mwetskier

i was in a pattern shop in south seattle in the 80s looking into having some cast iron prototypes made for a company I worked for, and the owner was showing me around. At one point I noticed an odd assortment of stuff that looked an awful lot like pieces of a waterski mold.

 

I asked the guy about it and he told me those were initial experiments they did before completing the first mold for the very first fiberglass o'brien. I believe that was the one that had a bright red bottom and sidewalls, a pointed tip, and an inset rubber bumper strip along the top edge of the sidewall that ran all the way around the ski. It looked similar to the red and blue mach 1 ski with the aluminum top skin, but this earlier model had a white fiberglass top with red and blue graphics. the only thing aluminum was the fin.

 

The part i found most interesting was when he showed me what they had used to form the concave tunnel portion of the mold. it was a section of 10 inch heavy wall plastic pipe! yeah, the science of ski design and manufacturing has certainly evolved over the last 4 or 5 decades.

@loewb -fyi, back in the 60s and 70s the prevailing method for building prototype test skis was to first laminate three layers of mahogany in a curved press. then the tunnel was cut in using a table saw and running the rectangular ski ' blank ' side ways across the saw with fixed guide rails to keep it centered over the crown of the blade. after that a pattern was used to lay out the top profile and after cutting it out on a bandsaw bevels were added with a 45 degree router bit.

 

the whole thing was sealed with lacquer and then they took it to a lake for testing, along with a fistful of files and sandpaper. i was just a kid when i saw some guys from o'brien doing this so i think most of the experts on this that are either retired or dead by now.

one thing i have noticed about pullout and glide is that its better to be *slightly* too late and fast than too early and slow. obviously *perfect* is the goal to shoot for but that can be hard to find every time.

 

if i'm out wide too early and too slow i'm pretty much screwed because once i'm out there, if i'm slow i have no way to add more speed. but if i'm too fast i can abruptly set an out bound edge for a fraction of a second and boil off some down course speed before i need to turn in for the gates.

 

i know this might sound crazy to some but i've watched skiers like chris parish use this exact trick to regulate their glide speed and i know it works for me too. so, this is only my marginally informed opinion, if you can't be perfect on your pullout its better to be too fast than too slow.

 

@ScottScott -even in todays ' me too ' feeding frenzy you still can't be ruined for what you're thinking. unless you say it out loud. or someone says you said it out loud. or someone says they heard that you said it out loud. or

 

on second thought maybe you shouldn't even risk thinking it.

@DefectiveDave -thats the one

 

@Andre -some footage *was* shot at ski paradise in acapulco, but the bulk of the mapple footage was staged from greg badals house on diablo shores. notice the luxury homes along the shoreline. not a lot of those along the river at ski paradise.

 

pretty sure the left handed course was shot in acapulco -rathbun had one when i was there a number of years ago. at one point gordon (lff) had lobbied for an ambidextrous course in tournaments, believing he was at an unfair disadvantage vs rff skiers.

@lkb @Andre - you're both referring to footage from gordon rathbun's ' slalom with andy mapple ' dvd. those skiing sequences were shot at diablo shores in brentwood ca, and mapple runs 35 off 38 off and 39 off on the video, starting his gate each time from just outside the white wash of the wake. they're referred to as ' no gate (narrow) ' passes.

so is that considered a balk, or a jump of -18 feet?

not long before his death andy mapple produced a video in which he discussed the relative paths of 28 off versus 38 off. heres a screen cap from that video clearly showing some of what @adamhcaldwell has been talking about in this thread:

 

 

i think you guys may be missing an important consideration -the back half and stern of an inboard is a critical component in producing a flat wake. without something to flatten out the rooster tail from the propeller its going to feel like you're skiing over a concrete curb when you cross it.

 

and if you had a trimable wing on the front foil you would want to use it to pull the bow *down* to flatten the wake, which is why putting a little extra weight in the bow can improve the slalom wake by spreading the boat's mass over a broader surface area. if you had a foil system that lifted the entire hull out of the water I think you would end up hating the resulting wake and rooster tail. as always, just imo.

@Stevie Boy -allow me to retort: ' most skiers stop thinking too soon. ' andy mapple

@adamhcaldwell - you wrote ' Need to figure out a way to “pull” and remain connected in a way that is conducive to swing speed without creating load on the ski when executing said “ pull”. '

 

When i read that i interpret it to mean your goal is to actively preserve your angular momentum without simultaneously increasing your vulnerability to the restorative force. would that be correct?

 

@Brady -actually i'm thankful @Horton didn't exaggerate all the way to ' a billion '. if you could write one word per second 24 hours a day, writing one billion words would take you roughly 32 years. a trillion words would take around 32,000 years.

