Preview: 2023 Peak 88 and 98

[ScottB]

I've often wondered about skis with interesting "tech". Would a Moment Deathwish without triple camber ski the same as one with? Or would an Elan Wingman 86CTi without Amphibio ski any differently than one with? Any Renoun without HDT/Vibestop? I guess we'll never know!

I have experience with Elans amphibio and Renouns HDT. To me, both are very noticeable. I swapped feet with the Amphibio and could easily feel the edge connection difference. I liked it. The Renoun was very noticeable in a proto ski, but not the right tech for me. I liked it stiffened in rough groomer terrain as you skied faster. It became a 2x4 in moguls with my 250 lbs flexing it. It was a proto ski and not production ski, so can't draw any conclusions other than the stuff works and how much is in the ski is very important.

 

[James]

Or would an Elan Wingman 86CTi without Amphibio ski any differently than one with?

Yes. For one thing there wouldn’t be a left and right. For two, I might actually buy an Elan.

I wish a company would come out and make really great skis with the basics, and then as a advertising campaign, blatantly lie about and exaggerate the underlying ski tech.

Well I just watched yet another Fischer video with a product manager talking about the titanium in the ski. Now there’s only so much leeway you can give for titan = titanium in German, to a perfect English speaker. They’ve used it up.

 

[AngryAnalyst]

The idea is not to reduce material inputs, but to place the Titanal where it’s needed and to remove it from where it’s not needed. CNC fiber laser cutting machines make this much easier than it used to be.

As for the cost discussion, as Swiss Toni says, the titanal is laser cut on a machine and the cost is a formula of raw material cost, nesting of forms (sheet utilization), machine set up cost, and machine operating hourly cost, and # of parts made per hour. Its how machine shops (sheet metal) price out jobs (if bending is required, have to factor that in too, probably not required for skis). I have been through this a lot as a mech. design engineer.

I think the driving factor in shaping the titanal is weight reduction. I think it may increase costs in general, unless it is going from a full width sheet to a shorter narrower width sheet.

Alright, I'm willing to abandon the idea it's cost driven.

Instead I'll ask a question. Why innovate by doing shaped titanal? If we don't think it's gross margin engineering, why is shaped titanal a popular design direction across brands right now (including Bode's thing)?

I guess it could be as simple as being economically possible to do shaped titanal now. However, I personally really like the suspensions of skis with traditional sandwich builds, so I am not convinced shaped titanal is producing a better product per se yet so much as a different one. The idea Scott has that it's about weight savings is plausible, I certainly have no interest in making my skis lighter but I'm aware that is something people think they want.

Bode's idea isn't about weight savings at all (he says). Just wondering how to connect the dots...

 

[ski otter 2]

There's a pair of used demo Bomber 78s for sale right now on Powder 7, just in stock - skied roughly twenty times, they say. Maybe another Bode ski.

2022 Bomber Woodie Classic 182cm Used Demo Skis on Sale - Powder7

2022 Bomber Woodie Classic 182cm Skis are now on sale with fast shipping from our Golden, CO ski shop. ...

www.powder7.com

* * * * *

I understand why not, but I wish there were more folks giving strong opinions here with experience skiing a Bode ski, and less of what seems to be pure speculation.


To me, Bode said a lot about what he wanted his Crosson skis to do, and I found that with one of them, what he said was what I got, and then some.
So to me there's a good chance that will be so with the Peak skis: named for both a Peak experience and nearby Peaks in Montana, maybe.

 

[Quandary]

Why innovate.........

Why would you use plastic in ski boots, I really liked the feel of leather. Why would they stop using cables in bindings, I really liked the elasticity. Why use synthetic insulation in ski jackets, I really liked the wet performance of goose down..............

 

[Philpug]

There's a pair of used demo Bomber 78s for sale right now on Powder 7, just in stock - skied roughly twenty times, they say. Maybe another Bode ski.

2022 Bomber Woodie Classic 182cm Used Demo Skis on Sale - Powder7

2022 Bomber Woodie Classic 182cm Skis are now on sale with fast shipping from our Golden, CO ski shop. ...

www.powder7.com

* * * * *

I understand why not, but I wish there were more folks giving strong opinions here with experience skiing a Bode ski, and less of what seems to be pure speculation.


To me, Bode said a lot about what he wanted his Crosson skis to do, and I found that with one of them, what he said was what I got, and then some.
So to me there's a good chance that will be so with the Peak skis: named for both a Peak experience and nearby Peaks in Montana, maybe.

Those predate Bode with Bomber, they used the old Blossom 124/77/110 mold that has been around since the mid 2000's. Construction is not Blossom-esqe. The Bomber was margerine verses butter.

