Measure Twice, Cut Once

Last night I had one of the neighbor kids come over and ask me to help him mount a new pair of bindings on a new pair of skis. He had been skiing earlier in the day and damaged his old skis. Naturally he wanted to get the new ones ready to go. I used to work in a ski shop and mount bindings professionally so I know what I am doing, otherwise I don't recommend mounting your own skis. I also have all of the equipment to mount bindings correctly.

Before he came over, I asked about the brand and model for both the skis and the bindings. This is important so I knew what I was getting into. Naturally he had Look Pivot 14 bindings, which are the most difficult binding to mount. Fortunately I have a jig for them to help drill the holes in the right place. I told him to bring a boot with him.

My neighbor arrived exactly when he said he would and we headed down to my ski tuning room. The first thing we did was measure the screw-hole distances on his new binding with those on the jig. I'm glad we checked as Look has 3 different hole patterns for their Pivot-line of bindings. I had pulled out the wrong one and needed to get the right one. Then we double checked it with the bindings. Everything checked out.

Now we needed to size the jig for the boots. My jig requires knowing the sole length of the boot. This is normally stamped on the bottom. My neighbor's boot had 2 numbers: 265 and 307. The smaller number is etched larger and prominently while I barely noticed the 307. Having looked at a lot of boot soles in my day, I knew that 265 wasn't right and so I pulled out my ruler which has imperial units as well as metric. The number I needed is in millimeters and so I used the metric side. As I suspected his boot sole is the larger of the 2. I set the jig accordingly.

Next is making sure I used the correct drill bit. Skis with metal in them can use a slightly larger bit while those without need a narrower one. Most skis will tell you which bit to use. My neighbor's skis did not. However they did say they contained a metal layer in the ski. That told me to use the larger of my 3 bits.

I drilled the holes and then added a waterproof glue into each one before placing the binding pieces on the ski. I then started each screw until it bit into the freshly drilled hole. Then I let my neighbor finish screwing the bindings to the ski. I followed along afterwards making sure the bindings hugged the skis tightly. Then we put the boot in and made sure it fit. It did. Next we made sure to set the DIN's and forward pressure appropriately so the skis fall off when they should but also don't release prematurely.

My neighbor felt a huge sense of accomplishment after helping to mount bindings on his new skis. Throughout the entire process, I had him double-check all of the settings and he felt included in the entire process. He is probably up on the hill right now testing them out.

So what does this have to do with computers? Throughout the entire process of mounting the bindings, we followed the rule of, "Measure twice, cut once." In our case we used a drill instead of a saw but the net result is the same. With computers, the consequences are much less severe and so we tend to measure once and if it doesn't work, go back and measure again. For me and some of my coding projects, this can often mean trying different values 3 or 4 times. Things go so much easier when I take the time to double check all of my values first.