Hey Pat,
I know this thread is a month old, but I thought I'd throw in a comment to see if it might be useful. The factory bevel on my wife's Supershape Speeds is 0.5 base and 3 side, giving a net 87.5 angle. This was a lot, and might be great for hard carving/racing, but for recreational skiing wasn't the best. The skis were pretty hooky on the hardpack, hindered smooth turn transitions at a more leisurely pace, and let's face it, every now and then ya gotta skid a turn or two, esp. when skiing with the kids, which the aggressive bevels were preventing. I changed the bevels to 1 base, and 2 side, for a net of 89 degrees. This was much improved for everyday skiing, and was plenty good enough for the eastern hardpack and icy patches we encountered last week at Whiteface. She had no problems with edge hold on steep blacks -- way better than her instructors, in fact, who were all on Atomic Metrons and were skidding all over the place on the ice patches.
The other drawback to an 87.5 angle is that I was sharpening the darn things constantly. They just wouldn't hold their edge for long. The new angle seems to be lasting much longer. They're still sharp after 4 days on the hard stuff.
BR,
Svend
Home
Login
Register