Mola

In Italy there’s a specific word for “grinding stone”.    It’s “mola”.     In Italy (and much of Europe) the history of the past couple thousand years has had a need for terminology for milling and grinding equipment, mostly mills for grains and olives.

A new 350mm diameter grinding wheel.

A new grinding stone and diamond cutting tips arrived this week from Val di Fiemme.     It’s the same version of grinding wheel I’ve used for the past couple seasons, and really it will be placed in line for use (I try to keep at least 2 “very good” stones in the queue).      The diamond cutting heads are of two types, and the recent shipment includes a couple of additional new style cutters to try out.

Grinding work has really picked up since early August.     Even though “official shop hours” don’t begin until the start of October, grinding work is being done for any client skis that are shipped in.    Work continues!

Hearing protection in “goofball position”.

The grinding schedule is more relaxed and service work gets done as a decent size group of skis accumulate – typically every other week instead of weekly.  FedEx and UPS continue to make normal deliveries every day, so no worries about shipping skis to Ultratune — they’ll get here.

So if you’d like to get your skis serviced now, so that you’ll have your skis ready and fast when the snow arrives in the fall, you can send skis any time.

Okay, here’s a picture of Mark in a lighter moment in the shop this summer (hearing protection in “goofball position”).    My 52nd birthday is this week!