Every year there are new things on the market, but it’s not always obvious what’s really a change, and what’s just a new paint-job. We’ve been surprised and excited to find some very meaningful changes in Fischer’s flagship Speedmax skate ski for next year, and we want to tell you all about it. But first, we should give you a little background.
Our business policy has been to focus on the positive aspects of the companies that we work with and the products that we sell. We don’t go around bad-mouthing products and companies that we depend on. But we’re also not always 100% happy with everything about a product line, and we’re very forthright with our customers about what we see as limitations. Two years after the introduction of Fischer’s new flagship Speedmax model, I think it’s safe to say that some of the shine had come off the skate ski for us. The quality of the production was outstanding, and the skis have been solid and reliable performers in a wide range of conditions, but they were seldom “wowing” us – especially in the cold and new snow conditions that have been uncharacteristically common for us in the last couple of years. To be perfectly clear – this is Fischer we’re talking about; we expect to have our minds blown anew with ever new production that we see. But it had been several years since we had seen skis that were really reinventing things for our highest level race customers who are measuring the new materials against well established and tested fleets.
In part, I believe, this was because Fischer was quite consumed with some major production upgrades. First it was the introduction of digitally controlled presses to the production line, and then to an even greater degree, it was the introduction of the additional steps required to produce the Speedmax model. You know all that “cold base-bonding” technology? Well, that required some reconfiguration in the production. For the past couple of years we’ve seen the evidence of all of this work in dramatically increased production quality control. The cambers have been increasingly consistent, with almost no “mistakes” (clearly undesirable or skewed camber shapes).
What we weren’t seeing was the kind of subtle evolution of design in the production skis that mirrors what is happening with the skis on the World Cup. My feeling was that there was a growing gap in quality between what was showing up in the race production skis that we work with, and what was showing up on the World Cup. The production skis from 2010 were good enough to get World Cup starts. Kris Freeman got a top-ten World Cup finish on a pair of 2010 production skate skis. We haven’t seen skis of that quality since then.
At World Championships in Falun I selected some new skis for Kris, and it was immediately clear that something new was afoot. These were plus model 610 Speedmax skis, but the camber bridge was positioned further back under the foot, and they were quite different to ski on. The acceleration under foot was immediate – they just wanted to take-off – and the bridge response was both more supple and more elastic. These new skis made a favorable first impression, and quickly became favorites as we spent time skiing on them. I remember thinking how excited I would be to be able to offer a ski with those characteristics to our customers. But I wasn’t full of high hopes – the production skis that Fischer had available in Falun were the new cosmetic, but pretty much the same old Speedmax that we’d been seeing for the past couple of years.
So imagine my surprise when it came time to select skis, and we found a number of production series that looked and felt just like that magic pair from Falun! As soon as I had an opportunity I asked Hans Hubinger – the head of development at Fischer – about the changes, and he acknowledged that they had changed both the material configuration and the camber of the skis. Which leaves me excited – even thrilled – to recommend these skis to our customers.
You didn’t think I’d let you off without the geeky specifics, did you? I can’t comment on internal changes to the ski – different laminations or lay-ups. But I suspect the material configuration is pretty similar between the various iterations of the Speedmax skate skis. What anybody can see and measure are the thickness profile and the camber profile of the skis.
Thickness profile is interesting because stiffness is a cube function of thickness. Relatively small changes to the thickness therefor make a relatively big difference to the stiffness of the material. Fischer’s sandwich construction allows them to vary the thickness profile of the skis by changing the milling of the core thickness profile. Accurately measuring the thickness profile of skis after they’ve been produced takes better instrumentation than I’ve got, but with a digital caliper I can measure to hundredths of mms, with sufficient accuracy to know when there are variations on the order of tenths of mms, which makes a significant difference to the stiffness profile of the ski.
