Is slalom ski tuning a thing of the past ?

[swbca]

Some dates are wrong

1962 - Minnesota slalom skiers used Northland slalom skis. Warren Witherall, who had his signature on the ski cut 1.25 inches of the back of our skis and moved the fin forward. As a high-school student, I felt felt pain when he extended the fin slot forward with a big hand saw.

 

1967 - Just before the Texas Nationals I was trying to make a Maharajah ski work. KLP could make the ski work, but other skiers would just fall over into their good-side turn when they were on their difficult rope lengths. To widen the ski along front foot, I used a band saw to cut a slot down the right side of the ski from the tip to the back of the front binding, then spread the gap and filled it with resin. It worked pretty good. The 1967 Austin Texas Nationals were on a river during a Texas flash flood with logs, branches and huge rollers in the course. Jump champion Chuck Stearns won slalom, I think I placed 7th. Many of the top seeded skiers fell in the rollers . . Floods are an equalizer. When Merrill Lapoint saw my Maharajah ski, he thought the saw cut was to fix a manufacturing defect rather than to "tune" it. I declined his offer to send me a new ski.

 

1968 - When Dave Saucier wanted to get a skier on a Saucier ski, he would meet you at Lake Saucier in a woods in the middle of a farm somewhere. Before you ever tried the ski, he would fill his boat with white dust as he made the very large round bevels larger and rounder.

 

1969 - When Leroy Burnett was the slalom sensation on a wood Obrien, running 30 off (or was it 36 off ?) at every tournament, I drove to his house in Northern California to get a ski. It was the best ski I had to date after I widened the ski with epoxy about 3/32" on the good side turn from the front heal forward. Later MasterCraft-Obrien built in the same asymmetry with their La Point Radius ski, which was sold in 2 versions, for Left or Right foot forward.

 

Fast forward to 2021 - as an outsider trying to start over in M9 in a few months, I have the impression that sandpaper, saws, resin and files are no longer part of breaking in a new slalom ski. I just spent $1200 on a blank ski, where would I start with carpenters tools? But Finally, it looks like manufacturers have figured out that all the older skis were too narrow under the front foot. Now the top 66-67" skis (such as D3 EVO and ION) are 3/16 to 5/16" wider than the universal 6 9/16 width from the past.

[skibrain]

In 1972 my dad bought a $30 pair of 68” Nash combos from Holiday gas station in my ND home town. It said “tunnel concave” on the 1/16” deep depression milled into the bottoms - so you KNOW they were made for performance. My older brother got the ski with the slalom toe. My dad took a jig saw and cut 4” off the tail, and 2” off the tip to make a slalom ski for 11 yr old me. We added a rear toe strap and I swapped the fin for the deepest metal fin I could find.

 

I tried my hardest to ski on that thing for two years. It didn’t turn. I would occasionally bury the tip on wake crossings. I wiped out a lot.

 

When I was 13, the local sporting goods store started carrying these skis called O’Brien. We scraped our money together and bought this red/silver/blue beauty of a ski called a Mach 1.

[lpskier]

@swbca Obviously, you haven’t spent time at LaPoint Ski Park. Saws, grinders, sand paper and files are still part of the tuning process. Bondo, too!

 

[Nando]

@swbca, didn’t you also create some semi-Frankenstein’s? I seem to recall a Taperflex Apex with an aluminum top from a Vector (?) ski to stiffen it and a couple of other things I can’t recall. I know KLP has widened skis recently and he’s certainly an example of a guy who’s not shy about pulling out a file. As my icon implies, I was the beneficiary of Dave Saucier tuning both my Saucier ski and before that, an EP. Tuning in the old sense of filing bevels is pretty rare, but there a few doing it.

[Bruce_Butterfield]

@swbca Awesome topic! FWIW, I started adjusting fins in the early ‘80’s with a hacksaw and file. To this day trying a new ski without cutting or filing on something just doesn’t feel right. Ski tuning is far from over, the tuning has just evolved significantly from years past.

 

So here’s some random thoughts as you get back into the skiing cult:

 

A 50 year gap?! Wow how things have changed.

 

The majority of the cutting, filing, and sanding still happens, but its with a company’s developers and top skiers long before any production ski goes out the door.

 

The cumulative “ski knowledge” has increased exponentially since the ‘60s and ‘70s when the average tournament skier was a willing guinea pig.

 

The performance level expected out of any manufacturer’s product is high long before the first production ski hits the market. The idea of needing to cut / sand / file to make a ski work would mean it’s a POS and to be avoided at all costs. It would be near corporate suicide to put such a ski out today.

 

All of the modifications / improvements you mentioned were destructive – if the “mod” didn’t work out so well, the ski went into the trash. That’s hard to do with the prices of today’s skis.

