During mid-winter and late season, there are more opportunities for in-depth ski testing. By this time of year activity in the shop has settled into a steady (busy) pace and there’s time to prepare and test grinds and new grind ideas.
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| Ski testing with factory-matched identical test skis. |
This season, I’m placing some focus on carefully dialing-in the range limits on some of the existing grinds, and I’m also testing a couple of effective broad-range structures for classic skis. Temp range, new snow vs. old snow, etc.
Testing and introducing new structures is not a simple business. First of all, anything “new” needs to be very good and very versatile. It needs to be better than something that’s already on the menu, which is a tall order, since the grind menu at Nordic Ultratune has very good, very verstatile grinds.
The on-snow part of ski testing is much less than half of the work. The test skis preparation takes more time than the on-snow testing, and the data entry and data analysis is a bit of time. Documentation, carefully, creates a record of testing and processes that is very important.
Good results depends on good data; I use factory matched test skis that are identically prepared in order to minimize the possibility of false results due to the influence of uncontrolled or unanticipated variables.
But the testing continues. It’s one of the most fun parts of the job.
