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#21
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And BTW - where these rockets straight cuts or skate cuts?
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#22
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Not much input from the ski industry on this discussion thread ... not
that I'm really surprised. I will fess up and say that I do know a little about ski and composite product construction. Though the emphasis in the last sentence is on the word "little". I have some experience from the past and the current. In the Past (mid-70's) I raced for a year on Lovett skis, there were made in the US in Boulder, Colorado. One day I got to assist in making a pair of skis. Actually they were a pair of racing skis that I would end up racing on a lot in the US and Europe (good powder skis, now hanging on the wall of my home office, serial # "TK 1", Lovett was a cool ski company). The construction then was definitely artisan oriented. I remember taking a brush and coating the fiberglass strips and laying them into the mold, sandwiching the foam core. With this lay-up technique it would have been easy to lather more epoxy on one ski's composite strips versus the strips in the other skis. When different thicknesses of epoxy cure, the ski flex patterns will reflect this. The flex patterns will differ. As of current, I have a garage with piles of carbon and kevlar fiber, epoxy resins and hardeners and fiberglass molds. I've gotten into making stuff out of modern day composites. It's easy, it's fun. Lately I've been working on kevlar-carbon fiber ski expedition sleds. Duing my mad home fabricator escapades I have learned a few things about quality control with composite materials. The basic lesson would be - if you want really, really good quality control, you don't put the epoxy resin on the composite fabric yourself. You have a company that specializes in this process do it. It's called "pre-preg" technology. A roll of carbon fiber, kevlar, or whatever type of fabric you want is run through a machine. This machine soaks the fabric with a carefully control thickness of a carefully controlled mix of epoxy resin mix. This pre-impregnated composite fiber is then wrapped and kept in cold temperatures to stop the hardening process. The materials are then shipped to a customer (who usually has a large freezer to store this material). The customer then uses this highly quality controlled composite fabric in the making of their products. So the question is - do ski use pre-preg composites? Or do they hand soak all of their composites? My bet is that the still hand, or tub, soak all of the composites and that is why there is such a variance when making skis. With this 'artisan' approach there is more "luck" involved than quality control. Pre-preg composite technology is not rocket science. It's been around for a long time and it keeps getting better. The catch is - it's more expensive than laying up composites with eposy-resins yourself. So I'm thinking that this would be another reason ski companies would opt to remain using the old methods ... it's better for the profit margin. Oh yeah - when I say composite technology is not rocket science ... I'm reminded of a ski pole manufacturer's ad. This pole manufacturer said that they were using a revolutionary carbon fiber braided sleeve to build their poles. Like this was some amazing, leading edge product they had developed and no one else could have. Ha! Carbon braided sleeves have been used for many years to build lightweight prosthetic legs. And the cost of this material is so low now that you can by rolls of it for less than 2 dollars a foot. See: http://www.cstsales.com/CarbonFiberBraidedSleeve.htm This web site is a "hobby shop" web site. Kids use carbon fiber braided sleeves to make lightweight model rocket tubes. So yes - ski and pole composite technology IS rocket science ... for 12 year old model rocket builders !!! Tim Kelley (Question authority ... and anything that the ski industry tells you!) |
#23
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Tim,
You've definitely opened a can of worms here. I've been writing a response to this for a few days now, but there are so many different aspects of this issue that my brain has seized up and my normal loquaicousness has degenerated into a rambling, nonsensical tome about ski manufacture. I'm going to post it because it has some interesting thoughts on the issue, but reader beware.... Ski manufacture and distribution is a difficult business and there are definitely issues of which consumers should be aware. But I think that your take on it is overly cynical and there is not a grand conspiracy out to get those small ski shops. Ski companies are trying to make money, and they know that the best way to make money is to sell people good product that makes them happy. While racing is vital to marketing and research, everyone understands that the consumer and quality of product are much more vital to their businesses. The problem is inherent in the cross-country ski industry, and manufacturing consistency, while it could be better, is not the true problem - the difficulty of fitting a ski to a skier is. Unlike selling bikes or ski poles, skis can not be sized easily into increments. Skis must not only account for a skier's size and weight, but also for track hardness, snow temperature, snow age, the skier's ability and many other factors that make fitting a ski a very challenging endeavor. I am sponsored by Fischer skis, so there is full disclosure. What follows is my experience and knowledge of what goes on in the industry, not just at Fischer. Let me also say that inconsistency has always been one of my pet peeves, but as I've learned more about the ski industry, I have learned why it is a fact of life we have to accept. First, about skis. The manufacture of a ski is a complicated process with many steps and ingredients. Minor variations in raw materials and the manufacturing process itself create