You want to buy your skis mail order? You may have a few questions about bindings, boots and about safety settings, etc. let me explain how we do it.
Buying skis online and getting them setup is a fairly simple process if you approach it correctly.
If purchasing a ski/binding package from ourselves, 95% of skis have the binding plate pre-fitted. This takes all the hard work out of the process as you dont need drills and jigs etc. Its already done for you by us or the factory.
UK customers can ask us to attach the bindings to the plate for you, providing you request this service before they are packed. We personally try to avoid this, as for 1. they are super easy to slid on and 2. There is the potential to damage the binding brakes in transit, as they are a little vulnerable.
Overseas customers ordering skis: The skis will always be sent with the bindings in a box ready to attach to the fitted plate, this is super easy, as instructions are given.
UK Customers: So If you want us to mount the bindings for you, read on.
Please send us a message after checkout, providing your ski boot size, your UK shoe size or the length of your ski boots (this is the best option) PLUS your weight AND level of ski ability.
Once we have this information, we can do a basic setup to your new skis.
The setup above is just a basic binding to skis setup, it mounts the skis to your bindings.
All ski bindings have to be micro adjusted to fit your pair of ski boots. So you may need to adjust to suit your actual boot. This is best done by a ski tech in resort. Its the fine details that need to adjusted, both the safety aspect (we cover this later) and also the boot fit. The boot fit part sets out to do 2 things. 1. To make sure the boot fits perfectly in the bindings and 2. That the perfect balance point is also achieved. Both are critical, but its the balance point that is often overlooked, as poorly balanced ski/boot is a badly setup ski. If you take a very close look at the sides of your skiboots, there should be a small vertical mark/line on the boot molded into the shell, somewhere near the centre. This is the boots natural balance point. If you take a look at the ski, you should find the same line in the middle of the ski, under part of the binding. It will be to one side of the ski. When the ski boot is in the bindings, the 2 lines should line up. This is the default posiiton. You can change the balance depending on your style. A pooly balanced ski/boot combo can result in sub-optimal performace. These take but a few moments to check.
The last thing that has to be setup is your DIN safety settings on both the toe and heel unit.
Each person is unique, the safety settings (DIN rating) is based on your weight, boot length and ability. These are factors that cannot be set by mail order. In my opinion this needs to be done when the customer is present, so all things can be taken into consideration by the ski tech. Please get this done in resort, it takes 5 minutes max,
So we do the hard bit of mounting the bindings for free, you get them adjusted to suit you.
The above information applies to skis fitted with step in FULL RELEASE bindings from Tyrolia only.
The above information does not apply to skis fitted with the simple "clamp up" UNIVERSAL NON RELEASE binding with leash as fitted to some ski blades.
Universal NON RELEASE bindings can be adjusted without tools and you can fit multiple boot sizes on the "fly". As the binding is "non release" it is not necessary to set anything other than the boot size fitting.
Have fun
The shortskishop team