Donek

I've e-mailed JK on the rusted rivets. I'm just waiting for a reply from him. Unfortunately it's not really possible to get a metalic look from a dye sublimated pbt print. As a result, I fear that his first two designs would just look half baked. I think they look great though. We'll see what we can do.

photos from todays race are posted on the photo forum. http://www.bomberonline.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=22570

The light at this event is always challenging. I shot during the qualifiers. After that the light was almost all shade and I decided to do a little riding. Gotta start with a Donek The mixed light in the morning can make for some very nice colors depending on how you set your WB. The sun comes right down the run, so you wind up shooting right into it and get a lot of lens flare. Shooting from the west side of the run usually produces the best results there. Too bad there was a timing problem shortly after this gate had sun on it. By the time it was corrected, the sun was gone. One more from the West And the death of a stubby There are more here: http://www.seanmartinphoto.com/gallery/6602246_zgTfp

I almost always turn the VR off on my 70-200 these days. Doing so speeds up the focus. I rarely shoot below 1/500, so the VR is pointless. The only time VR will be helpfull on a lens like that is if your subject is stationary and you're shooting below 1/300 (1.5 crop) or 1/200 full frame. The Nikon 80-200 f2.8 is a fairly popular substitute. It's $889 at BH. That's almost half the price of the 70-200 f2.8 VR. If you're shooting sports, get the 80-200. I shoot highschool sports with a young guy who just got Sigma's 70-200 f2.8 ($759 at BH). He says that it focuses faster than the two 70-200 F2.8 VR nikon lenses he has. Sigma's warranty isn't anything like Nikon's and my 50-500 sigma was in the shop being repaired just 16 months after I bought it. I'm not impressed with the Sigma build quality, but then I use the lens a lot, so at the consumer level it may not be an issue.

Printing on vinyl requires solvent inks. There are a number of printers available for doing this, but they aren't cheap. Most sign shops have them and can offer such a service. The UV stability of typical ink jet inks is pretty bad as well. Years ago, we tried printing on fabric and laminating it in the board. In direct sunlight, the image lasted about a day. Things have improved since then, but your best bet will be a solvent ink.

Last I heard Madd was made in Italy (or in that neighborhood).

I told you I missed someone, but then I did say US.

small US producers that I can think of right now: Hayes Brothers Sentury Smokin Venture Unity November Happy Monkey Revolution Broz (might be Canada) Probably missed one or two. But, what they said. Buy a Donek.

Presumably you're talking about Creative Edge Graphics in Auburn. Their number is listed on Yahoo Yellow Pages.

I'd be happy to print your topsheet for you. I'm not sure which outfit in WA you're looking for, but you can try yahoo yellow pages.

John who? Is it John Carpenter? He called it a radiator cap. I think Scottybob still uses that technology.

Brittle fracture is directly related to thickness. This is why a glass fiber can be tied in a knot, but a pane of glass shatters if you bend it. Cap construction incorporates a verticle fiberglass laminate component, effectively making the fiberglass laminate as much as 10 times thicker at the sidewall. Stress varies as a cube of the thickness. Stresses from impacts in thin laminates are relatively small, but at 10 time the thickness, you've increased the stresses as much as 1000 times. This is a dramatic increase in the likelyhood of brittle failure. I've only seen one cap construction that addressed this issue effectively and that company is out of business. As a result I'm unaware of a cap construction currently on the market that could be compared to a sandwich construction from a durability standpoint. The next issue for this community really is cost effectiveness in a small market. Cap construction is a component and labor saving assembly process that requires substantial capital investment in tooling. Given the size and fickle nature of the alpine market it is difficult to offset that tooling cost on a very small run of boards. There are techniques for pressing cap without the tooling, but they have significant drawbacks when it comes to consistency and quality control. It would be extremely difficult to produce a one off cap construction board and then reproduce the exact same result a week, month or year later. With sandwich construction it is possible to duplicate results time and again without the tooling expenses. From and economic and consistency standpoint sandwich construction is vastly superior in a custom market.

It's not about the strength of the fibers as much as the brittle behavior of the epoxy matrix. If you've ever purchased a fiberglass motorcycle helmet, you've been told that dropping it on pavement once will render it useless. The same holds true for a cap construction snowboard. Hitting a rock once fractures the epoxy matrix above the edge. It's unlikely that you'll even see the damage, but it's there. The cracks will wick moisture which freezes and thaws as you go up and down the mountain. Every time it does so, the crack is widened. The board becomes weaker and weaker with time in that area and that one little tap on a rock becomes the eventual destruction of the board.

