:: View topic - Hendryx skis

Hendryx the swede finally got his flash finished.

A really informative page, and very interesting with a new brand around! (the 93rd. skibrand?..)

He has got some very

I agree, my first pair of skis, the bremallows don't have any camber, while my second pair of skis looks like it might have 3 or 4 mm, which I would definitely call low camber

the statement about difficult in making low camber skis doesn't make much sense to me either. how is it more difficult to make a low camber ski than a high camber ski? if there is a difference i would expect high camber skis as being more difficult to produce with consistency.

is there a link to the hendryx site?

Try http://www.hendryxskis.se/

Hey, and his workspace is really tiny:

The graphics are nice...I'm wondering whether he uses sublimated topsheets or printed paper laminated above the fibreglass.

Concerning camber his statement is really strange, maybe he wants to express the difficulty to produce skis that actually keep

i like his garphics

but i dont know about the camber?? i think i will pay him a visit, maby this weakend if i have time. His workshop is abot 30 min whit the car from my house.

those graphics are sweet. bertborge, you mind asking how he did his graphics?

camber is an interesting topic. it's unclear to me its specific contribution, although i suspect it has something to do with pressure distribution as well as flex. but what i think might be true is too much camber can be a problem. i'll take the Kaffeines out next week at Whistler and see. they have about 25mm of camber, which seems excessive to me, kind of like double camber XC skis. Kelvin recently reported how strange the DLG's skied. they have about 25mm of camber, too. it will be interesting to note the affect on soft and hard snow. i'll write a few words after the Turkey holiday.

as for the low camber comment, it's not clear why it's difficult to achieve. as Little Kam pointed out, achieving high camber may be more difficult effort-wise. Or is it more difficult to achieve a specific tolerance on the camber? in that case, i can see how it would be difficult to achieve a tighter tolerance for low camber skis because small variations in the camber is more pronounced when compared to the target amount of camber. for instance, if you have 3mm of camber, then a +-0.5mm variation leads to (0.5/3)*100 = 16.7% variation in the camber. if camber has a significant affect on skis performance, then 16.7% may be large. therefore, one has to minimize the camber variation during production and trying to be within 0.5mm and ensuring that the ski does not lose camber for low-camber skis may be difficult. but consider the same +-0.5mm variation for a 16mm camber ski. the percent error is (0.5/16)*100 = 3.12%, so the same amount of change only affects the camber variation of a high-camber ski by around 3%. assuming that the camber is critical, then high-camber skis are more "robust", and in some sense more "friendly" to build. i dunno.

we should think more about this. i'm intrigued by the effects of camber. so far, i like skis with low camber.

I too think camber has a lot of effect om how a ski performs. This winter I'll be doing my master project (I'm industrial design student) on how different shapes affect the joy of skiing. The theory is that varying the 8 floating variables in ski construction (just count) jou can go on making different skis pretty much forever. title of the project is "making skis the snowflake way" (It's kind of strange translated, but it's abot the effect of extreme customizing)

To be able to adjust the camber of the ski, I have built a quite special mould that is adjustable in all directions. It's an amazing piece of machinery. I will keep you posted about the effects of camber or not.. and everything else, I'm testing everything!

endre: your work sounds very exciting. we would love to hear about the progress and results... keep us posted.

Hello everybody!

I see you have problems with my low camber theory. Well, it is not just a theory it comes from testing.

The benefits of low camber on hardpack is that the skis are very smooth from edge to edge and are very easy to adjust between turns. If you have alook at real World Cup skis you will notice they have a very low camber and infact race skiers break their skis to decrease the camber. Usually these skis have a camber of 3-4 mm and especially skis for speed.

What I mean with that it is hard to make skis with a low camber is that you get a lot of tensions when you heat up a ski to ~120 Celcius, let them cure and take them out and then be used at -10 . I can tell that A former cross country manufacturer here had big problems with the camber at production. They could make six skis in the same press and everybody came out different. This is typically for the european ski manufacturing and I know that you usally do not use these high temperatures in north America.