inconsistencies that are very difficult and expensive to remove. These inconsistencies are not all bad, as the manufacturers rely on it to provide variation among skis so that they can create a ski to fit anyone from 90lb junior to 250lb bruiser. But these variations also make it practically impossible to be able to take two pairs of similar skis and say which are faster without testing them on snow. Even skis that are made out of the same materials in the same batch will vary in flex and possibly speed. If you test two skis in a pair on a flex machine, it is highly likely that you will see variation between even two skis from a pair, as you said in your post. Now, taking your analogy to Dell computers, if you talk to any technician who works on those things for a living, you will discover that certain batches of model x break down much more frequently than other batches of "the same" model x computer. If you took 100 "identical" Dell model x computers, plugged them into the wall and ran benchmarking software to test their speed, you would see differences between them based on the quality of the parts installed, even though the parts are supposedly identical. This is true of cars, computers, appliances, ski poles, bike frames and any other complicated piece of machinery. The root of the problem is that manufacturing large numbers of any complex item brings inconsistencies because it is nearly impossible to get raw materials that are identical and be able to have 100% consistency in assembly. Ski inconsistencies seem to stick out more than other manufactured items, but this is only because subtle differences in production quality produce relatively large performance variations. And each consumer often has more than one pair of skis, so it is easy to compare between them. Can you tell me which one of your ski poles flexes less than the other? Probably not, but I bet if you investigate it more closely, you will see variation between the two poles in a pair and pairs of poles across a manufacturing batch. Also, the keyboard is one size fits all so it is not a very good analogy. Do you think Dell would be able to handle it if for some reason variation in hand size required them to stock 100 different keyboard sizes for each model of computer? And then there might be a difference not only in size, but perhaps you need a certain type of keyboard for when you set it on a hard surface like a desk, but a different keyboard when it rests on something soft like a person's lap. All while being able to educate consumers on how they should fit themselves? Dell might be able to handle this gracefully, but only because computers are a multi-billion dollar market and they could absorb the costs without raising prices significantly. The XC ski industry is simply too small to be able to absorb all of the massively expensive changes required to produce skis more consistently without making skis too expensive for the consumer. I know that Fischer has made huge strides in the consistency of their skis due to large investments in production machinery and robotics, but to completely remove inconsistency would simply be impossible, and to try would add too much to the price of a pair of skis. Finally, about your "trickle down" theory of ski distribution. This is a complicated issue with many different aspects, but I'll try to stay focused here. Basically, your theory doesn't really work because it assumes that someone can walk into a room with 1000 pairs of skis and pick out the "good" ones. Given certain parameters for an individual skier, a skilled ski picker can find flex patterns that are likely to be fast for that skier. But until the ski is tested on snow, not even the best ski selector would be able to guarantee that you don't have some nice looking firewood. And there is also a good chance that in that same room of 1000 skis, that they left the best pair in there without even looking at it. There is no magical way to pick skis without waxing them up and testing on snow. Even with very advanced testing devices, World Cup ski techs still take the shotgun approach to ski selection. Armed with a skier's stats, they choose a particular size, base and flex pattern that they think will be fast in certain conditions. Then they try to find as many pairs of skis as possible that match this profile, take them back to the waxroom, mount them up and test them on snow. They weed out the slower pairs and end up with a few top candidates, but only by thorough testing on snow. It might take 100 pairs of similar skis to find the one magical pair that will slaughter the competition on the World Cup. Because pickers are basically limited to choosing based on size, base and flex, the good skis don't necessarily get pulled out of the pool because: 1. The elite skiers are looking for very specific characteristics. If a ski does not flex correctly for a given skier's weight, then it is ignored, even though the flex profile may be very favorable and the ski would be likely to be fast for a skier of a different size. 2. The sheer quantity of skis in production overwhelms the ability of any race service team to be able to test even a small percentage of the total output. This is a completely uneducated guess, but imagine that a single ski manufacturer sells 50,000 pairs of skis. Perhaps they provide 1000 pairs of skis to athletes and teams (which is outrageously over what happens in reality). Even if teams test and reject 10 skis for every pair they select, only 20% of the total fleet has even been examined by a team. So even when we overestimate the number of skis tested by huge margins, that leaves 80% of the skis in production going down through the supply chain without even being examined by the teams. 