New Ski Company?!?

[Horton]

 

[The_MS]

@TW

[Horton]

@ms nope

[ntx]

@horton I know. Mr Cale Burdick is riding it.

 

[aupatking]

Well, the handle had his name on it @ntx, kinda cheating. Jk

Is there anywhere to get Ski/company info?

[ntx]

@aupatking not really cheating. Cale posted it on Facebook about three hours earlier.

[wtrskior]

I'm thinking @AdamCord

[skibug]

adam caldwell

[rockdog]

Anyone know what bag all his gear is in there?

[rq0013]

Obrien bag. One of my favorites

[webbdawg99]

Cale posted a video of him running 39 on it. But it was in practice....so it didn't count.

[Horton]

Tail wind 39

[swerveit]

looks like a mid ride.....

 

[Horton]

Caldwell @ 39

https://youtu.be/b4A4HK_yYQQ

[Razorskier1]

Guys who are better than me sure make 39 look easy

[skibug]

Again...guessing Adam Caldwell...made in South Carolina

[JC McCavit]

Why is the new company named after a mountain in Alaska? Alaska is not known for having the longest waterski season.

[Horton]

indigenous Koyukon name of a mountain in Alaska, meaning "great one."

[Horton]

indigenous Koyukon name of a mountain in Alaska, meaning "great one."

[Onside135]

I thought it was named after an SUV…?

[skibug]

Then they should have just named it GO Skis.

[skibug]

or "Ichiban"

[Deanoski]

The tip really stays down. Like to ride one

[Chuck_Dickey]

Is it me or is there very little up curve near the tip. Kindle like a fence board!

[swerveit]

yeah I noticed there was barely any rocker, suggesting its a mid ride. reminds me of my old Quattro which was Adams concept.. I'm looking at staying on a mid ride but other than goode theres no real choice other the O'Brien. so id be keen on finding out more.

[Horton]

I am pretty sure they do not call it a mid ride (trademark Goode skis).

 

The tip sure looks flat and I do know the width the the front boot is slightly wider than most skis.

[CaleBurdick]

The ski has so little rocker that the first prototype I took out of the box I thought was a joke! Whenever I ask them why they designed it this way or that, they always answer, "science." haha These are my words and not the engineers, but I think the reason there is not a ton of tip rise is because as you drive the front of the ski into the water during the turn the ski is designed to use that energy and drive the tail deeper into the water too. So the ski doesn't kick back with tip rise as much and instead just slows downcourse speed without killing crosscourse speed, which helps eat up slack. Also, I don't know if its possible to blow the tail out.

[Than_Bogan]

I love outside the box! But that tip is so low to the water that I think I'd be paranoid about catching it and going OTF hard??

[CaleBurdick]

oh and @webbdawg99 I ran 3@41, 2@41, and 2@41 on it at the Hidden Lake record tourney in July

[webbdawg99]

@CaleBurdick It wasn't a poke at you at all....more of keeping the running joke going. Impressive skiing no matter how you slice it!

I saw caldwell riding his most recent prototype at the July 4 event at Trophy. The lack of rocker was very noticeable....even from a distance!

[mbabiash]

Austin Abel was talking about a ski last year that he was excited about.

I wonder if this was the ski?

[webbdawg99]

@mbabiash Its very possible. Caldwell has been focusing a ton of time and energy into this project. I'm sure that almost all of his testing has been done at trophy.....which is where Austin also skis.

[AdamCord]

I'll try and shed a little light on this...

 

@adamhcaldwell and I are both nerdy engineers who ski. I used to be in the ski industry but have been out now for about 3 years. I attempted after leaving the industry just to go back to skiing for the joy of it and laying off the ski design side…but I couldn’t, the addiction to design was too strong. Caldwell had also gotten hooked on ski design from skiing with me over the years.

 

So we just started bouncing ideas off of each other. The idea was never to start a ski company, it was purely about answering questions. You see when I was in the industry I had deadlines, people to answer to. There are product cycles, and many more limitations. But when we started doing this purely as a hobby, purely for the intellectual joy of it, we had none of that. We had complete freedom to do whatever we wanted.

 

So Caldwell built a press in his garage and we started asking questions. Why do skis have the perimeter shapes they do? Where did this rocker shape come from…could it be better? What happens if we change the flex like this or that? What about the concave? And on and on. We wanted to answer all these questions and many more. Then Caldwell built a small CNC mill, 12” wide by 76” long, the perfect size for making molds. That’s when things really started speeding up. If we have an idea, I can design it in CAD and then he cuts a prototype mold, and builds a ski. This allowed us to go from idea to ski on the water in under 48 hours. With this system the possibilities have been limitless, and we have gone through many design iterations.

 

So for 3 years now we have been testing shapes, trying ideas, answering questions. It’s been incredibly fun and enlightening. What this constant pursuit has done is lead us to some conclusions that are really interesting, and the resulting ski is completely unlike anything else out there. The profile shape, rocker, tunnel, bevels, flex, torsion, construction, etc. are all completely original.

 

So now we have to decide what to do with it… The few people who have ridden it such as @CaleBurdick are really blown away by it. What we are considering is doing a small run of skis to sell, maybe 20, and see how it goes. If people are really into it then we might think about doing more, otherwise we’ll just continue with our hobby in private. ;)

 

I’m happy to answer questions about it, ask away.

 

[ToddL]

If you need someone to test it at longer line lengths, just say so. I'm available. ;-)

[Than_Bogan]

Firstly "nerdy engineers who ski" RULE! :smile:

 

I think my first question got missed because another post was being composed at the same time, but I'm curious about the tip being so low to the water in normal operation.