I understand why not, but I wish there were more folks giving strong opinions here with experience skiing a Bode ski, and less of what seems to be pure speculation.

Not a lot of us have had time on the skis. For a first run ski, they do ski very well. I didski a couple of pairs of 98's including some of the last prototypes and I think he is on to something with the keyhole, it is allowing a longer radius ski come into a turn nicer without being too hooky. But hey, what do I know, I've skied them. People can go by my experiences or someones who has not skied them and their interpretations are pure speculation.

 

[ScottB]

So I found this write/review and it clears everything up for me on Bode's new skis. I think its well written and very informative and believable. The executive summary is: ignore the key hole hype, just think of the new "tech" as they shape the titanal to work with the rest of the ski construction to give them the performance characteristics that Bode was looking for. Simple as that and any deeper dive with "marketing" "BS" or Bode speak is useless. When you ski them you will be able to judge for yourself if you like what Bode wants in a ski performance. He is a hell of a skier, so I am optimistic.

TGR Tested: 2022 Peak Skis 104

Bode Miller launches Peak Skis, and we got up to Big Sky to test the new Peak 104.

www.tetongravity.com

I can now sleep peacefully again.

 

[Swiss Toni]

I think the driving factor in shaping the titanal is weight reduction.

I think this is true for wider skis, but for narrower skis it will be more likely for performance reasons. Below is a layup board for an Atomic Redster G9, there is a long slot in the forebody of the upper Titanal layer and it has been narrowed in front of and behind the bindings, probably not much of a weight saving.



There is also the marketing aspect, there’s a saying in ski manufacturing that goes “if you put it on the inside you can put it on the outside”. Lots of stuff has been put into skis over the years that doesn’t seem to serve any real purpose.

Earlier in the thread it was stated that the skis are being made by Elan, Elan makes around 400,000 pairs p.a. around 25% of which are for other ski companies. One of the conditions is that they do the development, you can’t just send them a set of drawings and a BoM. The size, shape and location of the “Keyhole” is likely to have been determined by Elan’s engineers.

 

[James]

Is Elan the only ski factory in Slovenia?

 

[François Pugh]

Yikes! But I can relate to this. For me the early Bonafides did not work when I demoed them: at around 150 lb/5'10", for me those things, more than any other popular ski I can think of, were sensitive to how large or heavy the skier. At my smaller size, they didn't flex for beans, and thus did not hold an edge for me. Instead they skied only by slarving/sliding, pretty much like intermediate or beginner skis.

Maybe that's how the Bonafides have remained for you through all their versions, dunno.

However, the very last few years of the Bonafide (before the current max change for '21), these skis had changed. Bigger guys grumbled, power skiers grumbled, but for me, suddenly the Bonafide was soft enough to flex for me: and surprise, it was dialed in for me also, and had no chatter.
It flutters a bit charging or carving on harder groomers, but even a half inch of fresh settles down that vibration, making it as good with soft on piste as any other ski at least, and making it, for me, a really dialed in edge carver for mild off piste and soft snow days: if it's an inch to three or so inches, that's the ski I'll go to, as well as for soft mild off piste or soft mild bumps - here in Colorado.

Unfortunately, the max changes in the newest version ruined that ski for me, though heavier skiers tell me that it is again better for them. Phooie.

I demoed the previous model Bonafides in 18? (2019-2020? - 2nd longest length) skis on Vancouver Island soft snow, when I weighed 150 lbs. I found they were pretty good skis at everything, so long as you didn't ski fast. There are better off-piste skis and better groomer skis but they split the difference pretty well.

What caused me to scratch them off the list was their performance at higher speeds. You had three choices for high speed skiing: 1) Tip skis a bit and keep going straight; 2) Tip skis a lot and skid while fighting with the skis as they insist on trying to make a way-too-small turn for the speed you're going; and 3) slow down and then either carve or smear at will.

 

[François Pugh]

This vs this? Judging by the Peak 98 video, the Peak has 30-40 cm less effective edge. Hey @AlexisLD, how about adding a value metric: $ / effective edge cm. If I'm paying for ski material, I'd like it to be touching the snow.

I find it's very easy to increase the effective edge of most rockered skis; all you have to do is tip them to a higher angle.
I will admit to missing that constant connection with the tips (provided by full-camber skis) as I'm skiing along between turns though.

 

[Swiss Toni]

Is Elan the only ski factory in Slovenia?

Elan’s factory is the only ski factory in Slovenia, they claim it’s largest alpine ski factory by output in the world, it has 700 employees. It’s owned by a Finnish investment company and has an American CEO. There is at least one other alpine ski manufacturer, Dedra sport https://dedra.si/ I don't think you could call their facility a factory. If they ship to the US you could be the only person in North America who skied on Dedra Bazookas?