What we see in the new skis is a redistribution of material with the thickness profile varying up to 0.2mm in places. In general the new skis are a little thinner at the back of the bridge, and a little thicker at the front of the bridge, with a slightly greater maximal thickness located in about the same spot as before, directly under the forefoot. These are not changes you’d necessarily notice holding the skis in your hands, but they contribute to a difference in the performance of the skis.
The other major change that we see is in the camber profile. Camber is a somewhat generic term used in many different circumstances (bridges, ships, and lots of others) to describe a curve of some kind, and used specifically to describe the curve of a ski. Camber is an important consideration because that is where the individual differences between skis comes from in most cases. The material configuration and thickness profile are “drawing board” variables, which should be quite consistent throughout the production. For that reason the stiffness profile of the ski (the material stiffness at every position along the length of the ski) should be the “same” on every pair. What varies is the camber, and therefor the amount and location of deflection of the material. What we commonly refer to as “stiffness” in skis is not material stiffness, but the expression of materials through the camber under load.
To evaluate camber we tend to think about the ski in terms of three different “zones”. The front and rear glide zones comprise mostly thin material, and the shape of these zones determines the length and shape of the pressure distribution, and the distribution of tension in the glide materials (the more you deform materials, the more tension they carry under load). The bridge zone comprises the thicker materials in the middle of the ski that provide most of the structural meat of the ski. The camber (in combination with material properties) in the bridge determines the bridge length, full-weight action and elastic response, and the shape of the transitions to the glide surfaces.
With most skis, and certainly with Fischer, there is much more variability in the glide zone camber than in the bridge camber. This is where we focus most of our attention when we’re looking at the length of pressure zones and things like tip and tail splay. The bridge camber is much more consistent within the production, and over time. A significant change to the bridge camber will result in real differences in the feel of the ski, not just in differences in the optimal snow conditions for the ski.
We see very significant camber differences between the new Speedmax skis and the older ones. To start with, the resting camber is lower throughout the production. This is often true of skis with short pressure distribution and tip and tail splay compared with skis with longer pressure distribution. Those differences generally occur in the glide zone camber. But this adjustment starts in the bridge, and it’s significant. The camber at the back of the bridge appears quite similar, but from the mid-foot forward we see a divergence, with the new skis carrying significantly lower all the way through the front of the bridge.
The end result of all these adjustments is that the front of the bridge has slightly thicker materials, but a lower camber. Fischer has put material stiffness in place of camber to create bridge strength (“stiffness”, if you will). This results in lower tension in the materials (less deformation), a lower angle of attack at the transition, and a shorter front-end on to the structural bridge. The shorter front end means that the load distribution will be skewed forward a bit – the front of the ski doesn’t run quite as “light”, but the acceleration under foot feels better. It also seems to balance the spring-action of the bridge, and result in a more active and elastic feeling bridge.
Our measurements are all on 192cm skis, but we see the characteristics carry across the lineup of lengths. We also see better glide zone camber control than ever before, and a great clarity of purpose in the different models. The cold skis have clearly longer pressure zones, and low release angles. The warm skis have varying degrees of tip and tail splay, and slightly higher bridge integrity. All of the skis have very smooth action, and low tension materials. Our sense of the older Speedmax skis was that the transition in the front of the bridge was too abrupt and carried too much material tension. This made the skis good in higher moisture or older snow, but we struggled to find the easy feeling we wanted in cold new snow. The new skis have addressed this entirely, and I expect a great deal from their performance.
I’ve been referring to “new” and “old” skis here, while in fact I only know what I’ve seen. We have prioritized selecting skis with these “new” characteristics, and given the significance of the adjustment, I would expect that all the skis produced since will also have these characteristics. But there are also new cosmetic skis out there that have the “old” design. Our expectation is that the shorter-bridge skis will be better in colder snow, and good in everything. The longer-bridge skis will continue to excel where they always have. Our inventory is all “new stuff” because we have a lot of confidence in those characteristics, but I can’t speak for other retailers.