Donek

What do you mean by dual camber? Inka made a dual camber board that had camber under each foot. Never Summer's reverse camber actually has camber in the tip and tail (reverse between the inserts), but I thought the Kesslers had rocker in the tip and tail. Rocker is and early rise in the tip and tail.

Nothing quite as bad as that. On edge the board feels fine. In between carves and running flat just felt uncomfortable. Like the board wasn't locked into the direction I was going.

There has been some discussion here with regard to reverse camber boards. I have discussed the subject on numerous occasions with other engineers within the industry. On Friday I took out a reverse cambered board from another manufacturer to try it, in hopes determining if I should begin prototyping. I am still on the fence about the technology, but less convinced of it's applicability to the carve industry than I was before trying it. I typically ride a 160 incline when in soft boots. I chose a board from this manufacturers line that was similar in specs and stiffness. I used my Catek Freeride bindings at the same stance width and angles I ride my incline. I took the reverse camber board out first. I took it down a nice greenish blue run for the first run down Copper. This manufacturer told me that the reverse camber would be much faster than a cambered board, but I did not feel it was any faster than a properly tuned board with camber. The board held an edge very nicely. It did lack some pop out of the turn but initiated very rapidly and easily. I tend to struggle a great deal with carving fakie, so I tried carving this board fakie and found it quite easy to do. About 2/3s of the way down the hill I found I could actually lean over the nose and carve it completely independently of the tail while skidding the tail to scrub speed. A very unusual experience, but an ability I've never experienced with another board. My second run consisted of a blue and more carving. It continued to carve nicely. The third run took us back down to center village copper. This board has different sidecut radii in the tip and tail. Due to the tighter radius in the tail, I found I could over steer the tail, making it come around faster than the shovel. It felt a lot like driving a forklift with the steering wheels in the back; a rather interesting sensation. The 4th run was under the Super B lift. I found a small patch of powder and ran the board through it. The shovel definitely had a desire to seek the surface. I wanted to find the steepest terrain on the hill that hopefully possessed some harder snow. Super B has some blacks that are typically groomed and hard by Colorado standards. On this terrain I felt very uncomfortable. I found myself hesitating and unable to link carves. The board simply did not feel stable enough between the turns to enable me to transition to the next turn. After 4 runs I got my 160 incline out and took it down the same terrain I had taken the reverse cambered board. My immediate reaction on the incline was “this is a rocket”. It became apparent to me that I had been struggling with stability the entire time I was on the reverse cambered board. I could lay the incline flat and it tracked predictably. Carves were effortless and fun. I had no problem with big wide high speed carves or short tight carves. It was like night and day. I even let it run as fast as I could to try to see if I could reproduce the uneasiness I felt with the reverse camber. I never got there. When I got it on the steep run under Super B I made some of the best turns of the day. It's important to remember that I have spent over 20 years developing boards that suit my riding style. As a result I'm unlikely to find another manufacturer's board that suits me as well. At this point I feel that there is insufficient stability in a reverse cambered design for my style. I would love to see some others who ride soft boots to run a similar side-by-side test and post their feelings on the matter. The rest of the readers here would find it helpful and the manufacturers here could benefit greatly from your feedback.

If the Razor is close to what you're looking for but not quite, you might want to take a look in the vendor forum. We are offering a special this month on custom shaping. You can get exactly what you want and it won't pain your pocket book. Read it here: http://www.bomberonline.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=23407

go here:http://www.donek.com/tech3.htm ans scroll down a bit. I think I wrote that in 1996, but it should still be accurate.

Coda used to be Yama monoskis run by Mike Lish and later sold to Chad Hauck (SP?). I think Mike is returning to the business in some way and Coda is Chad's new company name. They are a cap construction board made with a baltic birch horizontally laminated core. The tail is split to provide the flex pattern (the core thickness does not change). Much of the construction info is a couple years old, so they may be doing some different things now.