When it comes to soft snow a low camber ski floats and slide better. This is due to the fact that the tail do not kick up but instead sets in the snow. It is the same theory as for surf boards. The low camber ski also comes closer to a ski with negative camber, it becomes very loose. When skiing on low camber skis in soft snow you only lean over and the skis starts to turn, more like a surf- or skate board, you do not need any initiation of the turn they just starts to turn without any resistance, they simply acts more surfy!

I can tell that I have helped a company with ski designs and I specified them with a low camber. I had prototypes wich were almost flat and they were wonderful but when I recieved the production series they had about 20 mm of camber and it was a completly different ski! They really struggeld in bad snow with a tail that kicked up so much you had to sit on the skis to prevent head butting, in heavy soft snow, they did not slide easy and on the hard pack they did not want to go off edges.

All the best!

Henrik

Tjena Henrik,

Jag bygger p min frsta skidpress nu s jag har inte kommit s lngt. Finns det mjlighet o komma p studiebesk??

Jag ser p bilden att du anvnder en vakum press, funkar det bra?? gr du en skida t ggn??

Tnkte jag skulle ha ringt o frga men det r lttare shr, d kan du svara nr du har tid.

Jobbar du heltid med skidorna eller r det bara "hobby projekt "

PS. din spann teori lter int helt dumm

.DS

what about pop, for a park ski. would low camber reduce the pop by alot?

I'm asking because im just about to make my mould and i plan on using it to make park skis, and to make a pair of powder jumping skis.

pop is a result of how much tension the ski has when you jump of the edge, a no-camber ski wold have as much tension as the concave of your kicker. imagine standing on a ski with 100mm. of camber, that would be like standing on a trampoline. In powder you don't get much pop anway. (unless you have a hard kicker ofc.)

My experience with the stiff upper lips (~10mm camber) and the daddy's little girls (~25mm camber) agree with what Henrik is saying. In soft snow, the dlg's have a tendency to submarine. The DLG's are also fairly stiff, and I wonder if a soft ski with lots of camber has the same effect.

-kelvin

basically i need to use a camber that will work for both powder and park skis, sorta find a middle ground, so im wondering how much pop i will lose in my park skis if i use a lower camber to get better float for my powder skis (since im using the same mould)

For the last 6 months we have designed and built a steel press frame, molds, templates etc. We FINALLY pressed skis yesterday but ran into HUGE problems. After our epoxy tweaking out and burning 50 pairs of latex gloves off our hands, we finally had two laid up skis in our press.

Heres what were working with:

-un-laminated hemlock cores

-4oz biaxial (0-90) fiberglass

-Durasurf clear topsheet

-Durasurf bases

-CDW steele tempered edges

-QCM EHV-0050 resin and ECA-315 hardener 5:1 ratio

15 hours of continuous pressure @ 50 psi and decreasing temperature (17*C to 10*C or approx. 70*F to 50*F)

We decided to use a thin, soft core with the lightest glass to create a light, soft ski as a control for later skis and materials (to gauge stiffness and weight from).

Our hoses were standing at around 3-4in, which meant that they only contacted some of the ski.

The problems:

-cores shifted down the ski leaving core-less tails

-topsheet and underlying fiberglass delamed

-epoxy is brittle and cracks when skis are flexed

-the hose didnt press evenly in the tips (which is probably the cause of the delam.)

-edges pushed out on one ski underfoot (almost as if the epoxy had no where to escape and pushed the edges out---we didnt cut the tape off the base near the edge to allow epoxy to escape there)

-when we tried to cut the excess material off of the skis 16 hours later, the vibration of the saw caused the glass under the topsheet (with topsheet still attatched) to delaminate around the sidewal of the ski

Any help is greatly appreciated

Dude, that is exactly what happened to me on my first ski. All I can say is keep working at it and learn from your mistakes. Be sure and nail your cores to the mold. I also put tacks around the edges to hold the base in place.

Again, keep working at it, and most importantly, don't expect too much out of the first pair of skis (or the second for that matter). I was stoked when I made it down 1 run without the skis blowing apart (I also won a of couple of bets). But, once you get your third pair out, it is all easy from there on out

I am sure you have thought of these things but here are my thoughts: I would double check your epoxy measuring and perhaps do a test section with your epoxy. Go through each step of the process ask yourself what went wrong and how you can fix it.

