Skin Minimalism

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anemic
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Joined: Fri Feb 28, 2014 4:39 pm

Skin Minimalism

Post by anemic » Mon Feb 05, 2018 9:45 pm

Far left is a purple tip to heel full width kicker. Plenty grippy, too much, too slow.

On the upturned base you can see a full length pure mohair about 1.5” wide - a very fast skin and great grip !

Then you see a half width tip to heel kicker. No less useable grip and provides more speed.

Check out those orange strips on the Glittertind! These are cutting floor surplus when you downshift from 100s to 79s haha. They are FAST! Not wide enough to be stable in place. It’s so thin it’s basically rope shaped and once it rolled it got snow covered and that was it but I will try more of this micro skin because I couldn’t believe how well it worked on the Eons! It went fine for about 2 km.
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Last edited by anemic on Wed Feb 07, 2018 9:18 am, edited 1 time in total.
Call it Nordic Freeride

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Cannatonic
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Re: Skin Minimalism

Post by Cannatonic » Mon Feb 05, 2018 11:38 pm

your quiver is very similar to mine, especially the profusion of 3-pin bindings on everything. I like the the tip to heel half-width skin. It would be fun to pick up a "race roll" of mohair and some tip attachments & experiment.
"All wisdom is to be gained through suffering"
-Will Lange (quoting Inuit chieftan)



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t-$
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Re: Skin Minimalism

Post by t-$ » Tue Feb 06, 2018 4:48 am

hey!

so i have been thinking about looking into the skin thing. so that's the best way to get custom skins, a roll of stock mohair and some pieces? where do you all source this stuff? thanks!



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Verskis
Posts: 179
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Location: Tampere, Finland
Ski style: XCD touring on small hills. Heavy tele at resort
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Re: Skin Minimalism

Post by Verskis » Tue Feb 06, 2018 5:15 am

Anemic, are you familiar with the Madshus Intelligrip skins? If not, they might be of interest to you:



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lilcliffy
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Location: Stanley, New Brunswick, Canada
Ski style: backcountry Nordic ski touring
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Re: Skin Minimalism

Post by lilcliffy » Tue Feb 06, 2018 11:38 am

Very cool. Appreciate you sharing this man. Excellent photos.
Cross-country AND down-hill skiing in the backcountry.
Unashamed to be a "cross-country type" and love skiing down-hill.



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anemic
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Re: Skin Minimalism

Post by anemic » Wed Feb 07, 2018 9:36 am

Verskis, thanks for the tip on that Madshus product which I'd forgotten about. Seems entirely practical.

t$ I have done well finding skins on ebay. Look for a "multi-pack" of old purple military ascension brand skins with proper attachments (not those bizarre mid-ski wrap-around straps). The adhesive is old, the backing may fail on some, but I you get enough skins to be creative, a huge collection of tip attachments and you can scrap what won't work or that which has become too old and rotted. I think I bought 2 dozen pairs for about $25 or $30? I just did a quick check and that deal is gone right now, but I did see one of these about am month ago, so keep checking. Bear in mind, you only need one set of skins and you're in business with everything you need.

Purple Ascension skins are the forebears to the orange BD synthetic skins. They are still available at climbingskinsdirect.com

ebay pricing is premium level for any skins from BD or G3 but priced right for Ascension brand and some of the other standbys you'll see on there (montana, pomoca). A long time ago I scored the skinny 210 cm mohair strips for my woodies - what a perfect match by the way.

The idea for our purposes in the exercise of XCD arts is that we don't require wall to wall, full length skins, and that is where things start to get more fun with skiing skins. A while back kicker skins were available in this vein but they had this janky metal plate setup that serious discouraged use so those aren't seen much anymore.

Quick primer:
synthetic is the grippiest and most durable and the slowest but all skins speed up with use and you can hot wax 'em on the ski to help all aspects of skin performance.
mohair is the fastest and the least grippy and the least durable and the most expensive
mo-mix or semi-synthetic is the middle of the road. in between in every way, a very good compromise. I prefer my mo-mix for AT style skiing.
Call it Nordic Freeride



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