I’ve always wondered how different is the new K2 Pontoon from the spatula? K2 states that Shane’s legend lives on but that’s about it for specs on the ski. An A-B of the Spatula vs the Pontoon would be cool.
Great article – will re read – SM was ahead of his time obviously and if you want a new pair in the wrapper eBay has them for $3000 – :) This could be fun to seek at garage sales and ski swaps so will keep a secret.
Shane was a visionary in a lot of ways. Wish he was still kicking. :-(
Nice. Digging the bindings too, may I suggest a quick bench test,
Jonathan, you can’t wait to test them, how’s the recovery, is skiing a near term possibility? Or am I implying something that ain’t there in your words?
Hi, Frame – our intention is to put a different binding on these, so no worries there.
And yes, I’ll be skiing next month. If I can hold out that long….
I am still skiing my Spatulas. I bought 2 pairs 11 years ago. I only ski about 10 days a year here in WA state, but I love them! But on 2 out of the 4 skis, that red thingamajiggy under the boot that the bindings mount on has broken off. Is it feasible/slayable to mount/remount bindings on them without it? If so, what is that thing for? Stiffness?
Brad,
Those spacers were on the skis because the Volant skis were so thin profile. I just measured the thickness of the Spatula under the front binding and they are exactly 10mm. That is THIN. WITH the spacer any adult binding could be mounted on to the skis. This allow for the Adult standard (G1/G2) screw penetration depth of 8mm and 9mm drill bit depth. Nowadays there are some adult skis thin enough to require 6mm screw depth and 7mm drill bit depth. Even this day and age that can present problems as the standard for adult skis and bindings is 8mm. Standard for Junior skis (G3/G4) is 6mm. Tyrolia has 6mm screw kits for the Attack bindings and I imagine the other bindings manufacturers do too. If you were to mount directly on to the Spatula (without the spacer) you would want to ensure that don’t use full-length adult screws that will likely penetrate through the core and will volcano or worse yet potentially pop through the base. So you would need to locate 6mm screws for your bindings or grind 2mm off of your screws (pain in the ass but can be done) Your other option would be use a 2mm spacer. Now there is the possibility that the spacer accomplished 2 things with 1 stone. Maybe it also allowed some additional flex in the system. So maybe you would be safest just using some 2mm spacers. Most shops that deal with race skis a lot will likely have these on hand or at least be able to order them.
That plastic plate under the binding is only a shim for the binding screws in the case where the skis are too thin. You can chuck that plate and mount straight to the steel deck. Just grind screws shorter if they are too long. I mounted straight to the steel on my Chubbs to get rid of the heavy plastic binding mounting plate on the last gen Volant skis.
Take Peter’s advice. He designed the skis! Hi Peter.
Thanks Ivor and Pete! Next question, if yas got the time. I’ve got 2 out of the 4 skis with the plate still on. Is there anything I can do to prevent this from happening a 3rd/4th time on them if I remount the bindings? Is it just a matter of using the longest, but not too longest, screws? Or should I just get rid of the plate, if that’s easy enuf. And a historical question: Was/is this a common issue within the rest of the Spatula community? I remember when I got them a fellow owner/friend who had moved on from them mentioned how there was an issue with them breaking, but I can’t remember or didn’t know what he was talking about.
And, what are some of the skis on the market from the past 5 years that perform like the Spatulas? I know a bunch of folks with Pontoons, but even those cats suffer when its breakable.
If you like the plate leave it on and use standard alpine length screws. If they have broken you can remove them and use an appropriate length alpine binding screw mounting right onto the steel deck. You could also stick them back on with an aggressive outdoor rated double back tape.
I have not necessarily heard about any issues but I never heard of any of the Spatulas break, at least from normal use. That was a solid construction and the ski is so wide it is really quite strong.
The DPS Lotus 138 and The Spoon have similar design and performance. More versatile in variable snow because of a small amount of sidecut underfoot. And certainly lighter.
