|
Manufacturers Need A Fix
Date: 18/01/05
By: Roussel
At the start of last season I bought a nice pair of Canon Heritage. Instantly I fell in love with them. They ride so nice, and where a big improvement from my last pair of boards. I rode them for almost and entire season, but unfortunately, they started delaminating just behind the binding inserts. I sent one of them back to Canon and got a replacement 2004 board after the snow had melted.
Now I am about half way through the season still riding my ’03 blue Heritage on one foot and one ’04 red Heritage on the other. Just today I was talking to Johnny White, his story of his boards breaking made me take a look at my own boards for any delimitation. And same story as last season, the layers are splitting just behind the binding inserts. And this happened on my ’04 board, which the one year warrantee finished last fall when I bought them. So again, thanks to “manufacturing defects” I might have to sit the end of the season out and have to save over the summer for a pair of boards that will most likely delaminate or crack in half, all because of manufacturing defects?
Is it just me or does this seem to happen a lot? Not just to Canon but to almost every single skiboard manufacturer. If your one of the many skiboarders who is an active skiboard forum contributor then you have seen many post about Canons breaking or delaminating, Salomons literally snapping or Grooves cracking in half. These problems don’t seem to be manufacturing defects but are almost manufacturing norms by now.
I do go on skiing forums now and then, and I have many snowboarder friends like most of your I’m guessing. How many of them have had a delaminated board? One, two maybe of my friends I could think of. Skiboards have the shortest warrantee of all snow sports, why? Do the manufacturers know they are going to be defective? Every now and then I see a post on a ski web site with thousands of members about delaminating skis. And just as often I see these posts on skiboarding forums with a tenth of the people.
Obviously something is wrong. If it’s a manufacturing defect, then do something about your manufacturing. I know most skiboard companies like Canon don’t have their own factories to make their own boards, and maybe that’s the source of the problem. When another company in another country manufactures your boards it’s hard to keep an eye on manufacturing. Maybe it’s how they choose to fabricate their boards. A post on the SBOL forums a few days ago suggested that maybe cap construction was the source of this problem (although cap construction is supposed to make boards stronger and less prone to delimitation.) I wouldn’t know exactly, I’m not a ski engineer.
Bottom line is, something has to be done. Wake up skiboard manufacturers. How are we supposed to be taken seriously when we sit out half the season cause we don’t have boards to ride? Not to mention compromising many skiboards safety by sending out so many defective boards.
|