3. Skis can only truly be tested on snow, so it is impossible to test even a small percentage of the total output, and furthermore, it is impossible to say which pair of skis will be the magical ones that win World Cups. This makes it highly probable that a signficant number of good skis are missed by the teams, even when they do test them, and they go along down the supply chain. The issue gets clouded somewhat as almost every company has special race stock and the difference between race stock and production skis varies dramatically between companies. For Fischer, the "race room" is tied very closely with research and development because they use race testing and feedback to determine what features will make it into next year's production skis. They also sometimes have special skis made for very specific conditions that would never go into production because they would not sell due to their narrow range. So while some race stock skis may have prototype base materials or use a mold that is in development, the majority are just production skis with special tracking numbers that can be used to easily identify the construction of the ski for race service people. And generally only very elite skiers have access to anything other than production skis, even though they are officially considered race stock. I know that this varies wildly by company, though. I've heard that some companies have completely separate race production, but I don't know enough about what each company does to say more than that. Back to the "trickle down" theory. So, basically we have a broad range of production skis that gets distributed. The majority of these are never even examined by race service, and even of the block that are examined by race service, the skis that are left are not the dregs due to the factors discussed above. What it comes down to then as the skis get to your shop is simple probability. Ski Teams pick just as many lemons as get delivered to local shops. The difference is that teams probably pick these out faster since they are out testing so much. A local shop will only be able to discover this after the consumer skis on them for a while, and only then if the skier is savvy enough to know that they have a pair of dogs. Ask any World Cup technician, and they will tell you about the probability of finding a good pair of skis. They select large numbers of skis every year and test them on snow, slowly weeding out the fastest pairs from the rest. Each service person will give you their odds of getting a good pair from each manufacturer. Everyone I have ever heard talk about this ranks Fischer first as having the highest odds of selecting a good ski, then Atomic, then Madshus, then Rossignol. Every manufacturer makes good skis. Some make more good skis than others. Unfortunately, all of them make firewood, at least occasionally. A lot of these skis are identified before they ship, but not all of them. Some manufacturers will warranty a pair of lemons. Some won't. For the manufacturer it is exceedingly difficult to tell if a pair of skis is truly a lemon because ski fit is so important as is base preparation. A wicked fast pair of skis will be dog slow if the person riding them is fit poorly or ruins them in preparation. In my travels around the country, I've talked with what seems like a hundred angry, under-educated consumers who hate their skis because they are "slow". After checking their skis out, it is about 50/50: 1. Extremely burnt bases or bases that have not been waxed. 2. The ski was bought on a clearance rack and either the shop told the person they don't fit but the consumer bought them anyway or the shop did not now or did not tell the person that those skis would suck because they did not fit. This is not the consumers fault. It is the industry's weakness - skis and wax are too difficult for the average person who just wants to go out and ski. Even many people who I would describe as enthusiasts have misconceptions or incomplete understanding of what is necessary to get a fast ski. I don't even know. Finally, getting to the point of the small ski shop. Most shops place orders for specific sizes, flexes and base combinations in the summer. This order is sent to the national warehouse, where the skis are picked and sent out when they arrive in the early fall. This is no different than the process for a college team, for instance. The only difference will be that a college team's ski selection criteria will be more specific than a shop's since the college team is picking skis for individuals and the ski shop is picking skis for what it believes will be its customers. So, while a college team's order for one of their skiers might have a flex range within 2-3 kg, the shop does not necessarily need such precision since they are ordering a large number of skis to cover their expected consumers, who are not specific people yet. At least in Fischer's case, there is not a "special" pile in the US warehouse that goes to the college teams. All skis are the same and get picked by size, flex and base. So, what it comes down to is probability. Unfortunately, that is why you are less likely to be able to find a great ski for you at a small ski shop (off the rack). The probability that you will pick a good pair of skis off of a small ski shop floor is exactly the same as it is at the warehouse or a big dealer. But since they sell fewer skis than larger retailers, they have a smaller selection. A smaller selection means fewer numbers of skis that will fit a particular individual and skis are probably selected on a broader range of flex than you would see in a high-volume dealer. Since ski fit is the primary factor involved in ski performance, this is a problem if you can't find a good match. These days, most shops should be able to place special orders for skis if they do not have something that fits what a particular customer needs, but it is less financially advantageous for them to order a pair for you rather than sell one off the floor. So, unfortunately, the market drives them toward pushing what they have on the floor, and maybe not toward doing the best thing for you. And even if they do place a special order, it is not guaranteed that the warehouse will have the correct size in stock. I don't think this is malicious on the part of the shop owners, but there