I don’t think it’s an obsession with flatness that’s the issue, but skis that work. Flatness may be a big issue, but it’s not the only one.
It really drives you nuts. Worse, there are people out there who think it’s them, or the ski, not the tune.
There’s only two shops in the East that I would say give you a near 100% chance of walking away with a fully skiable ski. One of those is out of business when the owner decided to leave the industry. I used to drive 2 1/2 hrs to bring him skis. Some were screw ups from other shops. It was easier to just take them and get them done right than to take them back and go through all that entails. If it was certain they’d come out right, maybe it would be worth it.
We’re talking about shops that have $250k+ machines. Some nearly twice that. There is no feedback loop or control or assessment of what comes out of these machines.
Back when I first started with “my guy”, he just had a small manual machine and rented space in a ski shop. Bevels were hand done. By the end, he had one of the big expensive machines. In all those years, like 15, never a bad grind or ski with problems.
I’m dealing with this now. A ski I got last year has issues. Literally the day skiing shut down, I took it out in the morning. Too screwed up to ski, I switched to the slalom skis. Finally last week I decided to deal with it. I went over it quickly with a .7 guide. Lots of metal coming off, tells me the base beveling step was skipped. I didn’t have time to fully bevel it, the metal in spots near the ptex was still untouched by the file. Went out and skied it. Still a bit of a nightmare. Inside ski catch and release, transitions you never know what will happen. They don’t slide well. Two runs and I’m done. If it was fully hard snow would’ve been 1/2 run. Take the Pivots off and feed it to the woodchipper, it’s just not enjoyable to ski.
See, if my guy was still around it would’ve been taken there last year and I would’ve enjoyed it already. Problem solved, for 5 hrs driving and the cost of the grind. It’s now back at the shop, they’re going to bevel the base. We’ll see how it goes.
The whole situation with ski tuning is just so depressing. The industry really needs to figure this out. Making $500k machines with no quality control loop is a travesty.
No wonder people want to spend inordinate amounts to do it themselves.