binding adjustments

A snowHead

I am thinking of purchasing a pair of skis for my son on ebay.
The seller has had size 8 boots so the bindings are set up for this boot size.
My son has size 4 feet Mondo 24.5ish.
Hypothetically are these bindings likely to have enough adjustment without redrilling?
The vendor is pretty clueless about boot sole lengths etc so do I take the risk,worst case scenario is i can put them back on Ebay,I suppose.

A snowHead

Without details of the bindings, impossible to say. However if the price is right and they don't adjust enough, resell either here or on eBay.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Bindings are a non rental Salomon C608 mounted onto the ski without a plate or rail.
I know they have a certain amount of adjustment but not sure it would normally stretch to 4 sizes?
If they go cheap enough i,ll take a punt.

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Very much doubt they will fit. If he has size 26/27 shell. They can be redrilled fairly easily at most shops. Plug old holes. dead easy

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

Also boot is gonna be nowhere near ski centre without drilling

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^ Echoing the above really.

You will need the bindings re-drilled, even if you can get them to fit, which I doubt!

This will cost you around £25 at most ski shops.

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

After all it is free

*Ski* the Net with snowHeads

spyderjon, ....... and the tea and choccie biscuits Toofy Grin

snowHeads are a friendly bunch.

Of course there's always the man down the pub that will do it for a fiver. wink

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i should add that if we were doing a full service on a ski, then a binding check was included in the price, but re-drilling them certainly was not

You know it makes sense.

I don't think £25 for re-drilling bindings, if it's done by someone with good knowledge and the right equipment, is a rip off at all. My local (ie not fancy London salon) hairdresser charges £40 for a hair cut!! So I don't go there any more - I've found an alternative who charges £8. And if she gets it a bit wrong it won't kill me. It takes her a lot less time than it would take to re-drill bindings, too. I had some done in a hire shop here last winter - no charge, as it was to fit their (incredibly expensive.....) hired boots. It took the lad a while to get it right; he was very careful.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

Mounting your bindings is very simple and straightforward...........

.....if you have the right jig
.....have the right tools
.....have the experience

A vasectomy is a very simple and straightforward op but..........

.... Maybe I could save a few quid there too.

a £25 quid mounting job is about 5% of the cost of a decent set of skis.

Afterthought : Hmm on balance I would probably have the cheap snip than the badly mounted bindings.........HELP!!!

A snowHead

I shall be getting the skis on Wednesday so will see what the binding set up is?
My uncertainty was not borne out of my own ignorance but more out of the lack of info that the vendor could provide prior to me bidding on eBay.
The skis came cheaply so even if I have to remount them I've still done alright and the skis are a nice pair of twintips that should do my youngest for a couple of seasons.
I've been doing this for a few seasons now with the kids gear and it is surprisingly cost effective compare with hiring. You always get your money back on secondhand kids skis.

As a hairdresser who does charge around £40 for a haircut, £25 for remounting is very fair IMO. Maybe I could charge a lot more if my scissor skills were used elsewhere though.

Shocked

A snowHead

Well I have no idea how much the cost of the jig is and I'll admit that the insurance thing never came into my head but still. A jig will last for ages. Unless it's like £500 or something it will pay for itself in a reasonable time surely? It's not exactly hard to do either if you've got the right bits (yes initial cost etc blah blah). £25 still sounds like a lot of money to me for clamping a jig to a ski and drilling through some holes.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

I'm glad I get my hair cut in Warrington and not Knutsford!

Wink

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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

http://www.epicski.com/forum/thread/83637/diy-binding-mount-skier219-method

or

How To: Freehand Mount Ski Bindings from steve power

http://www.vimeo.com/3465654

if you're interested.

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el nombre, enjoy drilling your skis free hand NehNeh

I like how that vid uses an easy binding to mount! try doing the same with some of the touring bindings on the market...

or my personal favourite... telemark! It doesn't matter in my opinion how much we charge for them, its not worth the headache!

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

forgive me if my figures are a little off here but i got the impression that most jigs are at least £2-300 each and a shop may have maybe 8-10 jigs to cover the different binding manufacturers then of course there is the delight of fat skis too so each manufacturer may have 2-3 different jigs. So even at a basic level you are into several thousand before you have drilled a hole Smile

After all it is free

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Well I suppose I will just have to agree to disagree with everyone. To me it just seems that people turn a blind eye to jobs and pay whatever the asking price is without knowing what the process actually involves. It always surprised me how much people were willing to spend on such minor repairs when i was working as a bike mechanic when it could take them all of 15mins to do themselves.

snowHeads are a friendly bunch.

but most people have a set of allen keys and a spanner in their garage, not too many have binding jigs and the drill bits required

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Yeah I was thinking that today. My dad has always had ample supply of tools and bits in the garage and my collection has been growing but to be fair to fit bindings without a jig, the only tools used were a drill with a little collar thing and a screwdriver. I guess it's just the way I've grown up. All my family will tend to fix things ourselves. Looks like I'm in a minority.

el nombre, maybe- you are a minority- but good for you!

whether £25 is a fair price or not all depends on how you value your own time and if you yourself would see mounting the things as a chore or pleasure. I suspect that el nombre would mount bindings/fix cycles for fun. Good for him. I wax skis my own skis for fun, my time is very very expensive when I charge by the hour- if I spent the time when I have been waxing skis working then I could have bought new skis (maybe 5hrs ski waxing with a travel iron last season, if I had billed for that time then I could have easily bought at least one new pair of skis). So economically it makes no sense to wax my own skis, or grow veggies, or mow the lawn or just about anything other than work...Mind you in the time it takes to mount a pair of bindings I'm sure that a ski tech who had bought and paid for all the gear could buy a new pair of skis if he mounted bindings for 5 hrs at £25 a pair...

