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What exactly do Cants and Shims do for snowboarding?

I have seem people talking about them and I don't know exactly what they do.

Thanks

Cants and shims are used to change the angle that the bindings sit on the board. I dunno if any soft-booters use them, but if you have hard boots that are really stiff, it'll be more comfortable because your ankle/shin doesn't have to bend right at the top of the boot.

HTH
Shep

Cant and heel/toe lift is accomplished via a shim under the binding pucks on a splitboard. Cant is the act of tipping the boot cuff angle in/out to relieve cuff pressure on your legs. Typically, as your binding angles increase, the need for cant tends to decrease somewhat. Heel/toe lift is just that, and is used to allow you to stand in a "neutral" position in your boots on the board as your stance width increases. Typically softbooters do not feel these issues as much due to the fact that soft boot cuffs tend to be fairly flexible. However, I wish I had known of cant shims when I used softboots as I suffered from heel lift in my boots a lot, as I used fairly aggressive angles. Most people need a combination of cant and lift, based on the individuals biomechanics. And as usual, YMMV. The end result is to be able to be on your board, in the desired riding position, w/o feeling any boot pressure points on your legs or feet, heels seated in your boots with the whole thing feeling natural. Cant/lift allows just that.

Jon gives a pretty good explanation. Here is my take. Lift refers to an elevation of the toes or heel. If you were to stand up right now and stand on your tippy toes, that is heel lift. A chick wearing some f$ck me pumps (high heels) is experencing heel lift. Flexing your ankle so that you are standing with only your heel touching the ground is toe lift. Make sense?

Cant is in a perpendicular direction to lift. Meaning that it is an elevation of one side of the foot relative to the other.

Imagine your average regular foot (as opposed to goofy) soft booter with both bindings set at 0 degrees. Toe lift would refer to how much higher off of the base of the board her/his toes are relative to the heel, achieved by placing a wedge between the binding and board. The effect being a shift of center of gravity towards the heelside edge. Or, a wedge could be placed under the heel and the center of gravity would be pushed towards the toeside edge.

That is lift.

Now imagine the same rider with a 0/0 stance. Do the same thing with the wedge, but now shift the weight fore and aft. Make sense? That is cant. A manipulation of your center of gravity either towards the front or back of the board.

Cant will shift your weight either towards the nose or tail of your board while lift will shift your center of gravity towards the edges in this example.

Combined, you can shift your center of gravity to very specific points on your edge, but, according to some on this site, we hardbooters do not know jack shit about edge pressure. Heck, Jasey Jay is a hack that does not know how to ride. Right Bcd? Fuck, you and shaun White could teach jasey Jay all he needs to know about edges, right? Them fuckin' racers are hacks compared to your sweet ass.

I'd love to see you keep up with him. Arrogance is a Mother fucker.

Cant and lift is fine tuning to adapt to your specific biomechanics, as Jon was getting at, to precision of edge weight and pressure. We are all different physically. Me, well long legs and short torso. Cant and lift can place me on the board so that I have the same input as someone who is 50 pounds heavier and more equally porportioned weight wise.

I use cants and lifts to make my riding both comfortable and effective.

Cateks, btw, are better suited to this. I would love to see a Catek split binding as Fin's TD's (I have not ridden TD2's) only give you limited options. His telle's are no match for Hammerhead by teh way as far as activness.

Funny thing is is that soft boots have done nothing but gotten stiffer. This shit started with Sorel's afterall. Cant and lift should be applied.

does anyone make commercial cants and shims for strap bindings? ive always felt like my front foot should be canted inwards and my rear foot should have some heel lift

Have you found any? I use a Burton Unicant on my rear strap binding on my Fish, at around 0degree binding angle. Its set to abute 6-7 degree of heel lift. Feels realy comfy! Gives my rear ankle alot better range of up-down motion. I'm in search after another one to put under the front binding.. And som other shims to put on my new splitboard..

/Gunnar