I've hinted several times that I'm not really a fan of twintip skis and I've also hinted that I have a way to deal with them, so here it is. One reason I waited to put this out there is that I wanted to get some days on the modification to test longevity. It seems to be just fine. As you've probably guessed, I cut the damn things off. I'm not the first one to blog about this, I've seen it on several other sites, but I've been thinking about doing it for years. I just finally got around to trying it earlier this season. People always ask me if the skis ski any differently, to which I always answer “no.” Done correctly, there should be no possible way that the mod can affect the skiing of the ski. Think about it, the upturned tail is never really in contact with the snow anyway. You are not changing the running length of the ski. It shouldn't alter the mounting point either because, again, you aren't changing the running length of the ski and the mounting point, if traditional, should be based on running length and center of sidecut, neither of which is changed. If you mount for a progressive stance, you aren't concerned about optimizing the turning, you're concerned about rotational balance and predictable switch skiing, in which case you probably want the twintip anyway. For the rest of us, the twintip is a nuisance. I've covered it before, but if you missed it, here it is again:
You can't stick the tails in the snow, which is downright dangerous in some transition areas
You can't fit the skis in the racks on the gondola, which is not dangerous but makes you look like a neophyte
They throw up an irritating rooster tail, which will not win you any friends
They don't work well with most climbing skin tail hooks
Your skis will constantly tip over when leaned against the wall
And finally, if you've ever tried to tele on twintips you've probably gotten caught with the tail of your left ski on the wrong side of the tail of your right ski; not comfortable.
People are fond of saying that twintips release more easily from the end of the turn, to which I reply “bullshit.” That can be engineered into the ski in other ways, namely shape of the tail. If the tail tapers back from the contact point, it will release easily. If it gets wider back from the contact point, it will hang on for dear life. Okay, what about people who say that twintips allow you to slide back and forth when negotiating tight chutes or maneuvering in the trees? Well, that's true, but a slight kick tail accomplishes the same thing, and I don't remember constantly burying my tails in the days before twintips which, let's not forget, weren't that many days ago. The real reason we are all being sold twintips is because the manufacturers and their marketing departments are selling them to us. Fine, we'll just cut them off.
I took a ski that I really like, the Line Prophet 90, and hacked a bunch of the tail off. It was pretty simple, I just figured out where I wanted it to end, measured down, put a line across both skis in the same spot, and cut them off with a hacksaw. The only difficulty is getting through the edge material, which is pretty hard, but with a nice fresh blade it didn't take much effort at all. I went pretty conservative on this first try, when I do my next pair I'll take more off. You want to leave a little upturn, but if you leave too much it kind of defeats the purpose. I left mine pretty straight across the back, partly because I didn't feel like messing around with shaping it, but it actually worked in my favor. When I lean these things against the wall or my car, they stay there, they never tip over fall on the ground. 90% of the scratches on my car were caused by skis falling over. I looked at some other sites where people had cut tails off of skis to see what they did about sealing the end and it turned out that most people did nothing. Epoxy won't get into the grain of the wood much and ends up chipping off. I thought that I might use some exterior grade polyurethane, and I think that's a good idea, but I never got around to it. The good news is that I've been using them all season and there doesn't seem to be any issue with water infiltration or delamination. Now, one word of caution: it undoubtedly voids the warranty, so if you're one of these guys who constantly breaks skis and sends them back, you probably shouldn't do it. Personally, in my career of skiing hard and often, I've had only one legitimate warranty return, so I'm not too worried about it. One of the other guys in the shop did the same thing to his Nordica Blower's, also with good results. Another guy in the shop had a great idea. He said I should send
the leftover tails to Line with a note that says “thanks for the extra parts, but I didn't need them.” I may do that, maybe we should all do that to get the point across.
I took a ski that I really like, the Line Prophet 90, and hacked a bunch of the tail off. It was pretty simple, I just figured out where I wanted it to end, measured down, put a line across both skis in the same spot, and cut them off with a hacksaw. The only difficulty is getting through the edge material, which is pretty hard, but with a nice fresh blade it didn't take much effort at all. I went pretty conservative on this first try, when I do my next pair I'll take more off. You want to leave a little upturn, but if you leave too much it kind of defeats the purpose. I left mine pretty straight across the back, partly because I didn't feel like messing around with shaping it, but it actually worked in my favor. When I lean these things against the wall or my car, they stay there, they never tip over fall on the ground. 90% of the scratches on my car were caused by skis falling over. I looked at some other sites where people had cut tails off of skis to see what they did about sealing the end and it turned out that most people did nothing. Epoxy won't get into the grain of the wood much and ends up chipping off. I thought that I might use some exterior grade polyurethane, and I think that's a good idea, but I never got around to it. The good news is that I've been using them all season and there doesn't seem to be any issue with water infiltration or delamination. Now, one word of caution: it undoubtedly voids the warranty, so if you're one of these guys who constantly breaks skis and sends them back, you probably shouldn't do it. Personally, in my career of skiing hard and often, I've had only one legitimate warranty return, so I'm not too worried about it. One of the other guys in the shop did the same thing to his Nordica Blower's, also with good results. Another guy in the shop had a great idea. He said I should send
the leftover tails to Line with a note that says “thanks for the extra parts, but I didn't need them.” I may do that, maybe we should all do that to get the point across.
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