A Very Deep Dive on Ski Boots, Part 1: Plastics

GEAR:30

BLISTER

Arts, Design, Skiing, Snow, Snowboarding, Sports, Outdoors, Bike, Technology, Gear

4.9 • 809 Ratings

🗓️ 28 June 2019

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ski boots are made of plastic, and different plastics feel and perform very differently from one another. So we get deep into the details with Atomic Ski Boots product manager, Matt Manser, to help you figure out which plastics are used in your ski boots, and the pros & cons & general performance characteristics of different plastics — which will help you understand why you might like or dislike your current boots, and what you ought to be looking for in your next pair.

TOPICS & TIMES:

What has been the focus of your recent work in ski boots? (2:10)
The 3 main families of plastics: PP, PU, and PA (6:57)
“PP” — Polypropylene (11:15)
How recycled plastics are used in the production process (19:18)
“PU” — Polyurethane (23:06)
Low-grade PU: Recycled PU (26:53)
Mid-grade PU: PU-Ester (27:53)
High-grade PU: PU-Ether (31:33)
Colors: how they affect plastics’ performance (33:44)
What is Desmopan? (38:32)
“True Flex” PU — Atomic’s proprietary PU (44:26)
How to make a lightweight boot out of heavy materials (49:40)
“PA” — Polyamide (53:58)
How to verify which plastics your boot is made of (1:00:24)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everybody, welcome back to Gear 30 on the Blister Podcast Network.
0:09.9	I'm Jonathan Ellsworth, the founder of Blister, and you can check out everything we're doing and reviewing over at blisterreview.com.
0:18.7	All right, folks, over the next two weeks here, we are about to go very deep into the world of
0:24.0	ski boots.
0:25.1	In part one, which you are about to hear, I'm going to be talking with Matt Manzer, who is the
0:30.2	product manager of atomic ski boots, about the various plastics used to make ski boots.
0:36.2	And then next week in part two, Matt and I will wade into the
0:39.7	very murky waters of flex patterns. And as you will see, that is a much weirder and more
0:46.0	complicated topic than you might think. And one very important note here. I promise that you are
0:52.6	going to want to check out our show notes
0:54.8	to this episode on the website because they function as a very useful reference guide to the
0:59.8	topics that Matt and I are going to be discussing here. You can find those notes on the navigation
1:05.3	bar of our website, either under the podcast tab, just go to Gear 30, of course, or listed on the navigation bar
1:13.6	under Reviews, and you then just click the word reviews, then go to the drop-down menu where you
1:19.5	can check out all of our Gear 101 articles, including these expanded notes to this particular
1:25.7	episode. And on that note, it is now time to jump down the rabbit hole
1:30.6	and hopefully get a whole lot clearer
1:33.0	about the funny-looking plastic footwear
1:35.3	that we all use to go skiing.
1:39.4	Matt Manzer, how are you?
1:41.8	Hey, Jonathan, I'm doing well.
1:44.5	And where are you currently?
	...

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