Thank you Shane. The Spatula converted me back to skiing from a 15 year stint as a snowboarder. The Spatula changed my course in life. I am now a sales rep in the ski industry and I am not sure this would have happened if not for Shane’s ingenuity. I always felt like I was riding 2 snowboards in powder when riding the Spatula. They were amazing in so many ways. Without going into detail I cornered the market on the Spatula. Shane may have been wrong about 1 thing. The original production run may have been 1000 pair of skis. That is still to this day the MOQ if you want any of the major European ski factories to build you your own ski. The initial delivery was 300 pair but the next portion of the production run likely was for 700, however, those may have not all ended up in the USA. In the spring of 2003, I purchased the remaining 530 pair of Spatulas from Atomic. At that point, I had already sold 60 pairs that I purchased from Gen-X Sports who sold Volant to Atomic. Thankfully, we were in the first season of some really good snow years…03/04 in the Wasatch was a 700″ year which made selling all of my Spatula’s a hell of a lot easier. I had 2 pallets of Spatulas in my garage. It was ridiculous. Anyhow, I would ship Shane 20 pairs at a time who basically sold them at cost. Dave Steiner also helped move skis at Squaw. Andy Gardner was my Alta guy. Ebay is where I sold the rest. It took me about a year and a half to sell them all. I kept a few and yes have 1 pair unmounted of course. What was cool about the Spatula is I would sell one to a friend of a friend and then after the next dump I would get a call from 2 or 3 of that guy’s friends. “I can’t keep up…I need a pair”. The Spatula was so groundbreaking. Thank you guys for doing this review.
Are you guys going to get out and ski them and review them….snow pending of course? This season is turning more and more ugly by the day.
Thanks for sharing this, Ivor. And yes, we fully intend to do an on-snow review/s … the snow is the only x-factor here.
First to Ivor up there in the comments, thanks for distributing these way back when. I think we had something silly like 20 pairs because we wanted everyone to experience the awesomeness. You helped facilitate the game change. There was life before spatulas and life after. Seriously, thanks so much.
As for drilling, there are/were specific bits for drilling through that metal. I’m not sure if they were distributed through volant/atomic, but they were around and there is one shop I know of that still has some around for the occasional person who wants to mount (mostly likely remount at this point) a pair.
I still have my pair in the garage and have always thought about putting binders back on them just for giggles. I also know of more than one pair that are still in the plastic. Not the ones on ebay for $2000 or whatever they were asking. Just ultimate fans of the ski that revolutionized the powder skiing industry.
They changed how I skied. We skied them everywhere. Corn, groomers, chunder, mt hood in the summer… when I could only afford one pair of skis I made them work all over the place.
These skis are still relevant today and if you have the balls to buy, mount, and snap into a pair you won’t be sad about it. You’ll probably get the same condescending looks that we got when we first slarved around on them.
Great story and review. It brings back many memories. When Shane brought in his notes he also included a page of surfboard reviews from a surfing magazine and said he thought the ski should be shaped like a surfboard. Shaped to plane in a liquid medium which is how powder behaves. It took an American visionary and an American company to break down the dogma in the ski industry that was dominated by European skiing. The original versions built be hand in the Volant factory as it was being decommissioned were much lighter than the versions made at Atomic. They insisted on adding lots of fiberglass (weight), not understanding how steel worked in skis negating the need for structural fiberglass layers.
We also learned how rocker alters the design requirements for flex as the skis are “pre-flexed” before you even start moving. We had to stiffen the tail half of the ski to balance it and prevent excessive wheelie behavior of an over-bending tail. We luckily hit the sweet spot with the first production skis.
Shane wanted to build a next gen Spatula when he lost support from Volant/Gen-X and moved on to K2. We were in the throws of applying for patents on the design so he tried to concept the Pontoon to avoid future patent infringement. He mentioned afterward the Pontoon was not nearly as good as the Spatula.
Shane and I had discussed ways of improving the Spatula after its first release. The primary direction was to add a tiny amount of shallow sidecut underfoot to make the ski more controllable on hard snow and risky conditions like the top of a ridgeline traverse or top of a chute. But not enough to compromise the overall powder benefits. We never had the chance to do that in the Spatula. But those attributes were designed into the DPS Lotus 138, basically a gen 2 Spatula. Shane said we did good with that design.
We did make a couple pair of 172 length Spatulas for the next year’s shows that were intended for smaller skiers and for women who were interested. My wife loves the one pair I mounted. The other sits unmounted as another memory of Shane. Then came the collapse of Volant in North American when Atomic acquired them and their intellectual property. Atomic didn’t pursue the patent. Spatula was abandoned by the industry.
I can only wish Shane was still around to inspire us with his ideas, his humor, his antics. A great man.
Peter Turner, former R&D Manager, Volant Sports. Current Ski Designer and Engineering Manager, DPS Skis
Thank you so much for all of this additional detail, Peter! And as we’ve been saying for years, the Lotus 138 is a truly phenomenal ski, and I love to think of it as a “gen 2 Spatula” that got Shane’s blessing. That’s great.
Thank you for this precious “add on” to an already magnificent corner of wonders.
