The perfect Flex ???

[John K]

I am looking for an all mountain carver with the nice smooth flex of my 178 proton..... I rode the axis which carved well, but felt relatively stiff.

Any thoughts on the prior or coiler ?? or board flex in general

Thanks

John

[Hans]

If you are looking for a real allmountain carver and you also want to do some extremecarving, and money isn't a real issue, look for a SWOARD at

http://www.extremecarving.com/swoard/swoard.html

These boards are available in three different lenghts and three different flexes. I like my SWOARD 168 Hard a lot. Bumps, fresh snow, offpiste, making long or short turms, or laying down and doing some deep trenches which take some time to learn for me, is no problem at all. If you take the longest one, bumps wouldn't be easy but that's not what this longer board is made for. Don't mislead you by the two bad gear reviews this board got, those guys demoed the wrong board (wrong lenght and wrong flex).

I didn't demo this board either before I bought it. Bought it through internet, but before that I really did get a good advice to take the good size and boardflex by the advice of the SWOARDguys.

Greets, Hans.

[Guest Randy S.]

I wanted a hard swoard too. Except I was told to go to www.viagra.com. Hmmm. Maybe I was misled.

[Peter Vu]

I think John K. has a good question here.

If someone was to order an All-Mountain board, what are the flex characteristics that we should be looking for? What would be defined as too soft or too stiff from an all-mountain point of view and....what would be the perfect flex and how is this characterized?

Peter

[Mike Tokar]

Good topic!

In the old forum there was a lot of discussion about defining flex using some sort of scale, but there was no consensus about the best way to define it. First off, we're mostly talking about longitudinal flex (from tip to tail) as opposed to torsional flex (twisting the board).

Coilers are each custom made to provide a rider with a preferred flex, based on rider weight and riding style. From what I hear, in order to get it right for each board and have a frame of reference from one board to the next, Bruce uses a fixed amount of weight and has his own flex measurement scale.

I think that the flex can also be tweaked to respond differently at different spots on the board, depending on the core and types and amounts of glass, carbon and epoxy.

As for the perfect flex, I think it would have to be somewhere at a happy medium, stiff enough for stability at sick speeds, and just soft enough to handle the bumps. My All Mountain is pretty close, but a bit on the stiff side. At 220lbs, I'd rather err on the side of stability. The thing is, my "happy medium" is going to be radically different from a rider that weighs in at 140lbs.

If the industry was to choose a standard measurement, I'd like to make it based on supporting a board at the beginning and end of the effective edge, and gradually placing a weight (25 kilos/55 lbs?) in the middle and measuring the flex in mm's.

It would also be interesting to measure the torsional flex given a fixed amount of torque twisting from the back to the front binding.

I'm no techie, but it would be good to have some kind of consistency across manufacturers instead of just arbitrary terms like "soft" or "stiff".

MT

[Guest Randy S.]

On their web site, Donek offers a stiffness index (on the specs page).

I don't know what those numbers correspond to, but at least you can use them to compare w/in the Donek range. Perhaps Sean would share with us how he calculates those numbers. At least for his North American counterparts at Prior and Coiler, it should be relatively easy to replicate the corresponding numbers for their boards.

[Mike T]

I'm still amazed at how well dialed the flex on my Coiler is! I didn't have a frame of reference from demoing other Coilers with a known stiffness index, I just told Bruce everything I could think of about me and my riding, and he hit a home run.

As far as the Axis goes - I've got the 172 and I find it's strengths are crud and open bowls. Like other Doneks I've been on, it's quite stiff in the mid section and a bit soft in the nose. The stiff mid section seems to give it more gusto in crud and mashed potatoes (which I see a lot of here in the Pac NW) but also seems to make it a bit of work in moguls and tight trees. For that type of riding I *think* I'd ideally want something softer between the bindings, and possibly a little stiffer in the nose to gain back a little of the lost carviness. I haven't had a chance to test that theory out though.

[Donek]

My stiffness index is really based on a 1 to 10 scale. Some of the longer boards broke the scale though. It does work, but looking at the scale calculation, I'm realizing I must have been a bit off my rocker when I came up with it. I'll have to revisit it and correct a rather silly mistake. I'll see if I can't provide some sort of real world number in the future. Right now it's based on the stiffness at the waist, the length and then a scaling factor to get it between 1 and 10. It really should be based on the average stiffness. There won't be much difference, as the tip/tail stiffnesses at the end of the cores don't vary all that much.

