How to make your own Tele Boots... sort of

[Alex]

This a thread born out of frustration. I'm not sure if I'll actually be successful, but my goal is to make my own carbon fibre upper cuff for my old pair of T1s. This isn't to shed weight per se, but to increase the ROM of my old 75mm boots. I personally feel that this is the biggest downside to tele right now (we have lots of binding options).

This is going to be a "play by play" account as I slowly make "progress". I also fully expect the first rendition to need a lot of improvement, but hopefully the 2nd rendition will be better and actually functional. By then, maybe we'll have more options. I'll update this whenever I work on it, feel free to jump in and tell me what an idiot I'm being if you see something wrong.

Step 1 - Remove upper cuff from lower shell of boot



This was slightly harder than I had anticipated. The canting bolt was REALLY stiff and the square flanged nut on the inside liked to spin. A wrench held at an awkward angle and an allen key eventually did the trick. Then I tried to drill the rivet out on the other side, but it just started to spin. I managed to get a knife edged screw driver under the rivet and I destroyed it, then popped it out:



The touring mechanism had 2 small rivets that I again destroyed and removed. The bar that attached through the touring mechanism is slightly bent to restrict it from pulling through the mechanism in normal circumstances, but with the rivets removed, the bar popped through with a light tug.



I was moderately frustrated by this point and decided to call it a day (err... hour). I think the problem was I was drinking some light lager and not something with some more vitamin awesome in it. This beer did the trick later - Belgian-PNW hybrid (delicious and packs the umph you need to tear something apart).



All the buckles were also riveted on and needed some friendly massaging to get them out.

More info in a couple weeks. More pictures here

[cesare]

Nice save on the brew and also noticing your excellent kitchen.

And... boot mods like this, frankenbinders, homemade binding adaptors, these are the kinds of thing that telemark skiing has been missing for a long time. Looking forward to seeing your progress.

Oh, and while you're at it, will you be reusing the original tour lever or redesigning it so it doesn't fall into ski mode when you're skinning? Biggest complaint I have about Scarpa tele boots is that silly little plastic lever that rotates on a pin and won't stay in tour mode. I've found duct tape to be effective, but I'm special 'cause I only want to ski in tour mode. Would be nice to see a lever more like a Scarpa AT boot has... or better since you can lose digits trying to change the cuff angle and then find out that the lesser angle would require cutting shell material even to get there.

[riser3]

but I'm special 'cause I only want to ski in tour mode.

No. You're special for so many more reasons than that. Don't ever change. Chez for Prez 2016!!!

[Alex]

cesare,
I'll need to swap out the bar and completely re-think the touring mechanism I think. The bar isn't very long and I'm going to have to shave away material on the upper in order to get the ROM that I want, so in all likelihood it will be gone.
A lot of the weight in the uppers is from the buckles and hardware, so I'm going to try to re-think this completely too (by looking at current boots with replace-able / aftermarket buckles).

The touring mechanism has a light spring that I think wears out / has icing issues of it's own. I've had times where it hasn't gone into ski mode at all. But the new T1s do have the newer "powerblock" touring mechanism (which is quite a bit better).

[Gunks Ray]

Nice save on the brew and also noticing your excellent kitchen.

And... boot mods like this, frankenbinders, homemade binding adaptors, these are the kinds of thing that telemark skiing has been missing for a long time. Looking forward to seeing your progress.

Biggest complaint I have about Scarpa tele boots is that silly little plastic lever that rotates on a pin and won't stay in tour mode. I've found duct tape to be effective, but I'm special 'cause I only want to ski in tour mode.

After getting a pair of Scarpa TX boots to tour in I took out the sliding metal bar part of the lock mechanism, you can take it out by just driving out the pin that holds it in, takes about 5 min with a good pin punch and a hammer. The boots are now a little lighter, probably lighter than if you remove one pair of buckles, that bar is steel and deceptively heavy, AND I have both a greater range of cuff movement and less resistance in touring mode (of course they are always in touring mode now). Like Ceasare I never use ski mode, always tour mode. Since I never lock the cuff it seemed silly to have the weight of the lock mechanism still on a boot used only for touring, I left the lock on my TX Pros as I'm lazy, I still never use it but when riding lifts who cares, I don't seem to have the accidental locking problem Ceasare does.

