Jack M

...towards hardboot carving is learning to carve on your softboots. If you can't do the Norm on your softboots, you'll have a very hard time with hardboots. On easy terrain, you should be able to rail pencil-thin lines, change edges before the board points downhill, carve the downhill edge, and link fully carved turns all on your softboot setup. If your boots are dragging, use higher binding angles. After you are doing this, trying hardboots will come a lot more naturally.

Taking Sean's point further, that in many parts of the world, the US flag is reviled as an offensive symbol of oppression. (not that I care or agree) This is an international website, should we not allow posts that include images of boards built with the American flag on them? OR has the Confederate Flag risen to the level of the Swastika? I don't know. I just know that when I see someone displaying it, I avoid them. But if I saw someone with this board, honoring my favorite TV show of all time, I would probably walk right up to them and start a conversation. Does that make me a Confederacy sympathizer?

waste of plastic. http://www.stadiumpal.com/

I would like to see it tried on a short SL board that I would use for bullet-proof days. I don't think the drag would bother me then - I don't want to be going too fast on ice anyway. However I can imagine they are a PITA to build, I think I'd be looking at a $1500+ custom. I'm out.

Safari? <img src="http://www.jmphotocraft.com/safari/Coiler_Safari.JPG" height=400/>

3000rpm in my car is about 80mph. I try not to cruise in 3rd gear on the highway....

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150137161844257

hehe, just teasing!

Yeah, that one had me crying. Guy is a flippin' genius. Did that get circulated here last year or something? I forget where I saw it first.

I agree it should not smell, and we have it tuned up every fall, and then by January it is smelling again and we have to have it serviced again. I fired our last oil company due to this, and the second one hasn't had much luck either with a permanent solution. We even had a draft inducer installed last year ($750). We go through this BS every year and we are sick of it and worried about health issues. We have some propane in the house already - hot water, clothes dryer, cooktop, fireplace insert, Rinnai in the bonus room. We have a tank outside. There is significant underground water on our lot, we had to have a french drain installed when we bought the house in order to have a usable basement. (had 2 feet of water down there after an extended power outage - now I have a generator!) I will look into geothermal. The basement is not finished so radiant is a possibility for the first floor, which is all hardwood with some area rugs. I don't know if it would be possible for the second floor as we have wall-to-wall carpeting up there, and then there is the difficulty/cost of installing into existing construction.

Is she hot?

We want a new heating system. We have oil fired forced hot air. It smells. I think I would like a "warm air" system which runs constantly and quietly. The question is propane, wood pellets, or stick with oil? Other? We'd consider switching to a forced hot water system, but that would probably be too expensive. Anyone recently go through something like this?

A Factory Prime is not worth the hassle and cost, unless it is some kind of collector's item or has very special meaning to you. Without even looking, I would place a tall wager that there is a better board in in our classifieds right now, in the US. Look for used Priors, Doneks, Coilers, Volkls, Nideckers, F2s, etc.

spare liver.

I think we might have had 2 snow days in my 4.5 years at UNH. College is definitely different from public grade schools.

Hey now, I made no such vow! I believed, I just had to try it for myself. I knew it would work, the concept is so simple and elegant, I was just worried it wouldn't be worth the weight. It is. Har har. So bring your laptop with you to the throne. I'll try to get some pics next time I ride, Feb 4-6. I wouldn't say it's like that. It's not like the plate doubles your speed or anything crazy. It's more like the plate allows you to ride to your full potential more of the time. You still have a sense of how fast you're going. More importantly, the snow-feel still allows you to have a sense of how fast you should be going. There is a certain amount of skill required to ride a board with a plate, due to the extra height and weight. I think the people in the market for a plate are generally able to be careful with their speed and managing crowds. Besides, a new-school metal GS board already goes really fast.