 

I'm not sure how much is secret sauce, but I certainly have more questions if you are comfortable to answer any of them:

 

1) My n00b understanding is that more rocker makes it easier to turn. So does a fish-like tail and maybe intentionally-soft torsional flex does, too. It doesn't look like the Denali has any of those to ANY degree, and yet it turns fine in the video. How?

 

2) Did you do anything with the fin pressure observations you made a year or so ago that included discussion of slots in the top of the ski to relieve upward pressure?

 

3) What are the materials in the ski and do you think that's a big deal or is more about the shape and flex characteristics?

 

4) Any clue what you'd price one these at?

 

5) Where did you fall in the bevels range? I understand that very rounded bevels suck the ski into the water and improve tracking, whereas sharper bevels may allow more acceleration. I feel like this is an area where there has been little consensus so far, even within a few years of the same designer!

 

6) Did you do anything that relates to the asymmetric nature of the slalom stance? One of the cooler things I learned at Nationals was that the Vapor has rather different bevels near the front than on the rest of the ski. The idea is that you're only using that part of the ski on your offside turn, and so you can specialize those bevels to that application. But the ski itself is symmetric, so no need for a left and right model.

 

 

[AdamCord]

@Than_Bogan I'll try and answer:

 

1. The truth is the static rocker of a ski is only one aspect of the rocker that is present while you're skiing. The ski is constantly flexing depending on how pressure is applied to it, so you have to understand and control that precisely to optimize it. There's also an element of slide and suction (drag), and how and where those happen along the bottom of the ski will dictate how the ski rotates.

 

2. We did a lot more testing to understand the pressure throughout the entire ski bottom by putting holes in the ski and running them to pressure gauges. That answered a lot of questions we had about pressure/suction/etc. That really helped drive us to the current profile shape we are at. I think there's a video of one of the tests on Caldwell's youtube page.

 

3. Materials are important but it's more about understanding fiber orientation to get the strongest ski with the right longitudinal and torsional flex. Also finding a way to reduce the shear load across the core and making the fibers carry that load is a big deal for both dynamics and longevity.

 

4. Priced similar to other high end skis.

 

5. I don't want to say much but overall our bevels are bigger than most. We spent a lot of time figuring out how to use bigger bevels but still have a ski that is wicked fast behind the boat and doesn't stop or get sucked into a hole. I'm staying tight lipped on how we did that ;)

 

6. Absolutely the ski is designed around the asymmetric nature of slalom, including the bevels, but we took this much further. You are right that in an onside turn the skier is generally further back, and in an offside turn the skier is further forward. Every aspect of this ski takes this into account, most notably the flex, rocker, bevels, and profile shape. We must have hundreds of spreadsheets of data that we used to do this.

[Horton]

Full disclosure - I consider @AdamCord as a friend. When I read "hundreds of spreadsheets" I almost gave him a Panda and called BS.

 

I texted him and his reply was something like "have you met Caldwell?"

 

You would have to talk to Caldwell to understand but I do believe there are that many spreadsheets (or nearly). Crazy whacked out engineers.

[Horton]

Actual Cord quote "I can't overstate how nerdy we actually are. I hide it better than Caldwell"

[Than_Bogan]

Anybody else intrigued by how the entire Denali dev team keeps saying "rotate" instead of "turn?" There's a tiny difference in semantics there that I think hints at a real insight on their part.

 

Eager to learn more!

[webbdawg99]

@Than_Bogan is an "early adopter". I predict that if this ski goes to production, he will be one of the first ballers on it!

[Than_Bogan]

Funny thing is, in most of life, and until recently even in skiing, I am/was a very late adopter.

 

But somehow after roughly age 40, perhaps faced with no realistic path to get better, I became super-interested in skiing technology. So now I want to try crazy new ideas to learn about them.

[Than_Bogan]

Hey related to that, my next question: would you do custom inserts and/or could the ski be drilled easily for ... oh I don't know ... say OB4 bindings?

[AdamCord]

@Than_Bogan I guess I hadn't notice that we use rotate. It just makes more sense to describe it in terms of how the ski moves on the water I guess. Doing the OB4 hole pattern would be no problem.

 

Also....gauges

 

 

[Drago]

I think I see a flux capacitor

[Horton]

Ooo My God! Becky! Look at those gauges!

[Chef23]

All that stuff is crazy. Very cool and makes me interested in trying the ski when it is available.

[Adam Caldwell]

Riding that ski was a fun experience! Coincidentally it was also good test for the effect of "tip weight".....definitely confirmed newtons first law.

[mwetskier]

I cant even read the latest coaching tip taped to the front of my ski when I'm riding it. how the hell can you study those gauges?

[bassfooter]

A fully-instrumented slalom ski. How cool! You guys need a telemetry pack to get all that data off the ski in real time. I'll quit my day job. Tomorrow. @eleeski, are you seeing this?

 

[Adam Caldwell]

 

@mwetskier, had a go pro mounted to capture video of the passes. There was a second, much cleaner version of the setup, but I can't find the pictures. I plan to revisit this again someday. There was so much extra weigh the ski felt like it was going to rip the bindings off my feet at the transition off centerline. Having something that heavy on your ski will definitely put into perspective how much energy is stored in the system....- major eye opener. I did not dare go beyond 35off. I'm certain something bad would have happened. Would like to lighten the load and get more data at 38/39/41. There are far more high tech ways of doing this of course, but we were able to accomplish what we were looking for at minimal cost. Revision 3 is to move the guage's off the ski completely, and mount them to a plate that would strap to my back with a go pro to capture the action. Maybe this fall I can run that experiment and share the footage/results from the shorter lines.