And the 'risk' of drilling through a pair of skis is also a bit spurious. If I bought some very cheap skis on ebay and drilled through them then I'm sorry to say that my attitude- after feeling a bit peeved would be to say 'so what'.

Anyway- telemark bindings mounted and set up in Otavalo- one of the best telemark shops in the world in about 15minutes cost €15 last season. So if tele bindings are a big faff- which I doubt then I really cant see how people can say £25 is reasonable for alpine bindings- which I have seen mounted in minutes.

I suppose that no-one really knows what the value of ski mounting is. If it is a job that takes a few minutes and is not particularly skilled (unlike say a job that can only be done after years of undergraduate & postgraduate training , a higher degree or two and a decade or so of senior experience) then £25 for a few minutes work seems like as good value as not much really. But then.....how many ski techs in the UK (not many)? How many skiers (a couple of million)? How handy are said skiers (not very really)? How interested are UK skiers in mounting their own bindings (not very a all- perhaps there is just el nombre and the OP).

So ski tech guys- charge what you like! There is no particular market in ski techiness.

Or the OP could take ebay skis on holiday ad get remounted in Europe- but beware.....

I'd be really interested to know how many UK ski techs have been sued about ski binding mounting.

You know it makes sense.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

bertie bassett, do you not know what the internet is for?

A snowHead

If you are a UK based ski shop and have a premises, you will have to pay rent, pay staff , VAT,insurance, business rates, water rates, electricity, gas, pay to get your bins emptied,pay the performing rights society so you can listen to the radio whilst fitting boots/bindings etc.
I could go on and on.
£25 for half an hours work and a general binding service /checkover is still good value all things considered.

I reckon the local ski shop may clear £6 if they are lucky before tax.

Think of it like that.

Think of what a main dealer charges you per hour to service your car now that is a rip off Twisted Evil

A snowHead

hedley, hang on - you're the one we are supposed to be urging to start the great snowheads 'no to ski techs we'll all do it in our garages revolt' get with the program and while your at it why pay for skis at all- why not make them at home? http://skibuilders.com

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

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kevindonkleywood, why on earth would you want to worry about all that wink

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

ed123, I am all for saving a few quid against current hire costs whilst the kids are growing, servicing them myself in the garage is almost therapeutic also, but not at the expense saftey though, mounting bindings is a job left to the pros wink

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hedley, there might be some cultural differences as Borat would say. It seems that in the US and Canada there are lots of keen skiers who mount their own bindings, switch them round from ski to ski, tinker with inserts puderludder or not and are as happy as pigs in muck.

kevindonkleywood, that all seems as if it should be fairly straight forward to a reasonably keen man in a shed- although probably not for me - but I have certainly looked at tele bindings, a drill and a pair of skis with evil intent. As they say somewhere on TGR about inserts 'don't get too worried about it- you're just installing inserts in some skis, not a new flux capacitor in the engines of the Enterprise'. lots of people service their own cars / change brake pads etc- which actually seems just a bit more critical.

pam w, when someone wanted to charge me £27 for a haircut after I'd stopped rolling round on the floor I went to Boots and bought some clippers.

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

ed123, I don't doubt that many people, personally may have the skills and experience to set up there bindings correctly and many people probably do.

My big concern here is that a lot of us are 'not quite as good at things as we think we are' I would certianaly apply that statement to myself and definitely to my skiing Sad

I think its a legal saying that 'the man that represents himself in court has a fool for a laywer' but there are many areas in which this holds true.

I work in a very high tech industy and spend a lot of time assessing the competence of people to undertake certian types of work. And whilst I will admit that this is not a scientifically based conclusion in general I have found that those that come across as being most sure of themselves are often the ones that do not have the fullest grasp of what they are actually doing.

I am a great fan of training and competence assessment (when done properly not just paperwork tick box exercise) as I believe it does remove, or certianly seeks to remove the likelyhood of mistakes being made in any process.

With ski tech training and certification the aim is probably actually for the binding suppliers to reduce the legal liabilities arising from failures of their binding systems, by making sure that each system is correctly supplied, installed and checked against the atandards for that system.

I think (but Im often wrong Very Happy

) the mention of cultural differences may fail to grasp the big differences between the predomanant type of skiing represented between the two forums.

To mount your own bindings or not is entirely a personal choice and one that the individual must weigh up against the cost and hassle of getting your gear to a qualified and certified ski tech.

I fully agree with you comments regarding the valuing of your own time.

After all it is free

kevindonkleywood, guess what- I agree with you too! But there is a lot of fun for many in getting stuck in. Any idea about the rates of ski techs getting sued- I looked on Bailii but couldn't really find any at all- - I have found one unreported case where blame was no made of the ski tech (cruciate ligament injury- can occur even with proper bindings) and one where it was (tibial fracture- ) but an article in one of the legal journals also points out that it is very hard to attribute a specific injury to equipment. Which is good!

Help!!

binding adjustments

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