is enough of a gray area in fitting skis that they can rationalize that the ski on the floor is "close enough". Most of the time, a few kg does not matter, so when they have something close on the floor, they will sell it to you and it will probably be OK. This is not necessarily wrong or malicious, but it may not be ideal for the consumer. And that is the root of the problem. It is impossible to stock all of the skis to fit everyone perfectly and maintain a financially viable business. Ideally, a well-trained person like Zach Caldwell would fit you at your local ski shop. He would place an order at the factory and they would match your specs to a pair of skis out of a huge selection and you would have the ideal match. But this is just not viable. Manufacturers have to educate their dealers and rely on the dealers educating the consumers at the local ski shop. Ski sales fluctuate wildly based on snow conditions. Every year everyone from the manufacturer on down to the retailer has to make their best guess as to how many pairs of skis they will sell when they place their orders in the summer. If they overestimate, then they end up with excess inventory which they sell at a loss or very low margin. If they underestimate, then they lose potential business and perhaps market share as their customers move to other retailers. And since there are so many configurations of size, base, and flex, the retailer not only has to choose the total number of skis to order, but how many of each size to stock. This is a daunting task and the reason why it is so difficult to pick skis. -Nathan www.nsavage.com "Tim Kelley" wrote in message oups.com... I'm starting this discussion thread so hopefully I and other r.s.n readers can learn more about how racing skis are distributed from the manufacturer to the consumer. I'll keep this discussion "ski vendor generic" so as not to offend anyone. I don't know much about ski manufacturer distribution models. But I know a lot about buying skis ... I've been buying skis for over 30 years. During this time I can safely say, the best skis I've ever owned I either bought in Europe, or bought 2nd hand from a former European national team member. I've never had much luck buying great skis from a small local ski shop in the US. This leads me to visualize that a typical ski company distribution scheme as such (please ski company reps ... correct me if I'm wrong): 1) A batch of skis are made in Europe. 2) World Cup/ Euro national teams pick over the skis. 3) Euro clubs pick over the skis. 4) Big Euro sports shops pick over the skis. 5) What's left is sent to other places in the world, like the US 6) US National and vendor sponsored teams pick over US skis 7) Large US ski shops and ski service companies pick over skis 8) US Universities and clubs pick over skis 9) Whatever is left over ... is then shipped to small retail stores The ordering of steps 1 to 8 above may be off ... but my main point is that it sure seems like the best skis must be long gone before the skis that go to local shops are shipped. Actually, this distribution model would not be that bad ... if it wasn't for my next point: quality control. It seems quality control for ski manufacturers is still in the stone age. It amazes me, and shop owners, what can show up at local ski shops in Anchorage. Skis with identical serial numbers that don't have cambers that are even close. Skis that are warped and would take stone-grinding off part of the base and into the core to flatten the ski! I'm sure skis are difficult to make. But they can't be any more difficult than computers, cell phones, TVs, etc. All of these devices, like skis, were once hand made ... but then the manufacturers got their act together. Imagine if you went to buy a Dell 8400 computer and the salesperson said - "Why don't you squeeze these 4 keyboards to see what fits you best". "Oh no - you can't turn the computer on and try it!" That's the way skis are still sold. After 30 years of composite ski manufacturing, you'd think that two skis could be made exactly the same. But that doesn't seem to be the case. And because of this lack of quality control, there is a need for this hierarchal "pick-over" of skis. And the result seems to be that the full-price-paying end customer at the small ski shop cash register in the US ... is often screwed. Your thoughts ...? Tim Kelley |
#24
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I think that wood skis of the past were very different ski-to-ski, and
selecting good skis was really an art. I hear that guitars are really different, and even a good guitar maker can't put out a fantastic sounding guitar every time. So there's something unusual and inconsistent about wood. Now that skis are made with a lot of non-wood, it seems to me that skis are very similar ski-to-ski, and the key is to get a good fit. Since there still is wood in there, I can understand that skis are different. I can understand that someone with a lot of experience can probably find some skis that are faster than others, but I think part of this is myth continued by wax techs and skiers when it's hard to explain why one pair was really fast when another similar pair was only very good. Maybe one pair has quite a few more kms than the other, maybe one pair has a lot of cold wax under the waxes of the day. Who knows, but when you believe one pair is fast, it's a powerful motivation to keep using that pair even if another pair might be slightly faster on a different day. Also, I think some brands of skis are better in certain conditions than others and that's due to flex patterns. Then there's soft skis for soft conditions etc. Lots of factors. So Tim, why do you think some skis are much better than others? Have you gotten skis from overseas and locally that are the same year but much different? Jay Wenner |
#25
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Hi Jay,