Brad,
I don’t know of anything you can do to keep those spacers in place. The good news is it sounds like from Peter’s comments that the plate isn’t doing anything other than acting as a shim or spacer. So if you lose the other 2 eventually its nothing to worry about. As far as the skis breaking…well that’s another story. While I have never seen one actually fully broken, they do eventually crease behind the rear binding. I think this will happen to all of them eventually with enough skiing on them. A bigger heavier person may speed this process up. Eventually, the steel top sheet will develop a crease (or crack like fissure) behind the heel of the binding. This happened to several pairs of Spatula’s that I owned (and skied 100 plus days). I also saw this several others skis. So they won’t last forever. It sounds like the DPS Lotus 138 would be a good replacement for the Spatulas. I also know that Liberty made some skis that were very similar in profile to the Spatula but even wider (148mm underfoot). Full reverse camber and reverse sidecut. I only ever saw 1 pair but they must exist. The original Armada ARG is also something that will ski similar. Armada had some other models too that might fit the bill but I am not sure what models. I am sure someone on here could chime in on the Armadas.
Late reply here, but I want to emphasize something Peter Turner said about reattaching the plate with an outdoor-rated 2-sided tape. If I had a pair of these and were concerned I would probably:
1. Mark out the current position of the plate
2. Carefully remove it, with the help of a heat gun if needed, though with extreme care to avoid overheating the ski itself. the goal is to help the plate delaminate without delaminating the ski. Keep in mind that the epoxies used in skis can embrittle over time, so you don’t want to overdo it here.
3. Re-attach it in the location you marked in (1), using a double-sided acrylic tape like Nitto 5015. There may be better choices for outdoor use, though.
Basically, this is the same routine that racers used to go through when ice started to get under our Derbyflexes (anybody else remember the Derby? I still have an old pair of DH planks with a pair somewhere).
I skied the Spatulas for the first time yesterday.
I own a ski shop.
they were amazing.
thank you Shane
Sick.
Hey yo. Whatever happened to y’all taking these out for actual skiing and a real review?
Wondering that too?
Any chance on reviewing these legendary skis??
Rode these badasses today at Bridger Bowl in 13+ “s. still my favorite ski. also own the pontoons and I grab these off the rack every time. Ski exactly as described.
Thanks, Shane!
I’ve always wondered how different is the new K2 Pontoon from the spatula? K2 states that Shane’s legend lives on but that’s about it for specs on the ski. An A-B of the Spatula vs the Pontoon would be cool.
Great article – will re read – SM was ahead of his time obviously and if you want a new pair in the wrapper eBay has them for $3000 – :) This could be fun to seek at garage sales and ski swaps so will keep a secret.
Blister retro reviews – greatest Christmas present ever.
Would love to see you guys do dedicated reviews on some other classic skis, if only to compare your take to modern skis.
– Volkl explosiv
– Salomon pocket rocket
– k2 pontoon
I’m sure others can contribute other suggestions.
Newer is not always better!
Some other things are in the works, JR…
Shane was a visionary in a lot of ways. Wish he was still kicking. :-(
Nice. Digging the bindings too, may I suggest a quick bench test,
Jonathan, you can’t wait to test them, how’s the recovery, is skiing a near term possibility? Or am I implying something that ain’t there in your words?
Hi, Frame – our intention is to put a different binding on these, so no worries there.
And yes, I’ll be skiing next month. If I can hold out that long….
I am still skiing my Spatulas. I bought 2 pairs 11 years ago. I only ski about 10 days a year here in WA state, but I love them! But on 2 out of the 4 skis, that red thingamajiggy under the boot that the bindings mount on has broken off. Is it feasible/slayable to mount/remount bindings on them without it? If so, what is that thing for? Stiffness?
Brad,
Those spacers were on the skis because the Volant skis were so thin profile. I just measured the thickness of the Spatula under the front binding and they are exactly 10mm. That is THIN. WITH the spacer any adult binding could be mounted on to the skis. This allow for the Adult standard (G1/G2) screw penetration depth of 8mm and 9mm drill bit depth. Nowadays there are some adult skis thin enough to require 6mm screw depth and 7mm drill bit depth. Even this day and age that can present problems as the standard for adult skis and bindings is 8mm. Standard for Junior skis (G3/G4) is 6mm. Tyrolia has 6mm screw kits for the Attack bindings and I imagine the other bindings manufacturers do too. If you were to mount directly on to the Spatula (without the spacer) you would want to ensure that don’t use full-length adult screws that will likely penetrate through the core and will volcano or worse yet potentially pop through the base. So you would need to locate 6mm screws for your bindings or grind 2mm off of your screws (pain in the ass but can be done) Your other option would be use a 2mm spacer. Now there is the possibility that the spacer accomplished 2 things with 1 stone. Maybe it also allowed some additional flex in the system. So maybe you would be safest just using some 2mm spacers. Most shops that deal with race skis a lot will likely have these on hand or at least be able to order them.
