(S'il vous plaît mon pardon en anglais. Je prends mon premier cours de français depuis le déplacement à la France cet été.)
I went to visit Peter Stelzner at
Rabbit On The Roof Skis in his hidden workshop in Montreuil (Paris) France to find out what the story was about these handmade skis that people seem to rave about. I also wanted to find out what was up with these rabbits.
He's making some interesting skis. Peter does not put any metal in his skis. Pure hickory, ash, carbon, triax fiberglass and kevlar. Retro looking topsheets (beaten with chains if you want) and finishes. He wants to quit making furniture and concentrate on skis full-time and go into more production. Right now, he makes about 30 pairs a year with a wicked 5-ton press. He's got a pretty nice collection of shapes and flexes and will customize the flex in the forebody or tail if you want. He doesn't sell 'em cheap. They cost between 800-1200 Euros per pair. After seeing his stuff, I could see saving my pennies and buying a pair from him instead of one of the flashy companies. Definitely retro-cool.
If anyone is going through Paris, definitely call him up. He wants people to see his skis. These are not your run-of-the-mill freeride boards.
I took a bunch of pics at his shop and wrote a little story about his shop. The writeup is in a 19 page PDF of what we saw:
1.3mb PDF (low res photos)
9mb PDF (higher res photos)
I hope to get on one or two differerent pairs this season if I can swing it and see how they feel.
Here are some images of the first two pages of the story...the PDF has a bunch of pics
inscrit le 07/12/07
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