Scarpa F1 sizing questions (old bellow version)

[Allan Fici]

iBjorn: My boots BSL measures 297mm not 301mm and they are shorter than my 299mm TX Pros. They are not 301mm anywhere on the sole or lower part of the shell that supports the Vibram outsole. Same tech cup set back from tip of toe in both boots.

My boots work for me because I made them fit using the boot fit techniques I’ve described here. I could easily have ski this in the next shell size smaller and maybe I’ll spring for a pair of 292 or whatever the heck size the next shell down measures. I really like the boot and the toungue in the F1. I also love the leverage of and slimmed down profile of the Kreuzspitze tour levers I installed with the Dyneema cord.

I’ve gotten the best skiing out of the F1 since I bought the Kreuz spring cartridges and all three spring rates last year. The extra travel of the Kreuz springs has made a huge difference in how these boots ski.

Let me me know if you find in your searching some smaller F1 shells than what we have.

[Charley White]

Man o man, I had the opposite problem and now the same. Seeming endless process to get my boots--same as yours, Allan, but MP 27--to fit [edit correction: my liners are different, see pic below.] Will condense the story to say I got a performance shell-fit of maybe 1.5 fingers. First outing with those Palau liners [stamped "Scarpa," & "made in France." ergo Palau?] I blackened and lost a big-toenail. Thermo fit twice for toe room and still uncomfortable. Put in the liners from my 27MP t1s and almost good enough. Hearing of bad rep for the stock liners, I sprung for the lowest-volume liner I could get from Intuition, the Tour Mod. Used last week without any thermofit, and find the toeroom now A-OK, but realize too much volume around the instep, where it should be hugging. Heel not bad. I am going to go to a bootfitter, but would like any tips I could get, in case this is my lifelong pursuit.

Reducing volume with a shim below (what means "5 iron" Allan?) would ruin the toeroom I got. I could sand the shim and/or insole down to zero or no lift from the balls of the foot forward to reduce feeling of "delta." Practical? What would be nice is padding on the instep--above-- the liner or under the tongue. I put a little stiff foam 5mm EVA pad inside the tongue, under the strap, and maybe only helps in my imagination. Options there?

Two more outlandish possibilities: I see here and there on my liners sewn-together pieces. I could take those stock Palau liners and cut out the cramped toe section and patch in a front wall (like my t1s) and thinner roof of neoprene or somesuch. Heard of this?

Even if I got good liner fit, it would be wonderful to add a ankle-flex-point strap--even a voile strap, but I need to get several years good use before i potentially destroy them by drilling out the cuff rivet. Any suggestions appreciated. Touring on these with my DIY TTS and Voile Objective BC was too wonderful to give up before a long try.

[iBjorn]

Charley: what BSL does your shell have, was it regular F1 or the Rce version, pre- or post 2007 version, and was your T1 liners at size 27 a good fit?

If you miss the instep buckle, a F3 might be a good option?

[paulzo]

Charley - Spenco used to make a arch support/half insole thing that would do what you are describing - lift up the rear of the foot from the ball back, but not affect toe-room. Don't know if it still exists but worth looking for.

[Charley White]

iBjorn--they are stowed in the garage at the moment. I will edit this tomorrow to post the BSL [if they measure differently, but found this photo of the imprint. Looks like 301] OK now measured BSL as ~298. I show "~" because due to the fabrication I made for the heel to create a cable groove bypassing the tech heel, I measure from the rearmost Vibram at the heel to the foremost plastic in the toe. Don't know the official mtd. But going from Jason's chart, it's not a race and so must be a post 2007.