 

Today we understand so much more about what fin and binding adjustments can do – that are fully reversible if they don’t pan out – that is where the majority of the experimentation and learning takes place.

 

Its been a few years since I had a close look at one of KLP’s skis. The last time I did, I remember thinking that what was once a stock ski had now seen the business end of virtually every tool in his toolbox.

 

Without all the experimentation you mentioned, today’s skis would be nowhere near where they are, so we all learn from those pioneers. I don’t see any slowdown in ski tuning, its just different.

 

[Rednucleus]

Great topic! You haven't seen anything till you have watched @AdamCord work on his ski between sets at Hilltop. Truly remarkable to see how he massages his ski set to set. Wish I understood anything he was doing!!

[Horton]

@Rednucleus he wishes he knew what he is doing

[Jody_Seal]

@swbca

As I enter into the elderly divisions of the sport I find the daily bowel movement has more of a effect on ski tuning then ski tuning itself. Lots of fiber in the diet equates into less ski tuning.

Take a tip from the jumpers: dump before you jump!! !lol

[cougfan]

@Jody_Seal sage advise from a wise old man???

[thager]

@Nando Back in the early 70s at Lake X old man Farcus told us youngsters "Pee before you ski!" Don't want your bladder exploding if you have an accident in the water and infecting your insides. Jim Heins, John Ewalt and I laughed about that one for years! At that same tournament I remember Dave Saucier hand tuning your Saucier slalom for you. Amazed me that a few swipes of sandpaper on the edges after a couple of passes really improved your skiing.

[6balls]

In our family we always called it a "Pre-ski Pooter"

[Wish]

First time I saw slalom ski tuning was my first yr in FL tournaments. Guy nicknamed Wild Bill was adding material to the top of his ski between rounds. Looked to have an arsenal of ski tuning items in the back of his truck. Hadn’t seen that again till @adamhcaldwell at the first Denali summit which was impressive to watch to say the least. Only thing like that I’ve ever done is to cut down a slalom ski for my daughter. Was fun cutting it up and shaping it. Crazy part was it actually worked well for her.

[RGilmore]

Not for nothing, but in the early days of fiberglass skis, the entire bevel and a good amount of the sidewall - especially in the tail area - was solid a solid resin / glass fiber mix. I personally watched Bob LaPoint aggressively file the tail bevels on several skis in Acapulco one year.

 

These days, file a little too much on a bevel and there's a decent chance you're gonna find you self looking at the foam core peeking out. That is a bad ski-tuning day for sure.

[Horton]

Filling a modern skis is a good way to break a ski. I have never and would never sand or file a ski unless a had a stack of identical skis I could ruin in the process.

 

Back in the day the designs were pretty crude so bevel tuning was all there was. Heck we did not have any idea what could be done with a fin until the mid-late 1980.

[swbca]

@Horton The designs were crude and the wood skis could completely stop working when they sat around in the dry winter air between summers. The wood Obrien which was my best ski ever at the time, didn't work at all the next spring.

[Alberto Soares]

@swbca I suggest you buy the book, lots of good information on it

 

https://finwhispering.com/product-category/books/

[ozski]

The new GT just delivered a new era of brain damage for skiers to tinker with. I can already see the new whisper tail coming...

[Horton]

@ozski

 

[pregom]

How much did a top of the line slalom ski cost 50 years ago? Adjusting for inflation, how does that price compare to today's top of the line prices of close to 2 grand?

[eleeski]

"Never touch anything but the fin (and only in .001 increments)".

 

WTF? I use a grinder on all my skis - unless the sawzall is needed. Bondo (actually Superfil for me) is also pretty useful to undo the grinding or seal up the core you exposed.

 

The reason you have a ski is to ski well on it. If tuning it makes it better, great.

 

Since I'm saying you might want to tune a ski, here are the basics:

 

Rounded edges ride deeper in the water, sharp edges lift. Decide where your ski isn't working for you and make small changes. During the process, take lots of sets. (If you take enough sets, your skills will improve enough that you will get better - regardless of what you have done to the ski.)

 

If you screw up, rebuild the edges with Bondo.

 

Evaluating a ski after tuning it can be enjoyable and rewarding. Sometimes it actually makes the ski better for you.

 

Eric

[swbca]

@eleeski Tuning Addiction ?    re: Bondo . . When skis made of aluminum, foam and composites started being built, I used multiple coats of catalyzed automotive paint to replace material that was "tuned off". It was easy to build thickness with the epoxy paint. I had a spray booth with infrared lamps setup just for skis. I rebuilt and reshaped the edges of my EP and Kidder skis endlessly. The ski always looked like new and occasionally worked better. But tuning is like gambling . . when you have a "win" you bet again, never know when to stop. All that matters is being ahead for the season "finals".

[ForrestGump]

@eleeski is so used to Panda's over the last decade, it has no effect on him any longer.

