Austin installing new snowboard bindings

After a couple years of good fun Austin had outgrown his snowboard bindings and one of the straps snapped off. It turns out that after more than 20 years of snowboarding I have several pairs of extra bindings kicking around for him to use. His job was to remove a larger and working pair of bindings from one adult sized snowboard and install them on his child-sized snowboard.

Each binding has four bolts that screw into lock nuts embedded in the snowboard. Each binding has a disk in the centre that rotates allowing you to set the binding angle which controls the direction your feet point on the board. Austin's job was to unscrew all 8 bolts from his snowboard and the donor snowboard, position the new bindings on his board and tighten them all down. The positioning of the bindings were to be +5 degrees on the front and -5 degrees on the back (this is called a "duck" stance in snowboarding lingo as it makes your feet point away from each other like a duck). The centre disks have angle markings at 10-degree increments.

Once he had adjusted the bindings and mounted them by hand-tightening the bolts he strapped himself into the board to test the angle and fit. He said the angle fit comfortably and there wasn't any heel or toe drag so the bindings were properly centered. However, he did discover that the upper binding straps weren't as tight as they needed to be (he could fit a finger between the binding and his boot).

After examining the strap on one binding he discovered that the strap has 5 adjustment holes and it was on the second largest. We estimated that he should probably try putting it on the second smallest instead. The estimation was based on the fact that the bindings were last used by an adult with approx. size 10 boots (Austin's are size 5) and that by using the smallest setting, the strap would be sticking out too far to the back and would drag in the snow when turning on his heel edge. We could have cut the strap to avoid that but then the bindings would be useless for anyone with large feet in the future.

The next thing he noticed was that these straps were held on by a bolt and hex nut that turned every time he turned the screwdriver. He was going to need something to hold the nut in place while tightening the bolt. He also noticed that the screwdriver didn't fit in the slots properly due to the funny angle of the nut in the bindings. To solve this I showed him how we could remove the screwdriver bit from the handle making it shorter, then clamping a locking wrench on the driver bit. He could use this to keep the bolt from turning and then use a crescent wrench to turn the nut on the outside. With these tools in hand, I left him to it.

It took about 1/2 an hour to complete this last step as he had to re-do each binding strap a second time as each time he forgot to check which adjustment hole he was using and got it wrong each time. The first time he simply forgot what we had decided. When he made the mistake a second time, I showed him how, before tightening everything up, he could have checked his work against the other (correct) binding to see if they were the same. We then talked about the measure twice, cut once rule to avoid costly mistakes. Thankfully, the cost in this case was simply time and him getting tired and frustrated.

He concluded that when he gets tired he just wants to get the job done and ends up rushing it. I suggested that when he notices this mood that he should slow down and make extra checks. He could see that by rushing and making mistakes the job actually took longer to complete and that he was getting even more frustrated and was making even more mistakes. A good lesson to learn. :)