More Ski Surgery

Since the Jersey family gave me a drill press for Christmas, I figured I should detail the first time I put it to use. My new ski bindings needed mounting et voila, fun project ensued.

After measuring, measuring, measuring I drill the six mounting holes in each ski using a collared drill bit to get the right depth.
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Once drilled, I tapped the holes in prep for putting in threaded inserts. These inserts were from Binding Freedom and were pretty easy to use. Internal M5 threads will make it easy to swap out the bindings plates if necessary and the inserts themselves will hopefully increase the pullout strength in this ski.
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As you can see, there were factory inserts in this ski already -- unfortunately they were a bit too narrowly set for the mounting plate for the NTN binding.

After the tapping, putting the inserts in with epoxy was pretty straightforward. Once they'd cured for 48 hours I mounted the binding plate.
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After skiing this setup for a couple of days, all looks good. I was having some issues with snow balling up under the plates (a common problem in PNW "concrete") so I fashioned some thin "snowball preventers" out of HDPE plastic, the same material used in cutting boards. Hopefully it does the job in Japan.
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