The general feeling was that they felt being associated with alpine would somehow hurt their brand in the eyes of the consumer. As my employees indicate, it's a very small group that actually believes carving is lame. Those who do are the ones that fall in line and condemn it because they are unable to make their own assessment, but fear someone else more popular or with more clout will condemn it. It's high school all over again.

The photos illustrate a pretty classic shear failure. If you've ever flexed a phone book, you noticed that all the pages slide past each other as it bends. When you bend a snowboard, no slippage occurs. The wood core and any other laminates between the outer layers resist that slippage or shearing force. Metal laminates are dramatically stiffer than glass laminates, resulting in a need for greater shear strength in the core and the layers below the metal. When a shear failure occurs, the metal layers will appear to delaminate and fold or buckle as they have done in the photo. Such failures will occur at the point of highest bending moment/shear load. This is at the edge of those spacers under your bindings. I have not paid much attention to Priors construction, but my guess is that the topsheet over the metal incorporates some other key changes. Applying a topsheet to the old construction won't fix the shear issues. On top of that, the metal is extremely difficult to bond. It comes from the supplier etched for bonding, but prolonged exposure, or polishing render that surface treatment inneffective. The only real way to bond to something like that would be to etch it with boric acid before laminating to the surface. I'm completely unwilling to expose myself or my employees to the hazardous vapors that are produced in that process. Hopefully Chris Prior would have the same view. I'd agree. Be thankful it wasn't you that broke. Go out and stimulate the economy by buying a new board.

You're unlikely to ever see such a thing. The rest of the industry works like a well oiled machine in their attempts to quell alpine. A few years back while at SIA we were looking for a new freeride binding to carry. Over and over we were asked to leave companies booths. Their explanation was always the same: "We want nothing to do with a company involved in the alpine market." The most interesting part is that every young employee I've had has expressed a desire to try alpine. Some have even made it a regular part of their riding. All agree that it improves their riding immensly.

Just go here: http://www.donek.com/tech2.htm#metal you can view an insert in the laminate stack photo. The diameter of the base of the insert is typically 3/4in.

Based on my understanding of the numbers I would be about 0.1%. As for companies on that list and who makes them, I can fill in some blanks. Burton - Burton, Karhu, and others I'm sure Ride and K2 now made in China Gnu, Roxy, Lib Tech are all mervin. Made in the US, but I did hear last year that some of the low end stuff was farmed to China Unity - made in Colorado Venture - Made in Colorado Never Summer - made in Colorado Palmer - I believe owns a factory in Europe somewhere I think Endeavor is another incarnation of a manufacturer in California Voile is made in UTah I believe I believe the vast majority of the rest are OEMed. I'm not as familiar with the European manufacturers, but I believe that Vokl, Nidecker, Salomon, and Elan make their own stuff. The list is missing some other smaller US manufacturers like Sentinel, Solid (restarted last year), Hayes Brothers, Revolution, Smokin. I'm sure I've missed some.

I need the rest of the day to talk with customers, take orders, program the cnc, print and manipulate custom graphics, and of course play hide and seek with my daughter.

Hey Bruce, My production day ends at noon (starts at 6:00am). I started reading before I took my daughter out to shop for Christmas and just got back to it. I've never really bought into the early rise in the shovel, but from reading between the lines I can see it might make core production a bit easier on the metals. You could thicken things up in the tip and tail and artificially soften the shovel by rockering it. The problem I had with the rockered board I rode (wasn't one of yours) was that, even though the board was damp, it went over everything when riding flat. I like a board that goes through that pile of soft snow.

Here are a couple mating bullsnakes I shot about 2 years ago. I have some others on my hard drive. Take a look at istock.com. You should be able to find some interesting images as well as vector artwork that you might use.