That plastic plate under the binding is only a shim for the binding screws in the case where the skis are too thin. You can chuck that plate and mount straight to the steel deck. Just grind screws shorter if they are too long. I mounted straight to the steel on my Chubbs to get rid of the heavy plastic binding mounting plate on the last gen Volant skis.
Take Peter’s advice. He designed the skis! Hi Peter.
Thanks Ivor and Pete! Next question, if yas got the time. I’ve got 2 out of the 4 skis with the plate still on. Is there anything I can do to prevent this from happening a 3rd/4th time on them if I remount the bindings? Is it just a matter of using the longest, but not too longest, screws? Or should I just get rid of the plate, if that’s easy enuf. And a historical question: Was/is this a common issue within the rest of the Spatula community? I remember when I got them a fellow owner/friend who had moved on from them mentioned how there was an issue with them breaking, but I can’t remember or didn’t know what he was talking about.
And, what are some of the skis on the market from the past 5 years that perform like the Spatulas? I know a bunch of folks with Pontoons, but even those cats suffer when its breakable.
If you like the plate leave it on and use standard alpine length screws. If they have broken you can remove them and use an appropriate length alpine binding screw mounting right onto the steel deck. You could also stick them back on with an aggressive outdoor rated double back tape.
I have not necessarily heard about any issues but I never heard of any of the Spatulas break, at least from normal use. That was a solid construction and the ski is so wide it is really quite strong.
The DPS Lotus 138 and The Spoon have similar design and performance. More versatile in variable snow because of a small amount of sidecut underfoot. And certainly lighter.
Thank you Shane. The Spatula converted me back to skiing from a 15 year stint as a snowboarder. The Spatula changed my course in life. I am now a sales rep in the ski industry and I am not sure this would have happened if not for Shane’s ingenuity. I always felt like I was riding 2 snowboards in powder when riding the Spatula. They were amazing in so many ways. Without going into detail I cornered the market on the Spatula. Shane may have been wrong about 1 thing. The original production run may have been 1000 pair of skis. That is still to this day the MOQ if you want any of the major European ski factories to build you your own ski. The initial delivery was 300 pair but the next portion of the production run likely was for 700, however, those may have not all ended up in the USA. In the spring of 2003, I purchased the remaining 530 pair of Spatulas from Atomic. At that point, I had already sold 60 pairs that I purchased from Gen-X Sports who sold Volant to Atomic. Thankfully, we were in the first season of some really good snow years…03/04 in the Wasatch was a 700″ year which made selling all of my Spatula’s a hell of a lot easier. I had 2 pallets of Spatulas in my garage. It was ridiculous. Anyhow, I would ship Shane 20 pairs at a time who basically sold them at cost. Dave Steiner also helped move skis at Squaw. Andy Gardner was my Alta guy. Ebay is where I sold the rest. It took me about a year and a half to sell them all. I kept a few and yes have 1 pair unmounted of course. What was cool about the Spatula is I would sell one to a friend of a friend and then after the next dump I would get a call from 2 or 3 of that guy’s friends. “I can’t keep up…I need a pair”. The Spatula was so groundbreaking. Thank you guys for doing this review.
Are you guys going to get out and ski them and review them….snow pending of course? This season is turning more and more ugly by the day.
Thanks for sharing this, Ivor. And yes, we fully intend to do an on-snow review/s … the snow is the only x-factor here.
First to Ivor up there in the comments, thanks for distributing these way back when. I think we had something silly like 20 pairs because we wanted everyone to experience the awesomeness. You helped facilitate the game change. There was life before spatulas and life after. Seriously, thanks so much.
As for drilling, there are/were specific bits for drilling through that metal. I’m not sure if they were distributed through volant/atomic, but they were around and there is one shop I know of that still has some around for the occasional person who wants to mount (mostly likely remount at this point) a pair.
I still have my pair in the garage and have always thought about putting binders back on them just for giggles. I also know of more than one pair that are still in the plastic. Not the ones on ebay for $2000 or whatever they were asking. Just ultimate fans of the ski that revolutionized the powder skiing industry.
They changed how I skied. We skied them everywhere. Corn, groomers, chunder, mt hood in the summer… when I could only afford one pair of skis I made them work all over the place.
These skis are still relevant today and if you have the balls to buy, mount, and snap into a pair you won’t be sad about it. You’ll probably get the same condescending looks that we got when we first slarved around on them.