 

[James]

There is at least one other alpine ski manufacturer, Dedra sport https://dedra.si/ I don't think you could call their facility a factory. If they ship to the US you could be the only person in North America who skied on Dedra Bazookas?

Maybe @Primoz has skied on those.

 

[Primoz]

@James it depends what you consider as "ski manufacturer". In my mind Elan is the only proper ski manufacturer in Slovenia. If you consider anyone who makes skis, regardless if it's 1 pair per year or few 100.000 pairs per year, then no, Elan is not the only one. I made few runs once on some sort of GS ski that was made by them for guy who running his ski school (and was occasionally involved with Maze for some ski technique drills, and who invented this UPS concept). It was ok ski, but I wasn't really all that impressed. But to be honest, when you have access and are skiing literally best skis on WC tour, it's kinda hard to be really impressed by average recreational skis, even more, recreational skis made in garage. I have nothing against garage etc. but I still think you need some testing, and some proper experience to build good ski, and big companies with huge race teams and lot of testing have sometimes issues with this, so imagine how much chances one man bend with no budged and no high end technology has, to produce great ski. When it comes to on-piste skis, this is my biggest complain with Elan... they "turned off" their race service some 10 years ago (their ski cross skis are not done in race department) and they have no racers to develop ski. With this, it's hard to compete with Head, Rossignol, Fischer or Atomic, who are testing new things daily. Sure they test for race conditions, but sooner or later that stuff trickles down to recreational skis too.

 

[justplanesteve]

There are different types of ski core, the most expensive ones are made from rotary cut veneers, cheaper ones are made of strips of wood.

I'm not so sure that is true, or maybe it depends on where in the world the manufacturing is taking place vs where the wood is sourced? I know a fair amount about manufacturing wood, but little about manufacturing skis:

Are you saying that the rotary veneers are also arranged vertically? or flat like plywood, except uni-directional?

1.) IF rotary sliced veneer is flat laminated, it should be a lot cheaper than edge laminating sticks. Both cost of initial material, and labor. Although glue cost might be a little higher.

Stick-lam might waste a little more glue proportionately (still less over-all) depending on what size the initial blanks-for-the-core blanks starts out. Bigger the blank, less glue cost, less labor, and less machining waste, but the more costly the raw substrate material. etc.

2.) sorting and assembling strips of solid wood (matching & counterbalancing the natural grain direction & run-out, sapwood vs heart, defects, etc in order to provide consistent performance cores) tends to be labor intensive, though there are machines that can more or less do it now. There would be more material waste & machining to get to the core stage. The cost of the strips per meter^3 that actually ends up in the finished core would probably be higher than the veneer.

A big factor between the 2 options you mention becomes at what point the glue influences the core characteristics more than the wood does. With micro-lams than can become significant as glueline proportion increases quickly vs wood volume.

Which touches on the primary point i'd like to make - "if your point is correct, the <most expensive ones">(in your opinion, microlams from rotary veneer) are not necessarily the better option, or even close" for many applications. Airplane propeller manufacturers among others went through this back when wood was the primary material, with an awful lot of government testing going into the research. In recent years it continued with (balsa) wood cores in wind turbine blades up until balsa supply became unsustainable & plastic foam was substituted. As periodically happens with skis vs wood.

They arrive at the factories in the form rectangular blanks which have to be machined, there is lots of waste (maybe 50%) this is either used to heat the factory or made into pellets for household heating

True that.
Also a point when too much glue can be a factor for residential heating pellets (formaldehyde, other pollutants) so maybe that is added cost in the microlam column, considering disposal.

smt

 

[Swiss Toni]

The European ski manufacturers mainly use European sourced wood, much of it is FSC certified.

In ski cores made from rotary cut veneers the grain is aligned longitudinally i.e. parallel to the base, in plywood the grain of alternate veneers is crossed, usually at right angles.

Most rotary cut veneer cores are made by a plywood manufacturer in Switzerland https://www.hessco.ch/en/products/ski-and-snowboard/ Hess also makes hybrid and edge-glued stick cores. Fischer has a plywood manufacturing plant at its Ukraine site, but I don’t know if they sell cores to other companies. The first part of this video shows how they are made unfortunately the commentary is in German.



“Stick lam” ski cores are pretty easy to make, all you have to do is glue up a stack of boards and cut the resulting block into core banks, some of the smaller manufacturers make them in house or source them locally. Most of the larger manufacturers buy them from a specialist manufacturer, a lot of them are made from short pieces of wood (offcuts?) that are finger jointed together.