Thanks for that Paul, I may have approximated this by sanding a shim and thin Superfoot in the toe areas. Definitely feel it without a cliff effect. And thanks to you, Allan, I just went ahead and gave it a go. No harm done in this approach.
1--Put in a neoprene (dense) shim, 8 or 10 mm, sanding down the toe area.
2--Put in a low volume Superfoot, sanded toe area.
3--Added a length of 5mm Evazote (from a MEC evazote bivvy pad) inside tongue, in addn to the ~10mm EVA square I'd already added.
4--Also tried a substitute to the Evazote, a length of maybe 8mm packstrap foam. Much denser. Felt better, but slight gappage where tongue meets boot; opening for water. Will work on this as this foam will hold up better than the bivvy foam.

Preliminarily, I'm very pleased. This greatly snugged up the fit while leaving toe room. Will now actually thermofit the toe area with the fit-kit that came with the boot. Then only remains to get some snow and tromp around in it to pack in the setup! Some pictures:


Foams from the top: Superfoot underside (pre-sanding of toe), 5mm Evazote, packstrap foam, dense ~10mm EVA I got from Granite Chief. You can see this under the tongue.


The new Intuition Tour Mod on the boot. This is their lowest volume, they say, and is kind of fussy/prototype in that there are pieces you must add--they velcro--for lacing and fitting.



The boot with the original liner, Palau I guess, but not the same as Allan's.

[Allan Fici]

Charley, Glad you figured out the volume issues with your boots. It’s a bit of trial and error most times. I don’t remember exactly where the term 5 iron comes from but it’s something like 48 irons equals an inch and they are just a type of shim. I love the original F1 Palau liner in my Procline’s but they did not work at all for me in the F1. My original TXPro 25.5/ 26 liners are working well for me with a 3mm shim under them in the shell. The other thing I always do is build a toe cap around my toes when molding the liner. I use a combination of old liners cut apart to give me the very toe cap and old socks toe caps to fill them out. I put them over my toes and pull a very thin sock over the whole mess and put them into the hot liner and into the shell. That way you can insure that you’ll have wiggle room for your toes, pro-perception for balance and snow feel and hopefully no black toes or lost toe nails.

That is the same Palau liner that came in my F1’s. What size is the Palau liner that you have and do you want to get rid of them if they’re a 26 or 26.5?

[Charley White]

That is the same Palau liner that came in my F1’s. What size is the Palau liner that you have and do you want to get rid of them if they’re a 26 or 26.5?

They say "Mondo 270," so I make that 27.

[iBjorn]

My second par of F1 Race arrived today, size 26 and one shell size smaller than my current ones. They seems to be a slightly older version with a little bit different upper buckle, and more importantly, a front gaiter without a zipper. They are a very tight fit without any socks with the original liner, and it is a nightmare to get the foot in and out of the boot - despite a shell fit with 2 fingers behind the heel. I really miss the zipper on the tongue gaiter. Oddly enough I can still move my heel up and down almost a centimeter...I guess I have to work with some shimming under the heel of the liner, as well as some to do some work with the insoles.

The boots score great on the kitchen scale...

[dschane]

Bumping this thread.

So, the F1 Race and F1 Carbon have smaller shells because the stock liners are thinner? If that's right and if you're planning on swapping out the old liners with a more robust liner say from your Scarpa Tx, would you buy a size bigger? That is, if my NTN boots are a 316 BSL and the choices are 310 or 318, would you go with the 318?

[Allan Fici]

Bumping this thread.

So, the F1 Race and F1 Carbon have smaller shells because the stock liners are thinner? If that's right and if you're planning on swapping out the old liners with a more robust liner say from your Scarpa Tx, would you buy a size bigger? That is, if my NTN boots are a 316 BSL and the choices are 310 or 318, would you go with the 318?

This is a good question dschane. I personally ended up with a regular 26.5/27MP F1 301mm bsl shell (actual 298mm bsl) that was very close in shell size to my 25.5/26MP TXP 299mm bsl shell. But because I bought them so long ago in 2011 and directly from Scarpa I don’t remember if I had bought the next size smaller, tried the fit and exchanged them. I know I did this with either the F1 or the TXP and I think it was the TXP that I bumped up in size. Anyway I feel that the F1 shell is higher in volume over the instep and maybe heel than the TXP comparing the same or similar shell size. I had to add an under liner shim and a tongue depressor pad to use the TXP liner right out of my TXP and make it work in my F1. Personally I think if I was doing this again today I’d down size the shell and work on making room in the liner or a punch in the shell if I needed to.

