Donek

I had my pass yanked a number of times when I was younger. I tend to do my best to avoid the patrollers and slip the trail if they are around. The last couple times I've been pulled over I've informed them that I own a snowboard manufacturing company that produces race boards and then showed them the corporate pass that said Donek on it. They've given me a bewildered look. I'm not sure weather they aren't familiar with the corporate pass or just figured they're on thin ice claiming a guy who makes race gear is out of control. They let me off with a verbal warning. There's nothing worse than a power hungry individual wishing to prove to himself that he has power.

The specs for those two boards can be found here: http://www.donek.com/specs_metal.html They are the last two on the list. Based on the dimensions I have from Jack, the Kessler he has is closest to the rec GS. I needed a demo of both boards for the season, so I went ahead and sent him both for the test so he could experience the differences.

Precisiely. The used market is flooded with Ferraris at $200 and the best I anyone could do new at $200 is a yugo. There's no real point to attempting such an endeavor. In reality I prefer to know as little as possible about cars. As long as the wheels are turning, I'm happy.

She's definitely a cutie Corey. Here's a couple of James. Now 6 months old. And at Halloween

Major manufacturers have automation capabilities that vastly outstrip smaller manufacturers. They can leverage their suppliers to do things a small producer never could based on their buying power. They can produce crappy RIM construction boards that cost next to nothing to assemble (the equiopment is very expensive). I specialize in manufacturing custom high end snowboards. My shop is not equipped to mass produce inexpensive boards and quite frankly, I don't get all excited about making cheap gear. I produce the least expensive board on the market in order to assist people with limited means in getting into the sport of alpine snowboarding. It is a stretch to do so, but it is a valuable endeavor. With the equipment I own and the country I live in, I can not produce anything for less. There are a number of very similar arguments that occur on various photography forums. Mostly they complain about cheap/inexpensive photographers destroying the market for the professionals. Your bio page indicates you are a professional photographer. I've yet to find a seasoned pro who believes that cheap photographers are a good thing. I guess I find the the dichotomy a bit unusual here. Perhaps I'm making the assumption that as a business owner and pro photographer you adhere to this norm. Just out of curiosity, do you feel that cheap photographers are good for that business model? I'm aware it's not exactly the same thing, but people who take great pride in making great pictures are very similar to guys who take great pride in making really good snowboards. You're probably no more willing to go out and take a bunch of poorly lit, poorly exposed snapshots than I am to go out and make a bunch of poorly made snowboards.

We're already at the bottom end (for the scale) with our pilot boards. We use scraped cores that normally would be thrown in the garbage and base material that is clearanced from the manufacturer. When we wholesale those boards to other vendors, we are close a loss on every pilot that is sold. Throw one in the garbage due to a mistake and we are loosing money on them. You can get boards made in China for $70. They are junk and actually represent a huge portion of what is sold in the US for $300 to $400 retail. You're looking at large quantity orders and that 16% of the alpine market doesn't even come close to a single order of one size from an Asian manufacturer. Manufacturing boards is largely man power and materials, but you also have to look at all the other costs associated with running a manufacturing business. At our scale, the overhead is equal to the labor and materials. By overhead, I mean shop rent (and I own the land and shop so it is really cheap), insurance, electricity, heat, equipment maintenance,... Most people simply do not understand the costs of running a legitimate business.

Bola does know all of us and I do use his input and knowledge of customers and what they want. I can't speak for the other manufacturers, but I would guess that they, at the very least, listen to what he has to say and factor it into decisions. There are actually a number of individuals on this forum who are on friendly terms with the majority of the manufacurers in this industry. Just go to SES. Myself, Chris, Bruce, and Frank all tend to show up. Aside from that, I've found this poll excedingly informative. %16 percent of the market (less than $400) is completely outside the ability of any current alpine manufacturers grasp. Boards would have to be produced in large numbers in Asia to address that market, but the profit margins would be so low, the current market would make such an endeavor undesirable. There simply aren't enough carvers to support it either. That market is best left to the people wishing to purchase used boards. The bulk of my product line and most others fall within that 66% willing to pay between $400 and $1000. The %17 willing to pay more than $1000 intrigues me. I'm left wondering how accurate this percentage is. Regardless, I'd be most curious to know what it is that makes a board worth more than $1000 to those individuals. Thanks for a great poll Jack.

Without rubber it's very much like our construction last year. I don't think it rides bad, the testers we worked with liked the boards better with the rubber. It's what most of the other guys are doing. We felt the 1 layer was better for freecarving. You'll also find that there is less decamber in the freecarve boards. With the additional decambering in the race boards and the racers preferences, the second layer of rubber was more desireable to them. More decamber can result in more vibrations in the board, so this is partly why.