Also, most of the presses that I have seen on this site don't use a cat track below the fire hose, I believe that this is an excellent method to allow even pressure distribution over the entire part. It requires the use of a simple cassette, but I believe that has it's advantages as well. With a cassette you simple use a mold release agent and you don't have to worry about all the plastic and tape to keep everything clean. Your ski's will need a few passes through the base grinder when you take them out of the press but that isn't a problem. Granted both a cassette and a cat track cost more money, but I think they are truly worth it, especially if you plan on making a number of ski's.

If you are using inserts the method that Lindsay suggests here works excellent for lining up your cores http://www.grafsnowboards.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=183

My 2 cents.

I had some similiar problems with edges pushing away from the base well pressing. I was super glueing the edges on and using a couple of plastic bumpers to guide the edges. to fix the problem I added more bumbers to my mold every 5 inches down the the running length. these bumpers are about one inch long and the thickness (height) is less then the height of the edge, so that the overhanging sidewall can go over the top of the bumpers without effecting presure. These bumpers will then be the guides for the shape of your ski and not allow the base to shift as well as hold the edges from pushing out. ALSO when I attached my edges to the base I weave light weight fishing line from edge to edge down the length of the ski pulling each edge in towards each other tight to the base. Then super glue and clamp. If you are doing rap around edges with seems at tip and tail you can tie the edges together so they can not pull appart. You can see a small impression in the base from the fishing line but it grinds out.

I am interested in the idea of a cassette for the ski and the track system, can you explain more or give me a place to find info?

Best of luck

Heres the progress so far...The problem with the epoxy, acording to Roy at QCM is the temp. This epoxy was recomended accidentally to us for low temp curing because of the hardeners fast cure. unfortunately it is a HIGH TEMP EPOXY and therefor only fully cures at temps. greater than 150*F. Since we are dealing with 50-70*F in our garage, our skis will take 2 weeks to cure---not good. AND they still wont be fully cured.,

As far as the edges go, I think I will cut slits through our tape over our bases to allow epoxy out, this should take care of edge blow outs. Well see how it goes.

I am also thinking of using super glue to hold on the edges followed by either a coat of epoxy or a coat of jb-weld or scotch weld as reinforcement prior to pressing

-thanks for all the help so far

Hey guys,

I've got a problem and I'm sure someone on here can help!!!

I've been cutting out the base by clamping a template and cutting around. But when the template is removed we are finding that the base is skewed and thus is useless!!! Any ideas??

Cheers lads

Ross

Ross: skewed in what sense? like the template shifted during the time you were cutting, or the base warping after it has been cut?

its definately the base warping during/after the cut. its not slipping during the cutting, but as soon as we lift off the template and check the base its warped.

Ross:

is it warm where you live? how warm?

interesting behavior... Little Kam and i just ran into this same problem. we were ready to lay up a pair of skis ealier this week and noticed that the base had changed its shape significantly -- warped by 10mm over 175cm length! i drew up a pair of skis with slightly reversed sidecut, and made a thin wood template to cut out the base. the wood template looks fine, no warp there. but after cutting out the base material and gluing on the edges, we noticed that the base was warped, including the edges, yielding a base with one side reverse sidecut and the other with sidecut. oops, that's not right. weird. at first we thought that our template shifted during the cutting process, so we made new bases. come to find out, the new bases we cut out did the same thing, again! ugh!!

so what's the problem? we're not quite sure what the problem is, but i'll discuss what we've observed. i think this is an important topic, and we should all try to put our heads together to resolve it.

I cut out a couple of small (1"x8") test pieces and stuck one in the refridgerator and left the other one outside. I didn't notice any changes, but a) the pieces could be too small to notice a big change, and b) it's not so hot here in Seattle. I've also looked at our finished skis, and don't notice any warpage.