[Chris Houghton]

Definitely you're in custom territory. I've used the BOBSi method to rate the flex of every board I've had the pleasure to measure (couldn't resist, sorry. I'll behave) and it uses a square of the effective edge to take length into account. Most "serial" boards as Maciek would call them are in the 10 to 11 range, no relation to Donek's measurement though. A custom board made for a 100 pound rider comes in at 9, and a super stiff JaseyJay custom is a 16, so that gives you an idea of the numbers and the range. The 178 Proton is 13.5, so it is stiffer than most. Also not quantifiable is the fact that the Proton nose is quite stiff, giving the rider a lot of confidence in initiating hard turns.

Of course, this says nothing about torsional flex, but if the construction is similar (read no cap please, we are alpine) the flex MAY be used to compare boards. Maybe.

[ALPINE]

I HAVE A PRIOR 175 AND 165 AND FIND THE STIFFNESS IS PERFECT FOR EASTERN FIRM SNOW AND IS A FINE CARVING TOOL!!!

I ALSO OWN A NUMBER OF OXYGEN PROTONS AND OLDER AND FIND THEY ARE MUCH SOFTER AND DO NOT GIVE YOU ANY WHERE THE SNAP COMING OUT OF YOUR CARVES. I LIKE PRIOR MUCH BETTER COILER IS ALSO VERY GOOD.

[Mellow Yellow]

WHAT........I CAN'T HEAR YOU..... :D

[Bob L.]

It seems to me that stiffness might be almost unquatifiable as a single number. Of course the best way would be to be able to try them out on the snow and see how they feel to you and your style of riding but this makes the measurement all the more qualitative unless you were able to ride at the same speed and carve the same arcs on the same snow.

When I've done a quick and dirty flex test (holding it upright, holding onto the tip and pushing at the waist with the other hand) , on my 3 boards, they feel REALLY different. Despite being all the same length. The 99 FP 167 feels relatively stiff and flexes pretty evenly along it's length (much like a Donek 171 Freecarve I A/B'd it with) while my 168 Proton has a VERY soft nose yet feels stiff at the waist. My Sims Premium 167 is soft throughout but especially at the waist. I'd love to hear from Sean or Bruce about how the flex pattern (not just a single number) works in real life riding/racing (pros/cons of a given flex pattern for given application) .....

[Donek]

Bob,

what you're talking about is the flex pattern of the board. It defines how the board will bend. The shape the board bends to works in conjunction with the sidecut to produce a turn. These shapes can work together to define exactly how the riders weight is distributed over the edge. Different types of flex progressions can dramatically change how the board performs. This is the real dilema in producing some sort of stiffness index that covers every manufacturers board. Two boards that produce the same center point deflection in a 3 point bending test (supported on each and and loaded in the middle) with identical sidecuts can in fact perform very differently on the snow. A very soft tip and tail will perform differently than a board that seems to have a more even flex progression. This can also be affected by the type of sidecut being used. Many companies use radial sidecuts, others use a combination of radii, while we use quadratic curves. They all produce different results.

That's probably not much help, but hopefully it answers some questions.

[John K]

Sean,

Great answer...... you have to ride it to find out is what I get. So owning a 178 proton and a 172 Donek Axis. They both carve well, but seem to get their with a different methodology.... how would you classify the Axis ??

John

[NateW]

I propose the Prow, Holistic, And Tail measurement system.

Then we can git down with the PHAT numbers, yo. Shizzle.

[jason_watkins]

Sean: I'm curious why you don't list stiffness index for axis at least, and the softboot boards as well.

[Donek]

Can we say Lazy. Or maybe it's just I've been so busy. I just put the axis numbers together for someone last week. They aren't up on the site so I'll list them here....

No matter what I do it seems impossible to attach html files or insert the html code here, so I'll try to get it added to the web site.

Sorry guys.

[zachp13]

I too am amazed at how well Bruce got my coiler dialed in. I had him soften it up a bit between the bindings. I find this makes the board much more stable in less than ideal conditions, such as moguls and trees. Really a great board and a come from a great guy to work with.