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teach

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Posts posted by teach

  1. On 1/30/2017 at 3:36 AM, WinterGold said:

    There is a lot of speculating and theory in this thread now, but I guess that some of those riders never really found out their perfect width by experimenting with different shapes.

    I still think that adding a centimeter or better two to the average production board, would better reflect our anatomy.

    I've experimented. With US 13 feet, using UPZ 312 mm shells (28) I find that over about 20 cm waist is really hard on my knees. I can measure the effect: If I can ride the next day or not! That's with ibuprofen, before and after. Around 20 cm / 60 degrees seems to minimize tweakage of my knees. 50 degrees/ 23 cm wide is really punishing. Even 21.5  cm is rough. Softboots... haven't used them in years, but it's worse. I used M30 soft boots and 26.5 waist boards at around 40 degrees (to avoid boot-out, so I agree with the OP... why are soft-boot boards so narrow given the prescribed stances?)

     

    On 1/27/2017 at 9:53 PM, RCrobar said:

    Many times I have read guys stating that riding a wide board is more tiring then riding a narrower board.  The explanation as to why is generally the idea that more leverage is created making it more tiring, makes sense I guess.  

    Tiring isn't the issue. SL boards are more tiring because they encourage more turns per foot. Wider boards (for me) bring more pounding per foot. Totally different. One makes a good day, the other a rough day, ice, and an enforced rest day afterwards.

    13 hours ago, Jack Michaud said:

    I think board width only becomes a problem when the board is simply too wide for your feet even at 0/0, which can be an issue for people with smaller feet.

    People differ!

  2. I have almost the same board. Don't detune anything until everything else has been ruled out. Suggestion: mark the Cateks with your angles and stance, and put them on the Coiler exactly as you had them on the Volkl, centered on the inserts, same width. If that works, then mess with the TD3s to copy the setup (toe-heel bias, lift, cant) as closely as possible. I'm assuming you're using the same boots...

    Those angles seem a little high for a 21 cm waist... what boot size? What boots?

    The most common cause of what you're describing seems to be boots shifted rearward too much. This is especially easy to do with UPZ. But there are lots of other possibilities. A weird cant setup can cause you to twist the board unintentionally. Putting the right liner in the left boot and left liner in right boot can cause all kinds of weirdness. Don't even ask how I know.

    • Like 1
  3. On 1/14/2017 at 9:17 AM, WinterGold said:

    Next I mount the setup to the board. As I want to do some freestyle I use 0 degree on the backfoot. Major bootout!!!

    So a snowboarding expert tells me that this can´t work. I have to use higher angles. Ok. No problem. I rotate the back binding up to 20 degrees. But the overall length of the setup hardly changes at all! Just measure it! Again - major bootout!!!

    What is going on???

    The span of a boot toe to heel is about the same measured from one corner of the heel to the opposite corner of the toe. That diagonal line is at around 15 degrees, depending on the boot size and shape. So rotating +/- 15 degrees from perpendicular won't make a change in boot overhang, other than for what part of the board's sidecut you're over. (So duck has an advantage here.)

    I rode 26.5 cm waist boards with M30 soft boots and had to ride with my back foot at about 40 degrees to avoid serious boot out. Yes, I don't get it either.

    On 1/14/2017 at 9:17 AM, WinterGold said:

    How many of you can mount their backfoot bindings on their boards at 45 degrees and have no bootout?

    On my 23 cm waist board, with M28 hard boots, I'm at about 48 degrees. Some toe bail overhang.

    On 1/14/2017 at 9:17 AM, WinterGold said:

    In order to serve the world wide market, you have to make a compromise. The Asian riders mostly don´t want or need wide boards. So you choose a board width which the Asians can still accept and the Americans and the Europeans barely fit on. 

    I'd think you'd see racers on wider boards, then, since they're usually custom spec'd. And if the Asian market is being catered to, why are boots so big? UPZ's smallest shell fits everything from 25 down. That covers over 70% of the population, I'm sure.