Apparently this is a known and recurring problem. see graf snowboards: (http://www.grafsnowboards.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=127&sid=578ef7a0e83bf6ffdb2fc30717ce7f57)

The coefficient of thermal expansion for UHMW is 130-200 x10^-6/k. (For comparison steel is 12x10^-6/k). (source:http://www.goodfellow.com/csp/active/static/A/Polyethylene_-_UHMW.HTML) This is the percent change in length per degree kelvin or celsius. So for a 180cm ski base, and a 10 degree change in temp, there is a change of almost 4mm! (1800*200x10^-6=.36mm/k)

This is quite surprising and I wonder how they deal with it in heated presses.

kelvin

Nice one guys. Well heres our situation.

We live in Birmingham in the UK, and from what you have heard about the weather over here it is actually about 28-30oC at the moment, and we are working in a lab at Uni that doesn't have any air-con. Its damn hot in there!!!!!

The first 2 i cut out I cut with long strokes as it were (ie cut about 50cms at a time) off the roll and when i took off the template it was warped.

Next we tryed cutting a blank out first and then cut around the template in the same fashion. Results were the same.

So next we tried cutting out a blank and making smaller cuts, cutting both ways. This worked better but it wasn't as accurate. I'm going to give it another go on Monday to see if i can cut it out better.

This would suggest that its an internal stress problem (but i'm sure the heat isn't helping). If a proper solution can be come up with it would help saze a lot of time and money!!!

Cheers for your help guys

Ross

Ross,

that is very interesting. For the skis that BigKam and I have made in Seattle, we have used a router to cut out the bases. I wonder if that makes a difference. I'll look into further.

Kelvin

the more i think about it, internal stress is probably the majority of the cause for the warping. i'm going to give DuraSurf a buzz and see if i can get some information from them. i'll discuss what i find out, but as Ross has pointed out, temperature doesn't help either it seems. if in fact internel stress is the major problem, then one remedy (though not 100% guaranteed) is to 'rough' cut the base material as i mentioned earlier, then let the material sit for a while. afterwards, the final cut can be made and edges applied.

From what I gathered from making p-tex repair patches. The cause of the problem is in the method of cutting.

The p-tex stretches as you cut it with a knife, the sharper, the less this occurs. When I've made patches using a stamp (looks like a cookie cutter made out of razor blades) The p-tex would be the shape intended. Using scissors would warp the p-tex sideways but not significantly. But with a shop knife the patch would never come out straight. The amount of distortion was greatly reduced if I had a very stiff stencil and clamped it down hard, reducing how much I would stretch the p-tex under it.

looking through the various manufactures production videos/pictures, it looks like they are using either die cutters (like a huge cookie cutter) or a router. Neither puts any stretching force on the p-tex.

To reduce warping/stretching but without changing the whole cutting method. How about using a heavy/stiff template and clamping it down very hard. Also cutting with a razor blade or similar that doesnt require much effort to cut, thus reducing the amount it can stretch the p-tex?

Ross:

any more news about the warping behavior?

we're left to believe that we have a bad batch of p-tex. so far our tests indicate that it isn't temperature related, or dependent upon the method used to cut the base material. i called Durasurf and they simply said that it's a rare behavior and most likely a bad batch. anyway, we'll get a new batch of p-tex and see what happens.

let us know if you discover anything...

Yes! it is internal tensions from the manufacturing process!

I am using snowboard grade ski base from ISOSPORT and they told me that due to the manufacturing of snowboard bases you get internal tension that might cause problem. When they make these wide material they in some way weld to sheets together and therefore get tensions in the material.

What I do is that I make base templates in MDF (20 mm thick) and then clamp the routed base on to it. Then I mount my edge on the base and it comes out perfekt. The edges are so stiff that they keep the base perfectly straight. I always check so that my edge/bases are perfectly matching each other!

Coming up soon: hendryxskis.se

Rock on!

Henrik

Henrik:

thanks for your thoughts, and welcome. we're excited to see hendryxskis.se. please forward some of your work to show...

as far as the base material is concerned, it's rather irritating there internal stress issues. i like your method of trying to minimize the behavior, but even after you attached the eges, and then remove the MDF template, isn't there enough stress to cause the edges to warp with the base? i guess we'll have to try your method and see what happens...

thanks again for your thoughts...