As the batch size is pretty small I don’t think there is much automation, they just seem to sort the wood according to density and discard any bits with knots and other defects. These cores are usually lighter than rotary cut veneer cores as they contain less ash/ beech, which also helps keep the cost down. The largest manufacturer of this type of core seems to be a Slovenian company, TDS Industrija d.o.o., which is now owned by Isosport. Slovenian labor is much cheaper than Swiss labor.

The amount of adhesive used, which will be negligible doesn’t seem to be a factor and as PVA wood glue is used formaldehyde isn’t a problem.

Which touches on the primary point i'd like to make - "if your point is correct, the <most expensive ones">(in your opinion, microlams from rotary veneer) are not necessarily the better option, or even close" for many applications. Airplane propeller manufacturers among others went through this back when wood was the primary material, with an awful lot of government testing going into the research. In recent years it continued with (balsa) wood cores in wind turbine blades up until balsa supply became unsustainable & plastic foam was substituted. As periodically happens with skis vs wood.

I can’t see what relevance this has to the cost of ski cores, I only said that the most expensive cores are made from rotary cut veneers.

 

[justplanesteve]

[/quote]I can’t see what relevance this has to the cost of ski cores,[/quote]

It doesn't, because you clarified the sticking point for me "is the rotary cut veneer laid flat, or in vertical blocks for re-sawing"
Your answer: "flat/parallel to sole" So the glue is minimal.

I only said that the most expensive cores are made from rotary cut veneers.

That is very difficult for me to grasp. There's practically 100% less waste getting from tree to blank, less glue, and less labor per piece. A higher quality log (more costly) is necessary, but the utilization is considerably higher. The savings in raw material volume and labor has to be higher. Your note that finger jointed pieces are used in the vertically laminated blanks does help a little with the cost on that side of the ledger.

In my former millwork business, i made small runs of specialty plywood and parallel laminations of all sorts, usually for bent work, and have had an economic incentive to get it right. So i remain puzzled. I also intend to make a pair of skis this winter "just cuz" and plan to use parallel sticks (vertical lamination) but it is almost irrelevant to a one-off hobby project, except i think that method is better.

PVA glue for cores is interesting as well, but makes sense on many levels - a ski is not intended to last more than a few seasons, and PVA has more give than many other options. In the cores, the glue does not matter a lot, since the engineered structure wraps it.

In ski cores made from rotary cut veneers the grain is aligned longitudinally i.e. parallel to the base, in plywood the grain of alternate veneers is crossed, usually at right angles.

That was my expectation, thank you for the confirmation.

So, since the higher end ski makers in the video used vertical parallel laminations rather than plywood, who uses the "more expensive?" flat laid veneers, and why do they spend more?

Thanks!
smt

 

[Swiss Toni]

Hess say that their veneer cores are 20% more expensive than their edge glued stick cores which are more expensive than the Slovenian cores. The price varies according to the type of wood used and the number of veneers

Veneer cores are mainly used in high performance / high quality piste skis, all the major manufacturers (apart from Fischer and K2 who make their own cores) and the high end mid-sized manufacturers use Hess veneer cores. If Hess went out of business it would be a major problem for ski racing as all race skis apart from those made by Fischer use Hess cores.

Skis with veneer cores flex and rebound better than skis with edge glued stick cores. They are also less prone to cupping and twisting, lots of people complain that their skis aren’t flat, this is almost always down to the core.

If you are going to make your own skis be aware that flex and camber vary from ski to ski even if they are pressed at the same time, so unless you get lucky you will have to make a few so that you can match 2 into a pair.

 

[James]

In ski cores made from rotary cut veneers the grain is aligned longitudinally i.e. parallel to the base, in plywood the grain of alternate veneers is crossed, usually at right angles.

Are you saying that rotary sliced veneer cores are made from:
laminated thin veneers that are all longitudinally grain aligned. They are glued in stacks of whatever thickness, say 6mm. Then these are cut in stripsand glued together like sticks, but the sticks in this case are laminated layers.

Is this supposed to be laminated rotary sliced veneer core?
Presumably two different woods. Each strip would be a stack of veneers?

Not surprised at all that this is more expensive than solid sticks glued together.

 

[Swiss Toni]

Yes that is a beech / poplar core made from rotary cut veneers, Stöckli mainly use Hess core banks.

Hess cut the logs to the length required for the core blank, then they peel them to get the veneers, these are usually 3-4mm thick. The veneers are then glued and pressed into a bock that is as thick as the width of the core blanks and as long as the core blanks, the block is then sawn into strips that are the thickness of the core blank.



The core blanks are then put on pallets and shipped to the ski manufactures who then machine them to shape.



The core blanks above are made from beech / poplar, these are the most widely used woods, ash / poplar and okoume / poplar are also used. In order to reduce the cost some manufacturers use 2 short core blanks which they join together by means of a finger joint under the binding heel piece.