The demand last year was so small that we took a big loss on the project. I would have loved to do one again, but I can't afford to take a loss again. I did not get enough good images last season o support a project this season. If someone wishes to partner on such a project in the future, I would entertain the idea.

Cindy, Mark B is a poster on Nikon Cafe that shoots a lot of youth ski racing. You can see some of his stuff here: http://www.pbase.com/markb56 Or you can try to find him on Nikoncafe.com I've forwarded him a link to this post as well.

They're actually very small nails. Devilishly difficult to manipulate with latex gloves covered in epoxy.

I've posted a video of the asembly process for our metal construction on youtube. <object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agmNjqrRUE8&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agmNjqrRUE8&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object> I'll be working on some other videos in the coming weeks.

I guess not. Insert retention on this construction is 20% less than a typical alpine construction. It could be even less depending on overall stiffness/core thickness. For a little extra I could probably swap an alpine core into it if you warn me when ordering.

The sasquatch is quite a bit stiffer than the Fatbob was. I'm not sure what the sidecut was on the Fatbob either, but I have had a lot of customers go to a Sasquatch from the Fatbob. I would need wider thinner metal to make a freeride board, unless I was to use partial width metal laminates. I have tried this a couple times with good results, but I have not pursued it in some time.

Amag's minimum orders are substantial. It could be a year or two before I run through all of the metal I have. I certainly hope it will be sooner.

The problem really comes down to a very large check I'd have to write in order to get thinner wider metal. Until I've run through most of the material I have in stock, I won't be making that purchase.

That 31 waist is the absolute limit. It will be, in large part, defined by the sidecut and length of the board. We'll have to see exactly how wide we can go once we begin looking at the rest of the specs.

Wow. I watched just about all of Mikes Videos. I heard he was starting something new. The entire thing in a little trailer is just amazing. I love the curing in the sun.

There are 3 major differences to the Saber BX shapes when compared to the Razor. 1. Decambering will make the board easier to manuever at low speeds or in a croud, smooth out the bumbs in rought terrain, reduce the tendancy to overload the nose, and feel less stable between the turns at higher speeds. 2. Large amounts of rubber in the board will make uneven choppy terrain easier to manage, but reduce the energy returned out of the turn. 3. Increased taper will increase the likelyhood that the board will easily exit the turn or want to end the turn as it crosses the fall line. Other variations such as tail shape will affect the boards function when riding faky. The BX shapes also have a slightly softer waist compared to the overall flex than the razor does. Hopefully this helps.

So far I haven't built any metal versions. I don't think a full width metal laminate would be feasible at this point. We could incorporate some metal into a prototype, but there's no way we could make it thick enough to mount a binding to it at this point. Thinner wider metal might help there, but we'd be looking at a completely different construction from our race boards. Right now the shortest Axxess type metal shape I can make is a 167. The width and soft flex conspire against us, resulting in a super thin core. The thinnest inserts available barely fit in it without causing problems.

The Razor is really a recreation carver and the Saber is designed more for racing. They are very different at this point. It is likely similar to the other BX boards. We did look at some of the aspects of the Kessler and Oxxess when specing the Saber BX boards.

SaBeR (Soft Boot Race). It's primary development has been towards BX, but the concept of generating a race board for soft boots was something I started considering a couple years ago. There are a lot of junior racers and Nastar level guys racing on soft twin tips and sticking with them because they're not willing to spend $1500 to transition to hard boots. The idea is that something dedicated to a race course and a soft boot setup would enable them to push their abilities further than they can on some flimsy freestyle board.

The saber is a result of work with Zoe Gillings initially. At the end of last season I started doing some additional prototyping with Mark Harris and his young athlete Mick Dierdorff. So far they are the only people to have ridden this board in it's final phase. I'll forward a link to your post here to Mark and hopefully he can respond. His computer went down, so it may be difficult for him.

In my line, it's most directly comparable to an Axxess, but the prior is softer flexing. Prior is close to large amounts of fresh powder, so I think their board is more geared towards powder. In my location and for most of my customers powder is a luxury, so the Axxess was designed as a carving board that could do powder as apposed to a powder board that takes plates. Hopefully Chis and Bruce will chime in here if they have additional help.

The freeride or incline series is a very carve oriented soft boot board. Given our new abilities with shape and flex adjustment, I'm sure I can make a board that will suite your needs very well. Just give me a call and we can discuss what you want out of the board.