 

reminds me of a old joke: ' three brazilian soldiers were killed today in iraq...

hey folks,. can somebody please tell me just exactly how many is a brazilian? ' -jay leno

 

personally i appreciate every single word either adam has ever written about the sport. on a related note, if you could write one word per second, 100,000,000 words would require a little over 3 years to complete. hopefully they'll express their thoughts in less time than that.

 

@Bracemaker -okay. except that a small package of matching machine nuts might cost as much as $2 at home depot while your good quality tool is likely to be 10 times that. so unless a guy already has that specialty tool or can justify buying it for its intended use its gonna be cheaper and physically easier to do it the old fashioned way. imo as always.

fyi the screws electricians cut with the threaded holes on a wire stripper are way softer than decent industrial grade stainless i would use in attaching a boot to a plate. i've tried using the wire stripper for stainless screws and its not a pleasant experience.

 

instead, anyplace you can buy decent stainless machine screws will also sell you matching nuts, which don't have to be stainless. screw a nut all the way on to any screw you want to shorten, then cut the the screw with heavy wire cutters or a small bolt cutter. after cutting simply unscrew the nut from the machine screw, using a screw driver and holding the nut with vice grips. as the nut comes off the screw it will automatically clean up the threads and you can then lightly file or grind the screw tip to remove any sharp edges.

 

also i would use stainless t-nuts for this wet application which you can buy here: no rust in my binding

i always look at the other docks on the lake as I ski past them to see if theres any cute chicks to wave at.

@MISkier - wow i just had a flashback to the 90s:

' It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is. ' [bill clinton]

when I think about the idea of bringing speed into and through the turn I envision what NASA does when they ' slingshot ' a spacecraft around a planet (for example earth) in order to change its direction and increase its speed. In our case theres no gravitational field associated with the buoy so it can't help us accelerate, but the more efficiently we turn the ball the less work we have to do to be on time to the next one. imo as always

@MISkier - no, I get how the *handle* path and the *ski* trajectory are different. what i'm struggling with is understanding how the path and the trajectory of the same object (the handle) can be different? Whatever *path* the handle follows, the *trajectory* of that handle is identical - isn't it?

 

@MISkier - i always considered the words ' path ' and ' trajectory ' to be synonymous and interchangeable so now you have me thoroughly confused. to be fair though i generally come into any slalom technique discussion already confused.

 

can you explain for me the difference between ' handle path ' and ' handle trajectory ' ? i'm asking because i figure i got a 50 - 50 chance of either suddenly learning that one true secret of slalom that will change skiing my life forever, *or* just adding to my confusion. so what could it hurt?

@MISkier - you wrote: "I think we are getting handle path confused with handle trajectory."

 

correct me if i'm wrong but where you wrote ' handle trajectory ' i think you meant to write ' *ski* trajectory '. yes?

@AdamCord - you wrote: ' Coming through center you have reached your peak tangential speed, trying to add more speed by pulling longer is pointless. Also the path you are on is not up to you anymore at this point. Your path is purely a function of the handle path and rotational speed around the pylon. Trying to ski wider than the handle path will only ski you away from the handle, separating you from the handle (arms come up, butt goes back). '

 

At the end you touched on a related point when you wrote ' keeps the pendulum short ' but i'm not sure all readers will connect that to the earlier point about avoiding early separation.

 

after the centerline, the farther your ski and com get away from the handle the more quickly the your centripetal force (and therefore speed) will be reduced due to the drag acting on the ski. the is because as the pendulum ' rod ' gets longer the more influence the restorative force (gravity with a pendulum / drag with a ski) has over your speed. so when you ' keep the pendulum short ' by having your handle in and locked to or near your hip you are better able to maintain your speed getting up on the boat. thats why separating early is one of the worst things you can do in slalom.

 

understanding that seemingly simple concept has dramatically changed my skiing.

@skierjp -wow not only is your heel really hairy, but the hair is white which means your heel must be really really old.

@dirt and @ColeGiacopuzzi aren't offering me any guidance that i'm aware of but @twhisper, @Sethski, and @Mapple *are* offering me lots of guidance. So i gotta go with the ones who share the goods and just let the naysayers say nay. imo of course.

 

the thing about google maps is its so boring and impersonal. the benefit of posing the question here is you get the comradery of guys giving you route choices and driving advice based on their own experience. you also get enthusiastic recommendations for where you're going and what else you might find on the way. for example, theres simply no way google maps would have suggested the great idea of stopping by lapoint ski park.

 

and most of all, calling any customer a douchbag is strictly against google maps customer service policy so we would have missed out on that. 'nuff said.