Soft Boot Carving on a Donek Plate

[Donek]

Thanks to Carlo for shooting a bit of video of me on our plate on November 12. I've done a bit of editing on it and here it is.

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[kieran]

particularly on toeside, it looks like you could comfortably go a lot faster.

[Tom]

Sean, i know you made a proto softboot plate. Are you planning on making a dedicated soft boot model, and if so how wide?

[Donek]

I'm rodong a standard plate with the cateks, but we do have a version that is about 24 cm wide. It looks like that is wider than necessary though, so it is likely to get a little narrower.

[Rob Stevens]

You're running pretty high angles there.
Going narrower would limit your ability to go closer to 0 degrees stance. Baseplates of soft bindings need to be fully supported along their length. The Cat binders have a metal baseplate so no problem there, but nothing else does.
It's a problem having a toe riser that can't go all the way under the toe of your boot because it's falling off its base of support.

[Donek]

You're running pretty high angles there.
Going narrower would limit your ability to go closer to 0 degrees stance. Baseplates of soft bindings need to be fully supported along their length. The Cat binders have a metal baseplate so no problem there, but nothing else does.
It's a problem having a toe riser that can't go all the way under the toe of your boot because it's falling off its base of support.

I do have a wider plate for people not using cateks or hardboots. It is not stock at this point and is a special order, but the same price.

[Rob Stevens]

What's the max width you can push the bindings out to?

[Donek]

What's the max width you can push the bindings out to?

The widest set of holes is 23in on center, although depending on your bindings slots, you can go significantly wider if you like.

[Rob Stevens]

This looks pretty interesting... I may pick one up for ugly snow days.

I do have another question for you... I would like to put some carbon fiber footboards inside my softboot shells. As someone without the tools to cut the material, I was wondering if this was a project you might take on? It needs to be thin enough to not take up much room inside the shell, while still being thick enough to be inflexible.

I have been on the Dragon Composites website and the material is readily available, but, again, I don't assume to have the knowledge to work with it.

I have been thinking about this for a long time, as my desire is to have stiffness under the foot, to keep it from reverse-arching, without affecting the flexible nature of the rest of the boot. "Stiff" softboots tend to be so in all the wrong places for me.

Thank you for any expertise you might be able to share with me and if you agree to make it, I will pay handsomely.

[Donek]

e-mail sent


This looks pretty interesting... I may pick one up for ugly snow days.

I do have another question for you... I would like to put some carbon fiber footboards inside my softboot shells. As someone without the tools to cut the material, I was wondering if this was a project you might take on? It needs to be thin enough to not take up much room inside the shell, while still being thick enough to be inflexible.

I have been on the Dragon Composites website and the material is readily available, but, again, I don't assume to have the knowledge to work with it.

I have been thinking about this for a long time, as my desire is to have stiffness under the foot, to keep it from reverse-arching, without affecting the flexible nature of the rest of the boot. "Stiff" softboots tend to be so in all the wrong places for me.

Thank you for any expertise you might be able to share with me and if you agree to make it, I will pay handsomely.