     

    6 hours ago, neanderthal said:

    The wider a board is the more leverage it takes to tip onto the sidecut. That extra width also gives the chop and crud a longer lever arm to throw you around with as opposed to a narrower ride cutting through the chop.

     

    6 hours ago, neanderthal said:

    As I am recovering from a Knee injury to my LEFT/front knee I have played with a number of factors tuning what works biomechanically best for me and found that my knee likes angles not less than 45degrees because these put too much lateral force  against the axis off the joint while steeper angles the forces work with the joint axis.

    I hear ya. I'm not sure if it's the angles or the board's leverage, but on boards wider than 20 cm my knees get seriously punished. I find around 60 degrees works really well, and that dictates a 19 - 20 cm waist. I don't have much experience with boards narrower than 19 cm, but I feel like I get thrown around more rather than less with those.

    • Like 1
  4. I was just out with a new hardbooter. A few runs on his new rig (Burton Ultra Prime and race plates) and the toe lever snapped. That's fixable, but annoying. But the interesting thing is after that I put him on my board and it was just like, you know, insta-shred. Night and day difference. He said so too at the end of the first run. The heel and toe lift, slight outward cant setup worked wonders. That's hard to do with Burton without a varicant or custom shims.

    So I think it's a good idea to have access to bindings you can tweak easily, like TD2/3 or Catek. As a bonus, less breakage.

    +1 on lonbordin's FIT IS KING! I wear 13 street shoes also and use 28 boots very comfortably. But it's a process to get to a fit-for-a-king fit. I probably went through 6 pairs of boots.

  5. For Burton boards, you need to make sure bindings have three-hole-pattern mounting holes. As to boot fit, in principle, the standard bail bindings are universal. Bail shapes and boot shapes vary, though, and you don't always have a perfect match. Bomber bindings let you tweak the bail height, which helps.

    There are several step-in systems, but Intec is the most popular. You need boots that accept Intec heels in place of stock for that. Some older boots don't.

    Things to look for in hard boots: the shell should be a fairly close fit to your foot. The different manufacturers' boots have different shapes, so trying them all out is ideal. There's a lot of information here about fit, and on Beckmann's site, beckmannag.com

  6. Besides the binding, the boot and footbed determine the overall angle your foot is held at. This varies by make, size, and by footbed construction. Beckmann has a good description of a sequence to minimize aimless wandering, though some aimless wandering is sometimes eye-opening.

    http://beckmannag.com, under "alpine skiing", the boot fitting, boot selection, alignment sections; under "haredboot snowboarding", the binding setup section.

    I believe TD3 step-in toe blocks are higher than standard, just to accomodate the Intec heel, although I don't have one to measure.

    "A few mm" equates to about a degree of lift over about 180 - 190 mm span toe block to heel block.

    I edited my previous post to give accurate numbers.

     

    • Like 1
  7. Pretty nice Friday except my favorite runs were closed -- Pocono Raceway (almost covered) and Rhododendron Glen (can't tell, but snow wasn't being made on it when I was there, though it needs it). Should be great until mid-next week, when it's supposed to not get below about 30 degrees for several days in a row. I'm ready for winter... any time now...

  8. Also, are you including the heel lift you get from the intec heel pins? They hold the heel about 10 mm above the baseplate (depending on how much wear there is on the heel).

    EDIT: The 10 mm figure was bottom of Intec pin to bottom of heel, it's 15 mm or so from bottom of heel to baseplate on a TD3 receiver (25 mm from bottom of Intec hole to baseplate). My _standard_ TD3 toe block is more like 12 mm. I no longer have step-in TD3s other than a few spare parts, but I suspect the step-in toe block is probably about 15 mm high? That would make the boot sole about level.

  9. About time to start this! I was there Thursday 12/29. More coverage than I expected, but soft fresh snow + a decent-sized crowd made for instant bumpy mess. We don't seem to be getting much in the way of winter temperatures yet, but my fingers are crossed. I'd be curious if anyone rode yesterday morning, might have been good.

