I don’t really know why I came to think of the adjustment possibilities for ski pole straps when I saw a bottle opener on the kitchen table. But for some reason I got an idea of how to adjust the strap with just one hand. After having broken my left forearm as a child, having the whole hand through the pole strap, I very rarely use the straps while skiing. I only have my hand through the strap on long flat sections where I need to push myself forward. But then it’s really nice to have a good grip and support of a tight strap.
Apparently, I’m not the first coming up with a thought of one-hand-adjustment. Both Dynafit and Kang seem to have had a similar idea. I hope that’s something they are happy with so I’m not on a dead-end road.
Pole strap easy to adjust with one hand
At least I’ve tested the idea now, and it seems to work really well. I cut out a primitive prototype from a piece of sheet metal, from an old nail plate. Then I drilled and filed until I could pull the strap through. The other end of the strap I screwed onto the grip together with the metal prototype, and … Voilà! It was perfectly possible to adjust the strap with just one hand—simply pulling the flap of the strap to tighten and pulling the loop to loosen.
Now I have to find a solution to the next problem. How can I most efficiently get hold of those pieces of sheet metal, the small “tighteners”? I can’t spend an hour making each piece like I did with the prototype in order to make more bottle-opener looking tighteners. The straps I’m developing with Weaver Textile are already adapted to my one-hand-adjustment idea. So, now I must figure out how to make these tiny adjustment pieces.
/Fabian Rimfors