So so based on that kind of long winded reasoning. My suggestion would be the 310mm bsl shell vs the 318. It somewhat depends on your foot type, skinny low volume, or more blocky high volume, low arch, high arch?...shape. But I would like to hear jasonq, iBjorn and Charley White’s thoughts on this based on their experience.

[iBjorn]

The table shown by Allan is correct regarding BSL and Mondo sizing as far as I know. I think that a lot of the issues in F1 sizing relates to how the F1 Race and Carbon are marked/selled in Mondo sizes, ie the Race/Carbon are often marked according to the shell size and not to the actual fit/liner size. As a result, when I received my first pair of F1 race, the box, boots and liner was marked "27" despite that the shells were marked BSL 301, in conflict with the table provided, and they were far to big to me . So I ordered F1 Race/Carbon in size 26 (BSL 292) and they were a good fit to me. However, using my T2/T4 265/270 liners in the BSL 301 shell provided a good fit, so I think that the volume of the F1 shell and T2/T4 shell is fairly similar.

So to conclude, if you want to use your TXP liner in a F1 shell, you should probably go according to the table at BSL 310. If you want to use the original F1 Race or Carbon liner (or any other thin liner) go for the 301 shell.

Edit: I can add that after molding of the liner in my pictured boot above - I got an almost perfect fit!

[jasonq]

here is what i can tell you. I ignore the BSL numbers as far as fit is concerned. I look at the UK shell mark. UK 7 shells fit me every time, with a "standard" thickness liner. I do use the BSL number, boot model, and that chart to figure out what UK size a given boot is.

looking only at the BSL can lead to problems. for example, a size UK6/MP25 TXP is 291, while a genI F1 UK7/MP26 is 292. One of those fits perfect, the other is way too small.

that said, between T2x, gen1 F1, F3, and TXP, while the UK7 shell is the right length, there are volume differences. The TXP is the highest volume, then the T2x, the, F1/F3. but the T2x and F1/F3 are pretty close and i can swap molded liners between them without any problems. the TXP is more different, and while i can use liners molded in the T2x/F1/F3 in the TXP by just bucking tight, going the other way doesn't work as well. I think scarpa says they use a 102mm last in all of them.

[dschane]

Alright, thanks fellas for the information. It's virtually impossible to get this right without trying them on, so I appreciate the added data.

The F1 Carbon is now available only in 29 (from that Italian site) and that may be too big. I have medium feet, minimal arch and they measure about 28.25cm. Based on shell fitting, I should probably use a Tx Pro 27.5/28.0 and work the liner to mold/fidget my way to maximum comfort. I have been using 28.5/29.0 with a sole insert for many, many years and ignored fact that I can fit a 3/4" dowel between my heel and shell easily and with a tad of room to spare. I have some 28.0 Tx Pros on the way and will first figure that out. I will say the comfort of the 28.5s touring, esp. multi-day trips, will be hard to give up.

[telemarkmark]

My F1s are a bit lose, but soooo comfy. Have not got around to baking liners as yet.
Out of interest, Where did you get your F1s? And how much?

[dschane]

My F1s are a bit lose, but soooo comfy. Have not got around to baking liners as yet.
Out of interest, Where did you get your F1s? And how much?

If this is directed to me, I haven't purchased them yet. There's some Italian store that has them, and there was a link somewhere in one of these pages on this site. I think they are 400 Euros. Tough to decide whether to jump now or wait until 2021, 2022, or 2023 when Scarpa, Scott, or Crispi offers up a new line-up of boots. Someone should try to convince other companies (La Sportiva?) to enter the mix. It's a gamble on us telemarkers, but with the explosion (perhaps saturation) of AT boots, a little risk may be in order.