This winter I will remove the rest of the tour mech from the TX boots, the little lever that Ceasare was complaining about and the metal mounting block inside the cuff that is held in by rivets, this will make the boot lighter yet. I will have to make a replacement block of light plastic to replace the metal mounting block of the lock or the boots won't fit right, but it will still be lighter and I won't have that silly lever still sticking out of the boot.

[Gunks Ray]

cesare,
I'll need to swap out the bar and completely re-think the touring mechanism I think. The bar isn't very long and I'm going to have to shave away material on the upper in order to get the ROM that I want, so in all likelihood it will be gone.
A lot of the weight in the uppers is from the buckles and hardware, so I'm going to try to re-think this completely too (by looking at current boots with replace-able / aftermarket buckles).

The touring mechanism has a light spring that I think wears out / has icing issues of it's own. I've had times where it hasn't gone into ski mode at all. But the new T1s do have the newer "powerblock" touring mechanism (which is quite a bit better).

Have you tried contacting Scarpa, I'm pretty sure you could just buy an AT cuff and bolt it on along with the AT tour mech. I'm pretty sure they would even sell you the fancy carbon one from the F1 Race boot.

[Alex]

Have you tried contacting Scarpa, I'm pretty sure you could just buy an AT cuff and bolt it on along with the AT tour mech. I'm pretty sure they would even sell you the fancy carbon one from the F1 Race boot.

It'd be interesting to see about that, but I'm not sure the Forward Lean would work out since the height of the pivot on the back of the lower is different on the T1 and their AT boots I think. The T1 has that big "Torsion Frame" that gets in the way of touring mode. So yes, I'd be interested to see if it'd work, but I'm not sure I'm willing to fork out the money for something that may or may not work. I'll e-mail them and ask just to be informed.
See below to compare the height of the rib that blocks the rearward path of the cuff.



Also, I'm not doing Carbon because it's light and stiff (errr... that's part of the reason), but the main reason is because small production thermoset-carbon composite is about 100 times easier than a thermo-formed plastic. This is something that almost anybody should be able to mimic. Carbon is expensive for high quantity mass production, but actually quite economical for prototyping.

[cesare]

Scarpa has a tele tour block mechanism for sale, but it doesn't fit the older 3 buckle T1s that I have. I'll have to look at removing it and see if anything could go wrong with the cuff to boot attachment.

[Gunks Ray]

I was thinking more along the lines of the Scarpa F1. The locking lever mounts completely on the cuff, the only part on the lower boot would be the pin that is the same as the pin that used to hold the old sliding plate in. Google Scarpa F1 and you can get lots of photos of the mech.

I understand The prototype verses production building process, I've been a Product Designer and Model maker for more than 30 years, typing this from my CAD station. I did however make a full hinged cuff assembly for my early low skate boots using low temp polypro sheet with a softening temp of a little over 200 deg. I heated it with a heat gun and molded it to shape by hand using gloves, made extension cuffs for my old T3's the same way. Carbon would be stiffer and better for this though.

[Charley White]

Am following with keen interest, Alex. Can you give me a preview of what hardware you think to attach your new cuff with?

Never had the nerve to drill out one of those rivets without something known and fungible from, e.g. McMaster Carr, to re-attach with (in other words, not having to rely on mfgr for replacement rivets). Post nuts? Regular bolt/nut/washers precisely tightened & "loc-tightened"? Are you planning to just skip any canting capacity there might have been in the original rivets?

[edit for spelling...[and to add, then remove distraction]]

[jasonq]

I'm removed a bunch of cuffs/buckets/etc, and it can be a bitch.

normal rivets, use a drill bit smaller than the rivet, and drill down the center from the outside. the idea here is to put as big a hole into the rivet as you can without hitting any plastic. Switch to a sharp counter sink, and from the outside, counter sink that hole until the head pops off. the rivet may spin, so just working the counter sink at an angle and it will keep removing material.

the adjustable cant "rivet", the screw that goes thru it is mushroomed on the inside. the best way to get it out is to use a dremel to grind the mushroom down, then back out the screw. it will still come out hard, and try to spin the square nut in the pocket, so once it starts to get hard, its not a bad idea to get pliers of something in there. this is much easier if you have already removed the opposite rivet.

for lightening boots via buckle mods, etc, check out what i did to my txp's:

http://www.backcountrytalk.earnyourturns.com/vb/showthread.php?805-Lightening-TX-Pros-cuz-you-can&highlight=jasonq