I'm not sure what material Virus is using, but I did talk with the guys at Crown about their prewaxed material. Sounds like a gimmick to me, dreamed up by Burton's marketing department. Unless you have some way of adding more wax to the base, there's no way it will always be there. Just like a good hot wax it eventually goes away. Fundamentally Base material (polyethylene) and hydrocarbon waxes are very similar. The only real difference is the length of the polymer chains. Both materials are hydrocarbon chains. Based on the description I got, it was a bit unclear as to wether someone just decided to start calling polyethylen wax in order to say that the base was permanently waxed. I've never used it, and as stated, you can't plan for all snow conditions with a single wax. If you want the best performance, you'll have to put a little sweat into your base.

I'm shooting with D300 and D700 bodies. I primarily shoot snowboarding with my 70-200 f2.8 and 24-120 nikon lenses. I've occaisionally used my 50-500 Sigma lens. Perhaps I'll pull out the fish eye this season. Other gear includes: 30mm f1.4 sigma, 50mm f1.4 nikon, 85mm f1.4 nikon, 105mm Nikon macro, 3 SB-800s, Catus radio triggers.

Anything's possible. Intergrating this into a design as a custom is very easy. Something simple like this is pretty inexpensive as well. Just ask about it when you order.

Considering the fact that there are many different materials in every board and every manufacturer uses different processes to produce their boards, there is no possible way that Carbon fiber can be attributed with the longer camber life in your board. It could be something as small as the moisture level in the lumber when that particular board was pressed.

Options have always been our intention. We wanted to be sure we were on the right track. If some of the graphics got no votes, we would have obviously nixed them.

Yes, we will be offering the original graphics as well as a couple from JK. I received the final artwork for the rust bucket a couple days ago and we will get it posted on the site soon. We also have a version of the carbon fiber print with the bird in flames as we could not produce the metalic finish with this printing process. I expect the images will be up soon.

Bonding to the topsheet material will be the big issue. You're likely to have a tough time getting epoxy to bond to the surface. Most topsheet materials such as PBT have a scrim backing in order to get the epoxy to stick. Others are sanded and flame treated. A contact adhesive or transfer tape might work with the precure laminate, but that adhesive will be rubber based resulting in a lot of dampening properties and possibly some creap. Other problems could occur when hot waxing the board. You'll introduce an unbalanced laminate stack which could result in some warping/cupping of the base when you thermally cycle the board. This could make it impossible to base grind in the future and might make it difficult to ride.

FedEx home delivery is nothing like the usual FedEx. As I said you are dealing with a dispatcher who's telling someone who is not even a FedEx employee to deliver the board. The home delivery service should be shut down. My regular driver informs me that she hears all kinds of horror stories about it. FedEx ground is only reliable when delivering to a business. If it's going to a residential address, it gets routed through home delivery and that service is abismal. I purchased a printer last year that wound up being routed through home delivery. I was informed that it would be delivered the day before I left for vacation. It never showed up, so I called dispatch and had them hold delivery until I returned. The moron attempted delivery every day I was gone, dropping it on the door step each day, ringing the bell and then throwing it back in his vehicle. When I received it, the case was in pieces. If price is an issue and time is not, the postal service is the best. Their priority service is as fast as FedEx 3 day and cheaper, but I have to drive to the post office.

Interesting idea. Any sales on that book. I printed a calendar this year. We'll see how sales go with it.

That's really odd. Having shipped thousands of boards I've experienced a lot of carriers. We stopped using UPS because of the alarming number of lost and damaged boards. This was back in the 90's so things may have changed. We shipped USPS for almost 10 years, seeing only one board damaged the entire time. We've been using FedEx air for 3 to 4 years. To my recollection they lost one board for about 4 months that went to Russia (terribly difficult destination anyway) and damaged one other. My guess is the package was improperly addressed or was missing your phone number when it came back to you. FedEx home delivery is another story. These are subcontract drivers who own their own vehicle and could care less about what they are doing. I've had nightmares with them. If you ship FedEx ground, you frequently wind up with these numnutz.

Well silver is a metalic color, so it won't work. It would be possible to put just about anything else there. Flames, solid, fades...