One of my resolutions this season was to do my own ski work and maintenance as much as possible. Yesterday, I did my first DIY binding mount in my uncle’s garage workshop, installing Plum Guides on my Black Diamond Currents. It went mostly to plan.

I used the dynafit template from Wild Snow, and consulted the instructions from Wild Snow and Slidewright. For drilling I used a drill press (Mmmm, I want one! A revelation) and a 3.5mm stepped drill bit kindly lent by Rich from Aussie Skier.

Everything was within 1mm, except for the left toe-piece which is 2mm off-center. The consensus is I won’t notice it while skiing; it’s worth noting that the difference in size between my left and right foot is about that! I also let the screwdriver slip while turning one of the screws, and stripped the head slots a bit.

I didn’t use any glue for the screws, as they’ll probably only get a few days skiing on them before I plan to put inserts in all my skis and pull them out again. (This should also give me a chance to nudge the crooked holes over a little bit, with some work)

So while it’s ok, it’s not great, and I have a few things to take away for next time:

Get the centerline right. String lines weren’t accurate enough for us. In the future I’ll use the paper strip method with Slidewright’s ski center template.

Use masking tape for all the position markings, so I don’t get pencil marks all over the skis.

In fact, measuring and drilling are entirely separate jobs really. Next time I’ll do the measuring and template positioning beforehand, which will give me more time and mental space to revise and check.

Driving the screws was surprisingly hard work. Tapping would not have been a bad idea.

The flexing of the ski will make a difference. Make sure to push it flat to the bench while you’re doing stuff.

Finally, the manufacturer’s boot center mark was actually about 1mm off between the skis, so remember to check that.