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I’ve been a fan of Madshus skis for over a decade, but for much of that time I felt that finding really excellent pairs was a little bit hit or miss. In the past several years I’ve invested more time in the brand, working with the Madshus racing guys in Norway and the US to develop a good fleet for Noah Hoffman. During this time Madshus has made some significant changes to their skis, and I think the direction they have taken, combined with the control they have of their materials, has put them on a really good path.

With last year’s introduction of the new skate models with the updated top sheet shape and profile, I feel that Madshus has an outstanding lineup of skis. More importantly, I feel that my understanding of the skis has developed to the point where it is no longer a hit or miss proposition to find excellent materials. The skis Noah has gotten in the past year have been outstanding, with a very high adoption rate into the race fleet.

Photo courtesy of flyingpointroad.com

Madshus skis are, perhaps, the most high-tech skis being made in terms of materials and design. In large part this is because they’re made in Norway, in the most expensive labor market in the world. To be financially viable it’s necessary to build tremendous efficiencies into the production of the skis, and part of this efficiency depends on the on-time delivery of very consistent materials. Madshus has taken a commodities-based approach to materials selection. This means that they utilize materials that are manufactured to very tight specifications, and available anytime with a near perfect consistency of production. This allows the factory to run with a light inventory of materials.

The use of these materials is facilitated by careful engineering. None of the Madshus materials have meaningful structural integrity on their own. Only once they’re glued up and formed in the press do the qualities of the materials combine to create a single, dynamic object. A great deal of attention is paid to balancing tensile and compressive forces on the bottom and the top of the ski to ensure a uniform and controllable load response profile. The construction techniques that Madshus has developed in order to be competitive in the marketplace have enabled them to create just about anything they can imagine, with near-perfect reproducibility. I believe that they have really narrowed their sights on what they want to build in the past two years, and that the yield of excellent skis from their production is unprecedented.

The one concession associated with the materials and design of the Madshus skis is a high susceptibility to thermal damage. All of the materials involved in the production of the skis are thermoplastic, and the core does not absorb heat. This means that heat from the iron can accumulate very quickly in the laminations between the base and the core, resulting in the materials rising up and deforming the base. This past year Madshus improved the thermal tolerance of the skis immensely, and we saw only one pair of this year’s inventory with serious thermal damage. The improvement was mostly from tightening the material tolerances for the density of the core, which allow them to mill the edges of the core closer to a zero-dimension near the tip and tail of the ski. This eliminates voids in the lay-up where resin can accumulate, and hold heat from the iron. It is important to use a an iron hot enough to allow wax to flow easily, and then to heat the wax in a single continuous pass, allowing it to cool to room temperature before reheating. This will ensure that there is never any thermal deformation of the ski. There is no issue with putting Madshus skis in a heatbox.