[The_MS]

Don’t mock bondo until you have skied on one of his skis. After that you can mock him all you want

[Horton]

Disclaimer: The administrator of this web site does not endorse or encourage anyone to file or sand on modern commercially manufactured slalom skis. Any removal of the outer laminate will diminish the structural integrity of the ski.

[thager]

It's not paranoia if it's true!

[ballsohard]

It’s awesome that @eleeski loves tuning skis that way and seems to understand it enough to make it work for him. Though, I still have zero interest in taking my new D3 and turning it into a D4, D5 and D6 in my next three sets.

[swbca]

@Horton I won't be touching the skin of my new D3. When the blank ski only weighs 3 pounds you know the ski's structure is its skin.

[lpskier]

Not to mention voiding the warranty.

[swbca]

@eleeski @The_MS I wasn't mocking Bondo. for relevance, I was referencing eleeski's practice of adding material to ski edges as part of ski tuning process. @eleeski uses Bondo or similar, I layer spray coats of colored epoxy. No Mocking here . . tournament scores are what count.

[VONMAN]

There's a lot you can do to tune a ski. Fin tuning or different fin shape. Different wing or wing position. Boot placement, angle or cant. But not the bevels. Sell the ski first and get some money back for a new stick. If you truly understand that Black Art, I Salute you.

[swbca]

@eleeski @Bruce_Butterfield and others

FINS . . I experimented with edges of skis and binding positions constantly for 30 years, making skis work for me, but what I learned doesn't mean anything with the new skis which aren't constructed with surplus non-structural sidewall material like the old skis.

 

We never experimented with fins decades ago, except in the 60's everyone learned that drilling a couple of holes would prevent the ski from turning sideways after crossing the wake, throwing you out the front apparently because of a vacuum pocket behind the fin.

 

CAN SOMEONE ELABORATE ON FIN ADJUSTMENTS ?   at least of few of the basics.

[BobF]

I've learned a lot from this thread. But most of all, I've learned that my ski buds can no longer refer to me as a tweaker for a few minor fin adjustments. :)

[VONMAN]

Buy and read this three times https://finwhispering.com/product-category/books/

[Horton]

@swbca

I really need to re-write and update this but this should still be a good primer.

 

https://www.ballofspray.com/home-page/tech/53-2004-lever-article

 

[Bruce_Butterfield]

@swbca definitely recommend Skijay's Finwhispering book. Its by far the best explanation of what the fin does all in one spot. There are definitely other theories and explanations, but Finwhispering is the most comprehensive and easy to understand.

 

Then you can get out the hacksaw and drill to see what improvements you can make beyond moving the fin!

[Nando]

@swbca, back in the early '80s, when Roger Teeter was living in MN (and for a short time afterward) he was trying all kinds of weird fin shapes. He provided PC and me with a box of fins, some with fixed wings, some without, and we cut and ground them into all kinds of shapes. What we found back then was that most of our experiments didn't work very well, but we did get some understanding of the effects of changing things. The Fin Whispering book is very comprehensive and really goes way beyond fin adjustments and covers a lot of ski behavior theory.

[swbca]

@Bruce_Butterfield @Nando I will get the book - I appreciate the recommendation. Bruce mentioned Theories and Explanations. What makes ski tuning a black art . . ? When I told Dave Saucier or Karl Roberge that my new Saucier or new Kidder ski was disinterested in turning on my On-Side turn, they would round the bevel more on the right side in the binding areas . . when they did that to my skis it didn't work . . but that was just me I guess. The way my other skis were setup I would make the bevel smaller and edges less round to get the mid ski to help initiate and complete a turn.

 

In 1967 Merrill LaPoint was helping run a local tournament in Marin county and I dropped in after seeing the event from the highway while on a vacation. Merrill loaned me Kris's Maharajah because that's what I was using that year and I had talked to Merrill at the nationals a couple of week earlier. Kris's ski still had the small sharp 45 bevel from the factory. All sorts of things can work that appear to conflict with prevailing tuning frameworks.

[Bruce_Butterfield]

@swbca in my mind the things that make ski tuning such a black art is the near infinite combination of ski characteristics that interact to make the ski perform the way it does. The list starts with bevels, tunnel, rocker, flex, width, length, then add fin and position and types of bindings. If you change the bevels at one particular point on a given ski, it could be magic, but making that same change on a different ski could disasterous due to how all the characteristics of a ski work together.

 

Then comes the hard part - how do you factor in a given skier's style (or lack thereof) and match that to the ski? A ski that works like magic for one skier may be completely unuseable for another. I had a hard time making a pass on many of the LaPoint designed Mastercraft skis in the '80's but they worked great for many others.

 

The good news is that pretty much any of the top skis will "work" for most skiers. Pick one, set it up to the manfuacturers recommended settings and you should be able to run buoys on it. Still may or may not be the best ski for a particular skier, but there aren't any real crap skis out there like years past that require saws and files to get them to work.

