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Burdick and Cord talk about the Denali

Horton

By Horton
in Skis Fins Bindings

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Wish Grand Master

Wish

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I kinda feel like I did not learn much. Mostly cause you could feel Adam's brain spin up like a 747 jet engine with millions technical thought explanations at the ready but reality struck and all stopped while he pondered these thoughts......"Why even try. Non of them accept a few will even understand what I'm talking about. I'll just say 'science' over and over and see how that goes." With what little bit he did say...very intriguing..and maybe that is marketing genius.
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bishop8950 Mentor

bishop8950

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Somewhere along the way Adamx2 explained they started on this journey because they really just wanted to understand how skis worked and how to build a better one. They had tons of questions which led to tons of ideas the wanted to test. The did not set out to start a ski company - it was an obsessive hobby. Even now they are not really marketing. They do think its time to let others try it and see what a wider test team thinks. After that we will see where things go. I love trying new skis and offered to ride one and fortunately Caldwell agreed. It is really interesting and different. It likes to get wide and stay wide. It rips turns. I need to dial in the set up before I am really comfortable on it (1.5 rides thus far) but they are definitely onto something.
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Adam Caldwell Contributor

Adam Caldwell

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@CaleBurdick, For more incite on the "thickness" as it seems to be of interest to others as well.

 

From top to bottom, this picture shows:

HO A3

Denali V1.5 (June. 2013)

Denali V3.1 (Aug. 2015 -Current)

 

@Wish - Couldn't have put it any better.

 

3ktmnl3je949.jpg

 

 

 

 

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Than_Bogan Grand Master

Than_Bogan

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@adamhcaldwell I've always wondered to what extent one length of a ski is simply a scale transform of another size, vs. what is related to the properties of the real world and must NOT change scale for a different length of ski.

 

An example might be if you've placed some kind of dimples on the ski bottom to cause the water to do something. If you scaled the size of those dimples along with the ski, it's possible they would behave quite differently.

 

If it's pure scale transform, then making different lengths skis is relatively straightforward. (Or I guess I should say designing them would be trivial; making them is a different issue.)

 

But if not, then a new size of ski could involve a ton of additional research to get right.

 

Not sure you can comment on that on this forum, but I'm interested in whatever you can say.

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Adam Caldwell Contributor

Adam Caldwell

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@Than_Bogan, @"Mateo Vargas" - A lot of things go into the equation. Its not all about matching a skiers mass to a "size" but rather the location of that mass on the person riding it. A taller persons COM is much higher, and will have a much larger moment over the ski, so they need the length and additional width to help balance it.

 

I played with building skis of all the same length and only adjusting width. I had Austin Able, 6'8" 225, riding a 66" (scaled only by width) with no issue. However, while he can ride it (he has some tournament scores at 41 on it), and there are ample lift dynamics to keep him moving, theres much less room for error in terms of fore/aft balance over the ski.

 

Think of being on a skateboard instead of a ski. Would you want to ride a 2 foot long board down a very steep hill? or one that was much longer?

 

Scaling is tricky, and not as straightforward as I had once thought. The data we collected from the "pressure test ski"(mentioned in another thread) was used to better understand this. Not all surfaces/areas on the bottom of the ski are created equal in terms of lift and drag. The pressure test ski helped us explain why bigger skis are often "slower" then smaller skis, despite having so much more overall area. Think of it like this, would making the fuselage on an aircraft bigger, or longer help to generate more lift, or increasing speed?

 

A couple years before we started working on this project I was riding 68 & 69" skis with the tail cutoff and narrowed. My first 41off score was on one of those. The issue I faced on smaller skis was that I would always submarine them into the first wake. I pull hard for my size. The extra lift on the bigger ski kept it moving and accelerating into center with much less pressure on my body and arms. The ski we have today gives us the nibble characteristics of a smaller ski, but the speed, power and support of something much larger.

 

Flex/torsion is another huge component to matching a ski to a skier. The deflected shape of the ski in the turn, and behind the boat, is very important at as the line shortens and the loads increase. Its hard for me not to say more, but I am already probably saying way too much.

 

 

 

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