Mounted my bindings yesterday evening. Used Titebond II as recommended above and, I tend to keep it around for wood working. The process went pretty smooth. None of it was difficult but I don't do a lot of drilling into $250 apiece sticks of wood so I took it slow. It was just a matter of mitigating all the usual issues of marking and drilling. I did dry run the whole process with a piece of plywood first and wound up making an adjustment.
My Alfa Free boots are a size 40, but I usually wear a 42 (US 8). I wound up moving the heel piece up a size on the template (farther from the the toe piece) to a 41. It just sat better on the heel piece than at the spot for a 40. At any rate, here were my observations:
- I measured the balance point with a carpenters square. It's marked accurately to the width of the square, about 1/16".
- To get good reference lines on the item I used the centering ruler in the post above and marked the lines on blue painters tape. Go slow. Turn on the light.
- The template worked well. Lined up with my center and balance lines.
- You always get some errors in marking holes but I feel that they were on the order of .5mm. I used a nail sharpened to a better conical point by spinning it in my drill and holding it against a file. I would definitely recommend clamping the ski flat for marking the holes.
- Drilling is always a challenge even with a drill press. The bit, especially a thin one, always walks a little and my drill press has more runout than I'd like. I used a 9/64" bit which is very close to the 3.6 mm bit specified. To control depth I make a collar for the drill bit that left 9mm of the bit exposed.
- The holes lined up nicely with the binding but I could see some offset that annoyed me but wasn't an issue. I would guess the holes and screws can tolerate any combination of 1mm of error in the hole locations. More than that and you could get some binding (on your binding!) One of my holes was a bit over 1 mm off but the others were all closer.
- Used a toothpick to generously line the holes with Titebond II.
- It was harder screwing in the screws than I thought it would be. I've worked a lot with poplar and it is more like pine than it is like oak. The screws had wide threads for bite and tended to get started a little crooked, like a tap. They straightened out and went in, though, as I said, it was harder than I expected.
- The job turned out looking quite nice.
Can't wait to try them out!
