a board for sale, best to email me and hope I still have the data sheet of that actual board for correct use range BV

I am staying out of the plate business as I have more board work than I can handle already. The Shred plates have some of my older stock topsheets on them but no logos allowed as you may have noticed. They simply needed to test with some finishing processes and I had the materials.I was fortunate enough to get an Apex plate late last season, successfully raced on that and will most likely continue in that direction.

Hey Shreddy, can you get me a deal on one? I understand Canadian and can help you with the foreign instructions if I can get one at cost. BV

Finally someone telling the truth:biggthump:biggthump:biggthump