As an engineer and board builder who's visited with Frank a couple times at SES, I'll answer a couple of these for you. Frank uses a spray finish to generate the ultra glossy look. My guess is he's researched the UV penetration of that material and found it adequately protects the materials under it, but ask him. The connection between strength and stiffness is commonly missplaced. Just because the ropes broke under less force after UV exposure doesn't mean the elastic modulus changed. A change in strength is not going to affect the boards stiffness/flex. Given the overwhelming strength of this material and the fact that it is right next to a piece of wood, it's pretty easy to see which is the weaker component. Even if the fiber's loose 50% of their strength, they're still dramatically stronger than the wood. The wood is still going to fail before the zylon. I'm not really sure where you're getting the data on compression vs tension on the zylon. There was similar data on fiberglass until they discovered the compression failures were buckling failures rather than true compressions failures. Regardless of performance in compression and tension, a properly designed composite laminate is symmetric about the neutral axis. This is why you see titanal on top and bottom. Well designed snowboards have the same glass laminates top and bottom. It produces a product that flexes consistently without warping, twisting or cupping. The board reacts consistently to changes in temperature (basically stays flat edge to edge) as well. Unbalanced laminate stacks produce all sorts of problems, so I'd be concerned if there was just zylon on one surface instead of both. Hopefully that clears things up a bit.

$1000.

Durability was the primary concern with a metal construction. The construction that I settled on really incorporates as much as I know about failure modes in metal boards and ways of eliminating them from the equation. As for ride, you do get the damp feel of the metal, but since I've used very little rubber in the boards, you don't get a dead feel. Hope that helps a little more.

Considering all the engineers on this board, I'm surprised nobody else has pointed this out. First off graphs in advertising are almost always about deception. If you carfeully examine the little test they've performed, you'll easily pick it apart as utter nonsense. I know that when I'm trying to make an accurate measurement I use a hand swung hammer. It always provides the exact same impact. Look at the two curves. The blue one is an exact replica of the red one only with a smaller initial impulse. This tells us that the two boards have reacted in precisely the same way, except the second one wasn't hit quite as hard. If the vibrations were affected in a manner that provide dampening, it would take less time for the vibrations to subside. If this sytem actually made a difference in the manner in which the board reacts, I would expect to see a dramatically different looking blue curve. Instead I see the same curve with a smaller initial impulse.

What I'm looking for is actual dates or at least a link to these dates.

I'm planning to print a calendar for the upcoming season. I need some input on dates to include in that calendar. With some help from everyone here, perhaps we can get a good representation of events all over the world. Please post any dates you think should be included in the calendar. Thanks,

I'm definitely no expert on boots, but I'm pretty sure they are made with thermoset resins. This is a less expensive approach to short cycle molding that is common in the boot industry. Thermosets also offer better control over flexibility. A thermoset resin is not weldable as it can not be melted. They will frequently soften up under heat, but never reach a point at which they can be welded.

Todd's done a pretty good job of explaining things. I've considered replacing it with a different scale, but always see problems no matter how it is set up. I don't see a good way of generating an intuitive scale.

While the construction may not be on the web site, I have all the materials in stock, so you can order whenever you like. We are filling orders all summer long.

I don't quote myself all that often, but here goes: I believe your above comments support that statement. I think most of the people involved in this discussion are not racing. Therefore your comments are probably better suited to the race forum or in private.

The metal construction has really been my focus this last season. We do seem to entertain the idea of other fibers every now and then, but the engineering always puts me back in my place. We did use carbon in the metal construction, but it is in a very unconventional orientation. I still don't see conventional fiber orientations as a viable option for a durable construction. The carbon in our metal boards all goes edge to edge. Solid black is fine on the olympic. On the bamboo, there seems to be a real durth of reliable sales reps in that market. They never return e-mails or calls. I am in the process of trying something that has little chance of working, but worth the effort none the less. I have purchased some Paulownia trees and will try growing them on our property. We are on the border of their winter tolerance and may find them dead next spring. If they survive, we'll begin planting more and eventually harvest our own wood. Paulownia is a rapid growth tree. I'm reasonably confident it is the same wood Mervin uses, although Mike Olsen tends to tell stories pretty convincingly.

We're always adding shapes. We just update the list once or twice a year. I don't have any photos. The first person to receive one was Kevin McDougal, so maybe he can post a photo. My studio for photographing boards last year was non existent. I'm working on a new one right now.