Ski testing by hand and eye was relegated to very experienced craftsmen and skiers but with the advent of machine testing more people have become involved and many ski shops now have machines to test and fit skis to skiers.
A rudimentary ski testing machine devised by Ross Huffman in Ontario in the 1970’s … pressure was applied by a clamp onto a bathroom scale according to the skier’s weight. The paper slips either stick or slide out according to the bottoming of the ski base.Position along the ski is determined by the scale (ruler) along the right edge.The graph above is the result of a ski test with the Huffman tester. It indicates where the ski is bottoming out along its length and where it is lifting off the flat beam underneathfor various hypothetical skier weights(loads).The ski tester at Gear West Sports in ???? The white rollers are pressure transducers that record the pressure exerted by the ski base as the ski is pressed down by the crank. Electrical currents produced by the transducers relative to the amount of pressure are recorded in the computer and graphed.The resulting graph comparing two skis showing the high spots and low spots along the skis.