[swbca]

@Bruce_Butterfield You talked about the skier as one of the variables . . I haven't skied for a long time but am committed to do as well as I can in M9 by every means available. The ski's I had configured over my final several years in various men's division were far from stock. When I borrowed or tried any other ski I couldn't ski on them at all in the limited time I gave to them. My problem was the same on all stock skis. I expected them to snap turn, not making each turn a long drawn out process. I have heard and can see on pro tournament video that modern skis are much more interested in turning than the old skis.

 

With the improvement in ski's, I have confidence that there are stock skis that work out of the box . . so its up to me to learn how to ski the ski . . and then work on the fins, boots and boot positions.

[swbca]

ITS THE SKIER NOT THE SKI   What about the skier that doesn't worry about the performance of his ski's. In a charming way always pokes fun at the guys who are always messing around with their ski's.

 

THE TRUTH    A gifted athlete can do pretty well on a terrible slalom ski. A mediocre athlete will get higher tournament scores on a great ski.

 

At the 1965 Nationals in Minneapolis, A skiing legend / World Champion trick skier introduced himself and asked if I could use a practice partner. The skier had started a real job and had been transferred from California to Minnesota. He started skiing at our place that day, the day before his Trick event. For the following 2 summers he skied at our place every weekday morning before he went to work.

 

He had signed an endorsement deal with a sports company known for their basketballs. He didn't get his input into the products that he was expecting. He had their skis for all three events. The designs were nothing more than a marketing guys idea of where to put their name. The trick skis were shaped like a diamond that came to a blunted point at each end. There was no tracking and no fore and aft support. The slalom ski was a banana design like used in ski shows. He finally used a hand saw to cut the slalom ski so it also ended with a blunted point at the tail.

 

THE PROOF . . I think he placed in the 1966 Miami Nationals on his diamond shaped trick ski. He occasionally ran 30 off in practice on the slalom ski. It took a gifted athlete to accomplish those performances on the skis he was using but far below his abilities. He loves the people and loves the sport. He always had a smile even though I'm sure he knew that he would have won 3 more medals at the 66 & 67 Nationals on any other skis. So keep on tuning your fins and bindings.

 

At 17 years old, a Mixed Doubles champion with Vicki Van Hook.

Currently in the USA Water Ski Foundation "Legends Program" and skis the western mountains about 20 days a season.

 

[VONMAN]

@swbca I'm a 70 year old skier that has been at this since 1981. Welcome back to the party. The ski's of today have changed so much, you will be amazed. You no longer have to adjust your style to the ski. You adjust the ski to what you want it to do. Read my write

up I did on my 2020 C-75 and scroll down on that same page to view my rudder fin design for laugh's. https://www.ballofspray.com/forum#/discussion/comment/360078

 

 

[Nando]

Out of curiosity, @swbca, what ski will you be making your comeback on?

[swbca]

@Nando Not sure if it will be a comeback, I hope so and time will tell. Spending my free time this winter working out to regain strength and getting down 5 more pounds to my best skiing weight. Also got some good feedback from this forum and other places on improving balance and reflexes. Its great having a reason to get fit.

 

My choice of ski is a 68" D3 ION considering the 30mph speed. I am sure there are other good choices, may be better choices but I figure this is a reasonable starting point.

 

I am stunned by the all the articles and forum threads on fin tuning. All credible people agreeing that .00x inch adjustments making huge differences. All the language developed to talk about fin settings and I have no idea what they are talking about.

 

I am also in the dark about ski bindings. I talked to Lance about boots. He told me he couldn't ski at all after mounting a new boot. He installed a snow skiing cant to fix it.

 

Do the new boot options actually improve performance versus typical competition bindings from the past ? Are skiers using the hard shell boots for lateral control like ski racers ?

[Horton]

@swbca There are bindings available today that are pretty close to what you used in the 1980s. I would suggest that you use a basic Wileys binding. https://wileyski.com/waterski-bindings-wiley/

[Nando]

As @Horton says, Wiley’s would replicate ‘80s bindings, but while that’s true and would eliminate another variable, a hard shell system is much more comfortable and will give better control (a little, anyway). Switching to a hard shell system IS a big change, but it is 2021...

[Horton]

It is a big change....

[swbca]

@Horton D3 has the fin and binding setup measurements for all of their skis on their web site. Are those values a sensible starting point ?

 

Thanks

[Horton]

@swbca the D3 stock settings are very good. At 30 mph I would tell you to set your ski to those settings and just go ski.

[swbca]

@VONMAN @Nando Regarding digital calipers; Any specific recommendation?

[mike_mapple]

@swbca 8" if you are really going to be setting / adjusting fins, most fins will run longer that 6" even if just slightly.