Idea for tuning jib skis....

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dirtybryan

Member
I used to race hard core, but once you get to the J2 and J1 levels it gets to anal to be any fun. However I know a good deal on tuning.

Why don't we base bevel park skis? It would make riding a flat ski easy for jumps and keep your edges a little further out of the way for rails. The only place I would see a draw back would be in the pipe where you have to carve up the walls.
 
Think of a battleship rail. The flat top being your base and the other two peices being the edge. Except with skis, you would only bevel the edges like 3 degrees at most.

On downhill and super g skis they do this so its easier to ride a perfectly flat ski, which is faster. When your legs wobble a little you engage your edge a bit which slows you down.
 
damn, that is a pretty good idea, for a jib ski, but i could see how it could cause problems.
 
The only real effect is that you have to roll your edges over further until they would engage. So when it comes to turning, they would be a little less responsive when you want to suddenly turn.
 
yeah, but sometimes i used my edge for some extra pop, or to engage a faster rotation.
 
its like 3 degrees tops, and your edges WORK just as well, they just react a bit slower.

$5 says most of the people on this site have skis without flat bottoms already. get a truebar (available at your local shop, or just have them look at them) and you will be surprised at how many skis come with convex or concave from the factory. its not really a big deal for jibbing in my opinion, more of a groomer/race thing. if i were competing in a highly competitive pipe contest/environment i would be doing a lot of special tuning, but outside of that i don't really think jibbing requires special tuning.

keep in mind that grinding your base, especially to bevel it out, takes a bit off your base. you can only get so many stone-grinds before your bases are shot. granted, most of my skis are trashed long before that would matter, but its something to consider if you plan on using your gear for a long time.
 
i bevel my edges like that, works great. i still keep um detuned a bit so they dnt bite on rails and butters, but overall, it works nicely.
 
Beveling your edges is a good idea if yo actualy know what your doing. Most people that do tune their own stuff end up being off by atleast 2 degrees anyway. So when you think your tuning at 4 your actualy probably doing it anywehere from 2-6 depending on what part of the ski you look at.

The clamp in file guides(what most people use that aren't freehanding) work quite crappy on most skis and don't give you an accurate angle measurement.

The easiest thing to do with park skis is to just not tune them at all. Let the snow be the abrasive force and detune the ski where it actualy needs to be detuned. Filing,sharpening,beveling...all of these create heat which messes with the properties of the metal and definately damages the temporary advantages gained from using edges that are heat treated. Although snow does heat the edges when youre turning it does it to a lot lesser extent since the snow is actualy cold and gives it a slight buffer of energy. All of this is from a completely anal mathamatical perspective though, which is what most people who do race tunes teach.

For Park nothing really matters besides the hardness of your edges if your doing rails, and the acuracy of your tune/structure of your base/wax if your hitting the pipe. Beveling them doesn't make them any less likely to crack on rails, it just makes them less likely to catch which is not when edges usualy break anyway.
 
I could see people have concave bases if they have been flat filing, which is a taboo when it comes to tuning.

Why would a manufacturer shipped skis with base beveling? The average skier wouldn't want it and its more work at the factory.
 
As for your first paragraph, are you saying your likely to be that far off using a guide? I can understand that if your going free hand.

Your 2nd paragraph is true, but tuning is a necessary evil.

3rd paragraph, it wouldn't strengthen the edges, but actually weaken them as you are removing material. But geometrically it should help you not catch edges as easily.
 
they don't intend to ship them that way... its just like a low-tolerance at the factory or something. its REALLY hard to manufacture perfectly flat stuff, especially wider skis/boards. have you ever scraped the wax off a snowboard? those bastards (especially the cheap ones) are usually horrible curved one way or the other.
 
I see, so when they come out of the press, they pray the bases and edges came out flat and flush, never even having the bases ground?
 
i don't know the manufacturing process. i'm a tech, but i've never made skis or whatever. i do know that bases more frequently have curvature to them as the skis get wider.

the original public enemies (as well as the black/gold ones for that matter) had bases that didn't seem like they were ground. every pair i got (i think i purchased 3 pairs for myself... but worked on like 20 pairs) the different colors of the base didn't line up perfectly. they were different "heights".

if ski manufacturers spent the time to make sure everything was super duper perfect, ski prices would be more rediculous than they already are. the average, and even the really experianced, user will never notice a difference as it is very slight. hell, i'm willing to bet that most racers don't notice a difference.
 
Yes i am saying most people are that far off with a guide. Unless you buy one of the better guides the manufacturing techniches allow for about 1degree of erorr. Add in irregulatiries in manufacturing of the base (as you said most skis to not come flat), and you have another degree of error. Then add in general human error just from not being smooth when your tunning and your up in the 3-4 degree range. Which is still relatively small, and most people don't even notice.

As for what i said about heat treating, i sincerely believe it isn't necessary to tune a park ski unless youre also using it in the pipe. The most beneficial way to tune for park is to just deburr and wax when you need it, keeps the edges stronger, and leaves more material there. For pipe however it is necessary to tune, and if your doing mostly jumps and barely any rails its not a bad idea to tune. I was just saying the way to make your skis the best for jibbing is to not tune, or detune them, just to debur them when you get the larger chunks of edge damaged.

Catching edges has never been an issue for me, and the way i have done with all my park skis is to ski them on snow for a week or so hard to detune the edges with the snow/ice. And then use them in the park on whatever i want, deburring them and waxing them as i see damage or feel slow respectively.
 
You guys know your shit.

For my original idea though. One of those things that would work in theory but in practice probably be unnoticable?
 
cliffnotes: technically speaking its possible and not all that difficult. however, the benefits would be tiny and not really worth the effort.

the guy who posted that really long one suggests that aside from waxing, tuning for the park in a waste of time. i agree.

oh yea, pipe riding is a whole different ballgame that is tuning intensive.
 
finally a thread that is useful and actually 'ski equipment' related instead of the usual is this too short, long, color matching...they are still entertaining though, back to the topic.

i have just gotten into ski tunning and acutally did bevel my base edge to 2 degree so i can do butter more easily...in theaory that is. i have not tried it out yet since i still haven't been able to ski yet. i only have an 88 degree ice buster, so i just run that on my base edge and just file out any rail damages manually with just the file that came with the thing. one question though, how do you get the edges to look shiny and smooth? since i only have the file that came with the ice buster, i can only finish the tuning with the finer side of the file and there are still some scratch marks on the edge. so do you use like a stone or wet sand paper to finish off your edges?
 
My advice to anyone that wants to learn how to tune properly.

Go to www.tognar.com and read everysingle one of the tooltips, its a very good resource to call upon for what tool to use when, or certain techniques to use.
 
I use 87 and .5 on my race skis. I would recomend 89 & 1 on park skis and 88 & 1 for Pipe. I suprised know one has done it yet i've been doing it for the last couple o seasons. Werd
 
I'd pick up the swix booklet. Usually any place that stocks swix files, and etc will have it. It shows world cup tuning, which really is excessive for our purposes and for those who don't want to drop that much money on hardware and wax.

Generally, use a wet stone to take out burrs and any casings (happen when you see a spark, the edge actually melts and remelts into a burr). Then file if necessary, then wet stone again. Always filing from tips to tails.
 
I wouldn't do any side bevel on park skis, you need all the strength you can and rarely do you need to carve iec in the park.
 
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