Great story and review. It brings back many memories. When Shane brought in his notes he also included a page of surfboard reviews from a surfing magazine and said he thought the ski should be shaped like a surfboard. Shaped to plane in a liquid medium which is how powder behaves. It took an American visionary and an American company to break down the dogma in the ski industry that was dominated by European skiing. The original versions built be hand in the Volant factory as it was being decommissioned were much lighter than the versions made at Atomic. They insisted on adding lots of fiberglass (weight), not understanding how steel worked in skis negating the need for structural fiberglass layers.
We also learned how rocker alters the design requirements for flex as the skis are “pre-flexed” before you even start moving. We had to stiffen the tail half of the ski to balance it and prevent excessive wheelie behavior of an over-bending tail. We luckily hit the sweet spot with the first production skis.
Shane wanted to build a next gen Spatula when he lost support from Volant/Gen-X and moved on to K2. We were in the throws of applying for patents on the design so he tried to concept the Pontoon to avoid future patent infringement. He mentioned afterward the Pontoon was not nearly as good as the Spatula.
Shane and I had discussed ways of improving the Spatula after its first release. The primary direction was to add a tiny amount of shallow sidecut underfoot to make the ski more controllable on hard snow and risky conditions like the top of a ridgeline traverse or top of a chute. But not enough to compromise the overall powder benefits. We never had the chance to do that in the Spatula. But those attributes were designed into the DPS Lotus 138, basically a gen 2 Spatula. Shane said we did good with that design.
We did make a couple pair of 172 length Spatulas for the next year’s shows that were intended for smaller skiers and for women who were interested. My wife loves the one pair I mounted. The other sits unmounted as another memory of Shane. Then came the collapse of Volant in North American when Atomic acquired them and their intellectual property. Atomic didn’t pursue the patent. Spatula was abandoned by the industry.
I can only wish Shane was still around to inspire us with his ideas, his humor, his antics. A great man.
Peter Turner, former R&D Manager, Volant Sports. Current Ski Designer and Engineering Manager, DPS Skis
Thank you so much for all of this additional detail, Peter! And as we’ve been saying for years, the Lotus 138 is a truly phenomenal ski, and I love to think of it as a “gen 2 Spatula” that got Shane’s blessing. That’s great.
Thank you for this precious “add on” to an already magnificent corner of wonders.
Brad,
I don’t know of anything you can do to keep those spacers in place. The good news is it sounds like from Peter’s comments that the plate isn’t doing anything other than acting as a shim or spacer. So if you lose the other 2 eventually its nothing to worry about. As far as the skis breaking…well that’s another story. While I have never seen one actually fully broken, they do eventually crease behind the rear binding. I think this will happen to all of them eventually with enough skiing on them. A bigger heavier person may speed this process up. Eventually, the steel top sheet will develop a crease (or crack like fissure) behind the heel of the binding. This happened to several pairs of Spatula’s that I owned (and skied 100 plus days). I also saw this several others skis. So they won’t last forever. It sounds like the DPS Lotus 138 would be a good replacement for the Spatulas. I also know that Liberty made some skis that were very similar in profile to the Spatula but even wider (148mm underfoot). Full reverse camber and reverse sidecut. I only ever saw 1 pair but they must exist. The original Armada ARG is also something that will ski similar. Armada had some other models too that might fit the bill but I am not sure what models. I am sure someone on here could chime in on the Armadas.
Late reply here, but I want to emphasize something Peter Turner said about reattaching the plate with an outdoor-rated 2-sided tape. If I had a pair of these and were concerned I would probably:
1. Mark out the current position of the plate
2. Carefully remove it, with the help of a heat gun if needed, though with extreme care to avoid overheating the ski itself. the goal is to help the plate delaminate without delaminating the ski. Keep in mind that the epoxies used in skis can embrittle over time, so you don’t want to overdo it here.
3. Re-attach it in the location you marked in (1), using a double-sided acrylic tape like Nitto 5015. There may be better choices for outdoor use, though.
Basically, this is the same routine that racers used to go through when ice started to get under our Derbyflexes (anybody else remember the Derby? I still have an old pair of DH planks with a pair somewhere).
I skied the Spatulas for the first time yesterday.
I own a ski shop.
they were amazing.
thank you Shane
Sick.
Hey yo. Whatever happened to y’all taking these out for actual skiing and a real review?
Wondering that too?
Any chance on reviewing these legendary skis??
Rode these badasses today at Bridger Bowl in 13+ “s. still my favorite ski. also own the pontoons and I grab these off the rack every time. Ski exactly as described.