My Boiler Plate arrived on Wednesday last week. The quality of the hardware is everything we have come to expect from Bomber Industries. Once mounted, you can pick up your board with the plate on it and shake it and bend it and there are no rattles, shifts, or creaks. But the quality of the deck is downright impressive for any experienced board-maker.... never mind the fact that Bomber has never marketed any kind of composite board before!! The finish is clean and sexy, and the structure is extremely stiff. It simply does not bend when pressed by hand or foot. In theory this is what a plate is supposed to do... rigidly span the curvature of the flexing board at all times so that your feet stay on a constant plane. If the plate were to bend with the arc of the board, then what is the point? Mounting the plate really feels like blazing into uncharted territory, as it introduces several new variables to the binding setup procedure. I was advised to put the ball of my front foot over the front axle of the plate. To make that long story short, the lesson learned there is to mark your board somehow with the old pre-plate position of your bindings so that you can get close to reproducing it post-plate. If you end up with a stance width a little wider on the plate, it's not to worry. As others have said, the plate makes it more comfortable to go wider. I went from a 19.75" stance to 20" with no problem. This is counter-intuitive because without a plate when the board bends in a turn our feet tilt towards each other, creating a more comfortable position. I believe the plate allowed me to go wider because now I realize that my stance width was previously limited by the board bouncing around underneath me, upsetting my stance. After reading all the other plate reviews, the three questions I wanted to answer for myself were, is it worth the height and weight penalty, will I still have snow-feel, and does it improve edge hold? Short answers, yes, yes, and yes. I mounted my BBP on my Coiler NSR 185. I figured an extra ~4 pounds of ballast would make the most sense on a board that is built for speed and drawn out GS carves in lieu of playfulness and all-around snowboard performance. Of course the height and weight present themselves as immediate obstacles at first - it took several runs to acclimatize to the new altitude and payload. You have to re-learn the input parameters to the system to get the desired output. But another factor I haven't heard mentioned is that the extra effort required to tip the board up suddenly made my boots feel softer. Had to go from my usual 3 notches to 4 on my top 2 boot straps, and I'm thinking about stiffer BTS springs. But nevermind that. The performance of the suspension action is real. There have been a lot of "innovations" in skiing and snowboarding that have made me scratch my head and wonder "does that really work?" That bulb on the tips of Dynastar Course skis. Those Rossi VAS plaques. Burton Rider Responsive Flex. K2 piezo-electric. Snow-Stix. Head Intelligence. Gimmicks? Maybe, I'm not sure. But once you figure out how to string a few carves together with a Boiler Plate, you will know without a shadow of a doubt, this thing works. It's really quite simple - the plate stays flat while the board bends underneath. The plate rides on two axles - the rear axle is fixed and can only hinge. The front axle can hinge and slide. The plate forms a constant bridge over the board bending beneath. File this in the "why didn't I think of that?" folder. What happens when your board encounters an imperfection, a bump, a rut, a pile of loose snow? It suddenly bends. With the plate, you no longer feel that. You still feel impacts that displace the board vertically, but the board is now free to bend as quickly as it needs to in order to react to the snow surface and recover. After one day I found snow-feel to be much better than with the Vist plate that I tried for a day. The plate is rigidly coupled to the board in the vertical direction and in torsion, but decoupled from the board in the horizontal shear direction and in bending. There are no springs; there are no surface-to-surface interfaces. Therefore it does not alter the flex or dampness of the board, and high-frequency snow surface vibrations are transmitted like always, preserving a lot of that familiar snow-feel. Bone-jarring board-bending impacts are now eliminated. This improves edge-hold because the board is allowed to flex and rebound faster, without protest from the relatively very heavy rider. By the end of my second day with the Boiler Plate, the weight and height were disappearing. I was simply getting used to it, while enjoying the huge leaps in confidence-inspiring stability and comfort. It is sort of like when you were a kid, getting the next bigger size bike. You still knew how to ride a bike, you just had to translate your skills to bigger wheels. In short order you were tearing around the neighborhood again. Same deal here. The plate allows a GS board to do what it wants to do - go fast! It makes skied-off or pushed-around or cut-up groom feel like fresh groom, and it makes early morning corduroy feel flawless top to bottom. I had previously thought that on hero days there would be no need for a plate. But the extra smoothness is appreciable and welcome no matter what. So much so that I am looking forward to trying it on my all-around go-to board, my Coiler Stubby 171. However non-carving performance seems to be hindered by the plate. I didn't have trouble stopping, but it felt like the board wanted to spin around backwards when skidding turns. That will take more time to get used to. As others have said, the plate is a leg-saver. This is easily one-third of the value of the plate. My legs were significantly less fatigued at the end of the day, and not even sore the next morning. And from a weekend-warrior desk-jockey ski-school dad like me, that is saying something. This is how I am going to carve into my 70s. Fin & Co. have hit a grand slam with the Boiler Plate. This is the next big thing.

yeah, I jammed my thumb in GeoffV's trench once. ouch!

indeed, these are great! but he obviously never went to Sugarloaf back when they had the hydraulic T-bars that would lift kids off the ground if they rode single!

see my pics here: http://www.bomberonline.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=31036&highlight=jackson+hole I found lots of carving there, and you know there's extreme terrain. The Alpenhof was a perfect place to stay, but for "luxury" you probably want the Snake River Club right next door.

I think it would be more plausible for a boot mold to be 3D printed, but an actual functioning boot, I doubt it. It seems Deeluxe, Head, UPZ have freecarvers covered fairly well, and I could imagine racing in my Deeluxes, but I don't know why racers hang on to their Northwaves...?

no worries, I can see how it can be taken in a way I didn't intend. oops!

Hey, come on, you saw the wink, right? I was referring to bobdea's board. I have no interest in anything with a Hangl. I appreciate the offer though. Like Snowman said, they are a museum piece. That doesn't mean they are or were a bad idea. They were a very important step in the evolution of plates.

oh yeah... definitely 173. No need for the hammer head either. The stock nose is plenty effective, and will give you more versatility in variable snow conditions.