  10. I'm sure you'll get varying answers here. I'd say lift and cant are just one of several adjustments you make in order to make your neutral position and range of motion around that as functional and comfortable as possible. That is, to minimize or ideally eliminate "fighting your setup" and pain. Boots (ramp angle) and footbeds influence that too, so have to be taken into account.

    With this all taken care of, edge hold comes from the board's torsional stiffness and flex pattern, sharpness, and your position in a turn.

    One "fight" you can have with your equipment results in twisting the board unintentionally, and that reduces edge hold for sure. Lift/cant changes may fix this, so in that sense increase edge hold.

    • Like 2
  11. Ski bags work nicely for alpine boards. When I fly, I use pipe insulation (foam tubes slit lengthwise) on the edges, nose, and tail, strapped on tightly with nylon straps from outdoor/camping stores. It helps in all kinds of ways. Makes the board much easier to carry, protects in all directions because of the thickness. Depending on my level of paranoia, I remove the bindings or at least uppers and carry them on. But I used to get taken aside a lot and questioned about the curious shiny metal parts.

  12. On 11/16/2016 at 1:46 AM, McKarver said:

    Just out of curiosity, what is the angle/degree of lift achieved using the biggest F2 shim?

    I have a pair of F2 large race standard bail, and it's 240 mm approx between the ends of the toe and heel blocks. If you get a net 9 mm of lift over that span, that's a little over 2 degrees. The "rule of 60" is handy here: a 1 degree angle is about what you get from a rise of 1 mm over a span of 60 mm. Happy to give a full explanation via PM if you want.

    I can't say for medium or small F2s, as I don't know the span, or whether the same wedges come with them. If they do, you'd get more lift, but still nowhere close to 6 degrees, for example.

  13. Yes, don't let them get cold! Other than that, there's a certain twisting motion with your foot you learn while pulling the outer tongue away from the boot outward (two hand here, one on the tongue, one on the boot shell) to make maximum room for your instep. Don't pause halfway, though.

    It gets easier after a few seasons. I'm to the point where it's rarely a problem. But it used to be a huge production.

    Other tips:

    1) unlock the forward lean. That facilitates the twisting motion.

    2) pull up the rear of the liner about 3/4 of the way in

    3) pull the liner tongue up, but not too much.

    4) slippery socks! Smartwool liner socks, for example. Change into them just before you put the boots on.

    • Like 1
  14. 7 hours ago, Neil Gendzwill said:

    The snow melts into slush the previous afternoon, and freezes rock-solid overnight in whatever shapes peoples' turns have left.

    [Shudder] My nightmare is Neil's ice.

    7 hours ago, philw said:
    1. ...
       
    2. ...
       
    3. I've maybe once ever come across true ice (rained on snow which froze over). No one, skier or snowboarder, one was riding that, it's very rare and I doubt most people will ever see it.

    I rode this once. The slope was well-groomed before the rain, so the surface was like glass. No one riding, so taking huge turns and going mach 2 wasn't a problem. It was really nice. Easy to focus on technique. I felt like a champ!

    As my technique improves I find conditions verging on ice really fun. Still not there for the real thing, but I'm always optimistic.

  15. 5 hours ago, BlueB said:

    Well, count the screws and you'll know... 

    Three for Bomber, four for Catek. No swapping out necessary.

     

    4 hours ago, BlueB said:

    Actually, nothing really needs to be fabricated... Extra shims and longer screws can be bought from F2 and possibly from YYZ. However, you can do lots of options from what's already in the kit. The canting shims can be doubled in opposed direction to create a 3mm flat shim. 6mm is already supplied. Screws are long enough to accommodate flat mount up to big 6mm shim with cant. That means it can also take 6+3mm flat shims - that's a loooot of heel lift... 

    If you use the long screws with little lift, you're going to gouge your board. Also, 9 mm over 240 mm span gives a little over 2 degrees lift... this is why you see huge heel wedges (custom-cut) on many racers' setups.

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