Are my skis mostly fucked, or completely fucked

[Sphinx]

Long story, due to a series of incompetent shops and ripping my bindings out, my mostly-new Bro Models are swiss-cheesed.

Would you trust a ski with this many holes in them, for, say, rock skiing? Or am I going to break them?

At this point I'm trying to gauge how much I'm going to ask from the shop in restitution.

[Count Fantismo]

They were just trying to lighten them up for you prolly...
Great idea. I think they could use a few more holes.

[bushman]

Drill baby drill.

[bbense]

As long as they used epoxy to glue in the plugs, I don't see any real problem.

[Chugachjed]

We need the story on this to determine appropriate compensation. And mount your own skis for the love of all that is or may be holy.

[slobmonster]

Please entertain us with some backstory...

IME those Bro skis have notoriously soft/weak cores. And looking at the plugged and open holes (granted, via your pic posted herein) I don't see anything terribly amiss. In other words, "restitution" seems a bit farfetched.

If it were me I'd have someone you trust install T-nuts, and be done with it.

[KoKopeLLi]

Long story,

Please tell it. This place needs another long story about a shop mounting fuckup

[splat]

Those skis have neither soft nor weak cores until some idiot fails to plug them correctly after doing something like that and they absorb water. If those are 192s they are strong as hell.

WTF happened? I counted 16 holes.

[KoKopeLLi]

17...I wanna hear it too

[Sphinx]

They're 179s. I weigh 188 and wanted a light randonee ski. I bought them used, drilled once.

Shop #1 mounts my Dynafits, very close to the plugged holes. Maxed out the heel adjustment for no reason, so when I bought TLT5s, the heels needed remounting.

Shop #2 remounts the heels and installed cants to adjust for my whacky alignment. I VERY SPECIFICALLY tell the guy that I'd be doing this myself but I need longer binding screws to compensate for the cant strips. The tech assures me that he would use longer screws.

I go to Park City and halfway through the first day, pop, there goes my toepiece. Luckily the ski disappears off the side of the run and gets stopped by a tree. The guy hadn't used longer screws after all.

The shop at the base of the mountain looks at the skis, scratch their heads, tell me they'd make a nice fence, and at my behest remount with appropriate screws at -2 cm. I ski the rest of the weekend and start researching new skis.

They're great boards, so I'm bummed about all of this.

Luckily it snowed a bunch on Monday so I couldn't fly back to work and had to ski pow instead.

[userA]

totally fixable n funcional, feel free to beat the shit out of them once the holes are plugged proper!
bobby

[1000-oaks]

The row of four yellow plugs across the ski (with the empty hole in the center) is probably the danger zone, but PM me if you want to sell them cheap. I'd drill & pull out all of the plastic plugs and epoxy in hardwood.

[SB]

^^^^ THIS

[pfluffenmeister]

The row of four yellow plugs across the ski (with the empty hole in the center) is probably the danger zone ... .

definitely.
that row of holes is right in front of your toe.

[Jethro]

I'd drill & pull out all of the plastic plugs and epoxy in hardwood.

You would still end up with four plugs of a different wood glued into the ski, with epoxy connecting the plug to the original core. The original wood grain has already been cut. I really doubt you would gain any strength by taking out the plastic and inserting wood. I'd be more concerned about the holes through the fiberglass and CF (if there is any in that model) and the weakness from that than any wood core damage.

[ill-advised strategy]

seems like if you're skiing them with dynafits you're not going to be landing huge airs on hardpack and doing super G turns through bumps...Probably not going to be buckling the ski.

[skuff]

Sollyfit plates?

[splat]

^^^My initial thought exactly. Once you have that many holes in the ski, if correctly sealed and if they have not already absorbed moisture, the ski is best salvaged with a plate. You want to make sure the plate extends forward of the front holes by at least and inch and a half to make that point of greatest flex resistance not on the holes. Wood glue will not seal carbon fiber, no matter what the guy at the shop says.

[axebiker]

That is a LOT of holes.

[pfluffenmeister]

^^^ no shit!

14 in the toe and 17 in the heel?!?

[MJbumper1121]

Wow... Quality drilling?

[1000-oaks]

I once actually thought about making hardwood plugs with the grain going across the plug (using a boring bar on a mill) instead of lengthwise (golf tees), and then epoxy them in line with the grain of the core.

Way too much work though, and who knows if it would help much.

[bern43]

So if those plugs were put in with water proof glue they're not sealed properly? I always thought the plastic plugs with a generous amount of waterproof glue was fine.

[El Chupacabra]

If you don't need the touring/alpine swap plate, a much cheaper solution for a plate is an old riser plate -- either from a race ski or something like the Salomon "axe" plate. It'll straddle those holes and provide a stronger mount.

It'll also be the last time you'll be able to drill those skis, so don't fuck it up.

[DropCliffsNotBombs]

Heli-coils with lots of epoxy or T-nuts...