BD STS tail strap failure

How do the Trab tails attach, Larry?  I know the tips have a little "nose slot"

Marcus, maybe a picture will illustrate how the Trab tail hook works better than I can describe it. You twist the cam so that it lines up with the slot in the tail, then from the top side of the ski you twist it 90 degrees and close the cam lever. The slot allows infinite fine adjustment so you get the tension just right as the skins change length. I have not had the setting slip.

I think one of the benefits of this system is that there is no elasticity at the tail. Going up hill, if the glue bond starts to fail, all the load is taken by the tail hook. If there there is some sort of stretchy connection with the tail of the ski, the glue bond starting at the tail can be successively broken when conditions are right. This seems to happen in the spring, when the skin glue is already in somewhat poor shape from repeatedly climbing out of low valleys over what only loosely qualifies as snow. In this case, slushy snow can start wedging itself under the skin right at the tail of the ski. The elastic tail hook then stretches a bit with load, which then concentrates the stress right at the furthest aft glue bond with the ski, and that fails. Then snow gets under that area, and so on. If the tail hook has no stretch, in the worse case the skin just hangs on to the back of the ski.

I'm afraid to re-read the above; I'm not sure I would understand what I wrote.  But there is some sort of logic to it. Seems to me anyway. 

Larry

I gave up on fixing the tail, just round off the edges a few mm from the tail; I use any kind of loop at the tip of the ski (including one made from cord on my 7 summits). I usually carry a little duct tape for emergency repairs, also works for skin failures.

I recently replace a broken BD tail, that failed at the slot, with a red G3 tail. The G3 system appears to be more robust, but I don't like the tensioning system. Maybe I am doing it wrong? The only way I could get it tight enough was without gloves and with serious effort. The skin glue failed on Rainier last month in a blizzard, and the only thing keeping them on was tail tension, but with mittens I couldn't get the G3 tight enough, so that skin kept falling off. Point being that I need a tail system, and I need one that can be used in bad conditions.

That said, I'm going to try Larry's idea of rounding the BD ss hook where it meets with the slot. That seems to make sense.

The red G3 tail seems to be a different rubber compound, I wonder if that would be stronger, using the BD ss clip? I wonder the hole could be squared with a soldering iron or something? Anybody tried that?

Thanks for the link Marcus. That's pretty cool.

I never really got why they would ever put stretchy attachments at the tail of the ski... I used to use the G3 skins, and had all sorts of problems with the tip loop coming off when the glue failed, due to the tailclip stretching; with the effect being me being very bitter about G3 skins. Anyways, I find a solid tail attachment far superior, such as the skins direct or black diamond ascension system. Another neat idea is the rat tail thing, where you fold the skin over a piece of cord and have an attachment for the cord on the top of the tail of the ski.