Do it yourself Fishscale climbing skins/bases, anyone done them ?

[wstdeep]

I'm tired of heavy skins. Has anyone done a DIY fishscale on bases or a minimalist aggressive climbing aid that straps on instead of skins ?

[Damian Sanders]

Let us know how it goes. There are a bunch of cheap, fat, fishscale skis on STP right now, btw.

[LightRanger]

A bunch of write ups on TTips BITD. Alas, gone.

If I was doing it, I'd try to (carefully) dremel a similar pattern to the Fischer/Atomic negative base pattern on their XCD skis.

[sb]

this has never been dun, u be the first

[XXX-er]

Before you go fucking up a good pair of skis have you checked out any threads about the use of fish scale skis, where they do and don't work ect ect?

[dschane]

This ^^^^. My take away -- the negative pattern is not as good as skis with positive ones, the positive pattern works great for rolling terrain and long approaches (I have the Voile Vector BC's), scales can never replace skins completely, the cheapest (short of DIY) and easiest solution is to buy kicker skins. There are lots of ways to shave weight; dremmeling your skis is near bottom on the saved weight to efficiency ratio matrix.

[telemon10]

Check out this thread for a short video of someone who used a dremel tool to do this.

[GeezerSteve]

I've done several DIY waxless bases, posted pics in this thread. That's a mild stepped base, not very deep, does not affect downhill skiing, works very well on the flats, e.g., crossing a frozen lake (have plans re what to do while waiting for your buds w/skins), little adverse affect on glide. Apples vs. aggressive fishscale oranges (e.g., Voile Vector/Charger BC).

I did that project with an end mill on a Bridgeport clone. There's a much easier way to do it: Use a Stanley knife to score the ski base with a series of parallel cuts, then use a blunt ended punch to tap down the p-tex behind each score to form a step. The punched p-tex may rebound a bit with time, so it may require repunching from time to time. The big advantage of this method is that no p-tex is removed, instead merely cut and compressed.

Here's a pic from the other thread. (Note that ski base was scratched up from summer tours before milling.) The Stanley knife + blunt punch method will look a bit different.

Attachment 117504

[jiri23]

bit off topic but if you are tired of heavy skins take a look on the Contour Hybrid Free skins. It is a split skin without the disadvantages of the classic split skin. The glue and the tip/tail attachement makes the difference. Have been using DIY split skins for years now without any problem but the handling is PITA. Last season on the Hybrids was much better with the same low weight & volume.

[GeezerSteve]

Yup, discussion of skins on a fat fishscale thread is definitely off-topic : )

[jiri23]

Still bit relevant if you read his first sentence

[GeezerSteve]

Okay I see that. Skins vs. fishscales is apples vs. oranges.

[dschane]

True, which is to say don't bother trying to toss out your skins and go fish scales to save weight. The "minimalist aggressive climbing aid that straps on instead of skins" is still a pair skins, unless you remove "aggressive" from the equation.

[Notchtop]

True, which is to say don't bother trying to toss out your skins and go fish scales to save weight. The "minimalist aggressive climbing aid that straps on instead of skins" is still a pair skins, unless you remove "aggressive" from the equation.

Qft. When my bud and I lap our mtn before the lifts spin, he charges straight up on skins while I tend to have to switchback on steeper pitches on scales. By the time he gets his kit back together for the DH, I'm just arriving. So while total time is often equal, I bet i work harder for it. Which I resent some days for sure.
Rolling or moderate terrain on trails in the hills however, scales are Mando.

[HHTELE]

I'm tired of heavy skins. Has anyone done a DIY fishscale on bases or a minimalist aggressive climbing aid that straps on instead of skins ?

A ski crampon is aggressive and straps on. I have never tried it without skins, but it might work. I am thinking of trying it with my fat fishscales when on a suitable tour with short pitches too steep for scales. Faster off and on than skins. Not sure how much slower they will climb.
I am expecting good grip and poor glide.

[Jethro]

I think crampons are really only good for traverses on hard crusts. Doubly so if there is shallow fresh snow on a crust. If you can keep your base flat to the snow, skins climb better than crampons

[TrueNorth]

Fischer Profoil "skins" look like an interesting alternative: basically a removable fish scale pattern.

http://skimo.co/fischer-profoil-skins

[GeezerSteve]

Interesting. I tried to DIY removable fishscales 30 years ago, didn't have the tooling to do it. I wonder how well they'll stick while doing downhill turns.