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Andrew Read

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Had to bring back this thread. Surely somebody found some more interesting skis in the past 2 years.
Recently found these bad boys sitting on the curb somewhere. Owner was cleaning out his attic and found a pile of old skis. The others were used and toasted beyond repair; but free undrilled mystery skis? How could I refuse?
20220919_093349.jpg

They look really similar to the K2 design; what with the red, white, and blue stripes with black lettering. The colors on these are flipped though and go blue, white, red. They also have a really interesting edge design. They call it their "L-shaped spiral steel multiflex caterpillar edges"
20220919_093536.jpg

20220919_093218.jpg

The steel edge is serrated the whole length of the ski. Absolutely shredded the rag I was using to wipe all the attic dust off.

Any ideas? I'm assuming Duralglass is the brand, but even google has a grand total of zero results for "duralglass ski"
 

cantunamunch

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Does it say 'Made in Italy' anywhere on it?

I think maybe Duralglass is the sub-model, Gemini is the model and Freyrie are the makers.


'Dural' is, of course, short for duralumin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duralumin and duralumin/fiberglass composites are sort of interesting to this day https://www.researchgate.net/public...sandwich_hybrid_composite_using_E-glass_fiber

but we really don't know if any of that is actually in the ski.

I suspect Freyrie because they absolutely had alu/glass composite skis called 'Gemini' as their mid-price offerings:

1663601573586.png
 
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Andrew Read

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Does it say 'Made in Italy' anywhere on it?
No country, manufacturer, or logos anywhere on it. It's got a stamped serial number on the sidewall of like 20,000. Anybody's guess if the numbers start at 1 and they actually made that many pair.
I suspect Freyrie because they absolutely had alu/glass composite skis called 'Gemini' as their mid-price offerings:
That sounds pretty likely. Can't imagine Gemini being that popular of a model name. Weird that they don't have any other branding information on the ski, considering they seem to be pretty well established by that time.
 
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Uncle-A

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If that was a Freyrie ski wouldn't the writing on the ski be in Italian because that was the standard back in the 1970's the writing on the ski would be in the country of origin.
I think it is a special makeup ski by K2 for some big ski shop or big box sports store. K2 was big into making these special makeup skis back in the 70's and 80's.
 

Andrew Read

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If that was a Freyrie ski wouldn't the writing on the ski be in Italian because that was the standard back in the 1970's the writing on the ski would be in the country of origin.
I think it is a special makeup ski by K2 for some big ski shop or big box sports store. K2 was big into making these special makeup skis back in the 70's and 80's.
I thought it could be K2, but it was weird that every other ski I've seen by them goes red-white-blue, and these have it backwards. Blue-white-red is the order on the French flag, so maybe that's a clue as to the country
Plus they have that weird notched ski edge. Dunno if anybody has seen that before. I don't have a ton of examples from that era to compare to.

The paragraph in the middle of the ski is in english, but they misspelled breakage as "brackage". Seems like a mistake a foreign manufacturer would make.
 

Uncle-A

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I thought it could be K2, but it was weird that every other ski I've seen by them goes red-white-blue, and these have it backwards. Plus they have that weird notched ski edge. Dunno if anybody has seen that before. I don't have a ton of examples from that era to compare to.

The paragraph in the middle of the ski is in english, but they misspelled breakage as "brackage". Seems like a mistake a foreign manufacturer would make.
Since the colors are reversed could it be French the colors of the French flag?

What you are calling a notched edge is a cracked edge, that was used by a few manufacturers in the 70's and 80's Volkl was one and Olin was another that I remember just off the top of my head.
 

cantunamunch

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Seems like a mistake a foreign manufacturer would make.

+ the second sentence is a fragment and they spelled 'vulcanised' with an s. The second is highly unlikely from a US maker and also unlikely from a Japanese one as they tend to use US spellings.

Top metal edges are nothing spectacular for that time, but the clear top sheet sort of is. Maybe that's a hint.
 
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Bad Bob

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There were so many ski manufacturers in that time frame. Most long gone.
There was one out of Iceland that an friend reped for.

The cracked edge technology sounds about right for the time.
 

Andrew Read

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Good to know about the edges. Hadn't dealt with many skis older than the 80s before. Guess it's just one of those technologies that went away like the center groove on the bases.

Well they'll look cool propped against my wall. Maybe I'll find some odd-ball ski collector and give them to him for his museum.
 

Andy Mink

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Plus they have that weird notched ski edge.
Several, if not lots, of manufacturers used cracked edges in the 70s, maybe into the early 80s. The theory was to allow a more even flex. If it did anything at all that was positive it would likely still be around.
 

Uncle-A

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Several, if not lots, of manufacturers used cracked edges in the 70s, maybe into the early 80s. The theory was to allow a more even flex. If it did anything at all that was positive it would likely still be around.
I think it was too expensive to make and not durable enough to stay around. It did make the ski flexible. In the case of the Olin skis the big bold letters on the ski VCE was for Variable Cracked Edge. The edge segments closest to the tip were small and as they got farther away from the tip they got larger. The flex was most noticable in the Olin Mark VI that was a SL ski one of the softest SL ski of it's time. Because it was soft many people took it into the bumps and did a fair amount of damage to the soft tip were the smallest segments of the edge started to come apart.
 

Bad Bob

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Seems like Blizzard, Vlokl, Dynamic, and Olin all used the cracked edge at one time or another in the late 60's and 70's. Skied them all in that timeframe.
2 things are remembered about them:
You could flex a ski and get an segment to pop out of position ( a big PITA).
The skis would kind of 'whistle' in certain snow conditions.
Don't know if they relly benefitted the skiing.
 

cantunamunch

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Seems like Blizzard, Vlokl, Dynamic, and Olin all used the cracked edge at one time or another in the late 60's and 70's. Skied them all in that timeframe.

K2 and Elan carried on using them into the first half of the 90s (see K2's MSL and CSL, Elan's MBX R-series and PL series) the cuts got finer and finer and finer as the saw/laser/heat treatment processes got developed. They got to be hairline thin, barely even noticeable to the eye - unless you dropped an acidic base cleaner in there (blackening at the crack) or unless you ran the tuning tool the wrong way (like rubbing cat fur).

I want to say some XC/XCD mfgs used them too (Fischer or Rossi) in their steel-edged XC skis in the 2000s but my memory is not reliable on that.
 
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tomahawkins

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Several, if not lots, of manufacturers used cracked edges in the 70s, maybe into the early 80s. The theory was to allow a more even flex. If it did anything at all that was positive it would likely still be around.
IDOne still uses cracked edges.

 

skipress

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So far you guys have been great. Here is a new challenge. Anyone know anything about knock-off Heads branded Allalin Manor and Olympic Jana View attachment 95127
So conjecture but Allalin Manor sounds like someone trying to capitalise on Rossi's Allais Major



allais major ski.jpeg
 

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