This is a reply to you and Nathan. First to Nathan I'd like to say thanks for your post. Besides being a good athlete, you are a great communicator and educator. I along with many other readers no doubt learned a lot from that post. Posts like that make R.S.N a good place to visit. Jay, I actually have gotten skis of the same year locally and "abroad", i.e. same year 2nd handers through a university skier that was on a Euro national team. They were much different ... but hey, we're just talking 2 pairs of skis. So we can't truly make any judgement. We can only ask questions and wonder - like I am doing on this discussion thread. Honestly - I have never skied on skis that felt as lively, free, fast, responsive ... and just all around great in wide conditions as the 2nd hander Euro skis I got. Another pair that I once bought in Sweden comes close. Why were the skis so good ... in my opinion ... it is a great flex pattern that's evenly matched on both skis. I understand that skis can vary due to manufacturing, the picking for a skier's ability and style, etc. But after getting a pair of skis like this that are so much better than anything I've bought locally ... you start to wonder: "Why can skis that are stamped, say "192 Med Flex", and come from the same reputable ski company ... differ sooooo much?" You feel sorry for other consumers like myself that have to learn the hard way that skis vary so much ... by paying $400-$500 for every 'lesson'. And you feel sorry for ski shops, especially your local small shops, that have to deal with selling a high variance, high price commodity to us. Eventually, you get to the point that you put up a post on R.S.N to see what others have to say about this situation. Tim |
#26
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Nathan -
Thanks for taking the time to write a great post about a very difficult topic. Ken |
#27
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Tim,
I, and I think that all of the ski manufacturers, share your frustration. They want to be able to make their customers happy, but it is a difficult task due to all of the forces they are fighting. What made your secondhand skis fast? It seems that your thinking is that there was something "special" about these skis because they were race stock. My guess is that your skis are no different from production skis. The reason they seem special is because they were selected by a very knowledgeable person who happened to match them to a person who is close to your size. I would also be willing to bet that another significant factor is that they were prepared and waxed by professionals. No offense intended here, but most people don't understand that keeping wax on a ski except when the ski is on the snow can make an immense difference in performance. I do know for a fact that Fischer makes some race stock skis that are not available to the public. And that they can be really, fast in certain conditions. But I also know from personal experience that stock production skis are not fundamentally different than "race stock" skis. Many of the skis in my race bag are production skis, and I probably race on production skis 75% of the time. There are a few prototype molds and bases that I use under certain conditions, but generally, if these prototype features are useful and cover a wide range of conditions, they make it into the following year's production skis. I commonly find that while I'm out coaching with my training (rock) skis, the people I'm coaching often comment about how fast my skis are relative to theirs. These are stock production skis waxed with straight hydrocarbon waxes with a whole bunch of scratches on the bottom and not particularly well-cared for. But I do keep wax on them most of the time and this makes them faster than most citizen racers' race skis because they do not wax as often. It is not because my skis are race stock, but because I know how to prepare a ski to make it fast. And even though they are training skis and I neglect them, I know that training at a higher speed is a good thing, so I always keep them waxed, even if I ski over gravel sections with them. So, just because you have a "magic" pair of skis that came from "race stock", you can't assume that the reason they are better is because race stock is somehow fundamentally different. -Nathan www.nsavage.com "Tim Kelley" wrote in message ups.com... Hi Jay, This is a reply to you and Nathan. First to Nathan I'd like to say thanks for your post. Besides being a good athlete, you are a great communicator and educator. I along with many other readers no doubt learned a lot from that post. Posts like that make R.S.N a good place to visit. Jay, I actually have gotten skis of the same year locally and "abroad", i.e. same year 2nd handers through a university skier that was on a Euro national team. They were much different ... but hey, we're just talking 2 pairs of skis. So we can't truly make any judgement. We can only ask questions and wonder - like I am doing on this discussion thread. Honestly - I have never skied on skis that felt as lively, free, fast, responsive ... and just all around great in wide conditions as the 2nd hander Euro skis I got. Another pair that I once bought in Sweden comes close. Why were the skis so good ... in my opinion ... it is a great flex pattern that's evenly matched on both skis. I understand that skis can vary due to manufacturing, the picking for a skier's ability and style, etc. But after getting a pair of skis like this that are so much better than anything I've bought locally ... you start to wonder: "Why can skis that are stamped, say "192 Med Flex", and come from the same reputable ski company ... differ sooooo much?" You feel sorry for other consumers like myself that have to learn the hard way that skis vary so much ... by paying $400-$500 for every 'lesson'. And you feel sorry for ski shops, especially your local small shops, that have to deal with selling a high variance, high price commodity to us. Eventually, you get to the point that you put up a post on R.S.N to see what others have to say about this situation. Tim |
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