Hacker News Reader

Comment by swader999 | Hacker News Reader

I'm a ski race parent. I tune every couple of days on snow. My U12 boy skis on 0.5 degrees base bevel, three degrees side edge. Here he is on a firm course at his last race this year: https://youtu.be/RWYO2ib-qe8?si=CRH01ViFUFApSx_o

Setting that up is difficult but it's pretty easy to maintain once it is there. Side cut.com has great advice and tools.

If you are on groomers and ski on decent skis, not powder boards, it is worth getting a tune.

For ski racing and carving on man made snow, it is very similar to ice skating, you'll want to tune very frequently.

View on HN

I can tell you are very proud of your U12 boy and from that video, you should be. His fundamentals are rock solid. His fore-aft is good, his timing is excellent, he's clearly prepared for the course well in inspection. He's generally not reaching to cross-block, as evidenced by the strategic inside-clear at the top of the pitch. Really, really strong.

Thanks and you know what you are looking at!

I drink and I know things.

Son is U16, same 87/0.5 and if I am not doing them well, he will tell me as he can feel the difference. Of course, we have race and training skis, this helps having the race skis very well tuned.

Your son is good :-)

Thanks, he's been working really hard at it since 3 years old! We're at Mt Hood this week so tuning is still a thing even today lol.

U16 is quite a step up, the courses get quite challenging at that level.

You can see in this video that the interaction of the ski with the snow is much more than just the edge of the ski. I really doubt the fine tuning of the edge matters that much.

I don’t think there is any objective way to settle this debate. I think if you enjoy tuning skis, go for it. I like sharpening knives and tools so I get it. But I don’t bother with my skis.

Edges matter a lot for racing and carving, impossible to learn and progress without tuned skis and propper angles. Like going to ice hockey practice with dull skates, it just doesn't work. Parents obsess over wax at this age but it actually only adds a bit of speed, but boots and edges are critical.

I was going to mention this too; I used to have my hockey skates sharpened regularly, but I don't recall ever needing ski edges sharpened. Waxed, yes. Sharpened, no.

Higher level ski racing uses water injection. They'll hook up the snow making water hoses to a bar that shoots water right into the snow. So it really becomes a 3D hockey rink.

> I really doubt the fine tuning of the edge matters that much.

Try it and see.. Note that when you race, you often do it on watered+salted hills where hundred people have followed the exact same track. Really icy.

It also might be a thing we're you're just not good enough to notice. I don't mean that as a slight, but seriously changing the angle of the edge of a ski is basically like racing a completely different pair. The feel of how it engages can quickly become too aggressive or lax.

Respectfully, this is incorrect. That would be like telling someone who games competitively that their GPU and CPU don't matter. Once you can tell, you can tell.

If you gave a blind test, same exact skis but varied the tuning, most serious racers would be able to tell you what changed after a few turns. Edge or base bevel angles, wax, tuned or de-tuned. I haven't raced in years and I wager I would do pretty well on that test.

It sounds entirely straightforward to do a randomized, blinded test of freshly sharpened vs unsharpened skis. (Okay, the skier can feel the edge or look closely, but a cooperative skier could just not do that for the purpose of the experiment.)

Yes! And coaches will typically pull the kids from training if they show up dull. They'll go in the race shack and tune their edges and visually improve to all after fixing them.

You could also sharpen just one edge of each ski (opposite edges across the pair), then put the skis on random feet. Then see if they can tell which edges are sharp! Most of a typical skier’s weight is supported by the inside edge of the downhill ski while carving.

Youth racers tend to ski with one set of edges on the inside for training, and the other edges inside for racing (under the theory that the inside edges take more of a beating. Who knows if that is accurate). If you ever see youth racers on slalom skis (which are chiral, since they have tips that deflect ski gates), you’ll often notice that the skis are on the “wrong” foot.

True enough at younger levels but as you move up in age and skill, the weight distribution between the downhill and uphill ski gets closer to 50/50. What you're saying has a kernel of truth and young skiers are still taught downhill ski as a fundamental but shaped skis have really changed the game on this.

No, you never weight each ski evenly. Former WC mogul skier here and even in moguls there's a slight difference in weight on each ski in a turn. Shaped hour glass skis make it easy to turn but you still need more weight on the outside downhill ski.

That's why I said "closer to 50/50".

Also, that's awesome that you competed WC moguls. I probably saw you compete depending on when you were active, and we almost definitely know some of the same people.

Awesome! I might be even older and boring though. 92 was my last cup year.

Oh boy, yeah pretty old :) There is one person I know (but not very well) who you likely encountered (Canadian, in fact) but they didn't make it to the WC until 94 I believe.

Tele is pretty close to 50/50.

Free the heel, free your mind?

And make sure you tell everyone about it... ;)

https://skitownallstars.com/products/no-one-cares-you-tele-3...

Nice

In a race, my kids race edge is marked on each ski and he only has those two edges close to his big toes on his race runs. If you don't ski, your a genius if you can figure out how and why this would work I'd imagine.

I used to paint an arrow pointing to the left on one ski and the right on the other. Then I would for instance ski <--> during the day, and -><- during the race.

Do you mean .5 or 5 for the base bevel? 5 is quite far off the snow.

0.5 for base bevel with three degrees for the side is very aggressive for his age but his cuff alignment is dialed and he can handle it.

Thanks for the correction. I had just never heard of 5° degrees as a base bevel. Not sure why you seem defensive. Isn’t 0.5° (or lower) the factory tune for slalom skis? Might only be a thing for U16+.

All good, I didn't type it correctly initially. A lot of coaches in the past have been critical of those angles he's been on so I was probably anticipating it lol. Most kids that age are likely 0.75 and two degrees for Sl. And yeah older Fis kids are maybe trying zero base and perhaps 4 degrees on water injected surfaces.

Tuners look at me so strangely when I ask for 0°/4° lol. I can’t imagine dealing with coaches.

Yeah that is dialed like an F1 car and four degrees will shorten the life of the edge a bit. Some will do that much just under boot but go 3 at tip and tail. Another approach is to never debur and file every run. Saw that hack at a Fis GS race this year that was water injected by an over zealous course crew.

I’ve heard the lifespan thing before and never understood it. It’s still 86 degrees wide.

I guess it's because you cut away more initially so there's less edge to work with from that point forward.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com