Our recent trip to Tahoe convinced me that we need some rock splits. Something where I just didn’t care if we took core shots or gacked an edge. I have plenty of decks to wreck, but my wife only has 2 (count ’em… ONLY TWO! oh the humanity!) splitboards so I picked up a Head Flocka Something-or-other off Sierra Trading Post for stupidcheap in order to chop it in half. I was about to do the Voile T-nut thing, but then stumbled upon Snoli inserts, and thunk to myself, “wow, self, those looks pretty spiffy!” Turns out Tognar.com sells the little beasties and the special drill bit to install them, so a lot of cheddar later they were in the mail.

I whacked the board into two bits, G-Flexed the inside edge, and proceeded to do the inserts. Down the rabbit hole I went…

Turns out that the 9mm tall Snoli inserts are a bit too tall for the deck. They would stick up above the top sheet by a couple of millimeters when fully seated, so I needed to shave them down a skosh. Little did I realize that 7mm inserts are for sale elsewhere (for even more cheddar).

The worst part ended up being that the Snoli inserts are a little shallower than stock split inserts, so all my binding hardware screws are too long. I need to grind about 2 mm off everything to keep the screws from bottoming out before the bits are snugged down tight. Fock.

Pilot holes drilled:

The Snoli drill bit, some milled holes, and a stock 9mm Snoli insert and a shaved-down insert:

9mm insert (top), shaved insert (left), and a fresh 9mm insert about to get a haircut (right) in my custom Snoliholder (trademark):

All Snoli-holed up:

The 2 inserts on the right are the Snolis, the others on the left foreground are the stock 4×4 inserts:

Karakoram hardware to finish out the job:

To be continued… but in a nutshell, next time T-nuts!