Hendrik.

what adhesive are you using to attach the edges? -thanks

i can't answer for Hendrik, but we use SuperGlue. just a dab every 10cm or so...

Hello everybody!

No, the edges do not warp with the base. This is due to the big differences in elasticy modulus. The edges are much stiffer and stronger than the base so the edges keep the base perfectly straight.

When it comes to the glue I use super glue from R&G germany, r-g-composites.com, blue type.

Henrik

Biggie! In my opinion you should make a lowcamber ski that is a little stiffer to compensate for the pop.

And now to materials for pop. Be carefull using carbon fiber to increase pop. Carbon fibers have a negative elongation coefficient which means its lengths increases when getting cooled while glassfiber shrinks. This means that if you add carbon in the top of youe ski, as most manufacturers do, camber rises when you take them out and it is even worse if you use it in a heated press.

My advice! Stay away from carbon!

Kelvin!

A soft ski is not affected as much as a stiff ski and this might be one of the reasons why many powder skis have a very soft flex. With a low camber you can stiffen upp the ski a little bit and increase stability on uneven snow a bit.

I could write a book on carbon, but in my opinion carbon is for racing cars!

And do not mix carbon and glassfiber, its like mixing rubber and steel!

Henrik

Isn't that exactly what we do? Rubber dampening strip right on top of the steel edges?

Hose-man you got a point there but we put rubber between the steel edge and the glassfiber to equalize tensions beetween these two materials. They have different heat elongation constants which means that they contract differently when getting cold!

What I mean with rubber/steel mix is that if you take a bit of rubber and a bit of steel and dimension them so they can take half the strain each and use them together and then start to load them! What happends?

The steel will take all the forces because breakelongations differs so much!

This is the case with carbon-glas mixings! The carbon takes all the forces and if you do not dimension the system correctly it actually gives a weaker construction by adding an ollieband wich will take all the forces and therefore snapp very early.

This is what happend to the surfboard industrie when they started to strengthen their boards with some extra carbon bands! The boards snapped and got weaker!

Henrik

I agree with your last post about the ollieband Henrik, but there are other ways to use carbon that will not expose it to those maximum tensions in the ski. If you use it as a torsion stiffener (45/45) and the glass in the length of the ski, the differences in the vibration frequencies will dampen the ski, in addition to the incteaced torsion, a 45angled fibre will not reach its maximum tension at the same time as the 0deg. fibre

wow, endre, if i understand well....do you think that if i want to use both glass and carbon, its better to use 45/-45 carbon and 0 glass? Because I was about to use them opposite way!? One local supplier of those fibers recomended to use 45/-45 fiberglass with some layers of unidirectional carbon running lenghtwise the ski...hmmmm...now i dont know...

Atleast that's my understanding.

Well, the best thing is to make two pair of skis, same dimensions, one with carbon +-45 and 0 glass, and the other with glass +-45 and 0 carbon, adjusting the weigth of the fibers in order to have the same londitudinal stiffness.....

Then testing.

If i use the same mould for two skis that need a different camber, could i achieve this by changing the layup, puting more carbon strips on the top of the ski that needs lower camber?

No! It should be the other way as carbonfiber has a negative elongation coefficient. It means that carbon expand when temperature decreases and vice verse. Carbon in the bottom gives a lower camber at lower temeperatures.

For a +-45 degree carbon the increased break elongation would be the root square of 2, 1,42, times its break elongation. That will be around 2 % for a carbon with 1,5 % elongation. Best carbon yhat I know has a break elongation of two %, extrem high tensile. E-glass is about 5,5 % and S-glass is about 6,5 %.

So far, I am going for glass! I have tried to break my skis but I could not. They just bent like crazy. I think I can bend the tips together on my skis!

Henrik

According to that last comment, you use very thin cores and a lot of glass. Do your skis wheight a lot? Sounds heavy with a ski that could bend together like that, and still have what you call a "medium flex".

No I can not bend them together but what I mean is that the skis will bend this much and not break!

What I did is that I place my skis in a deep ditch with an angle of ~60 degrees in the bottom and, this was hard to my heart, jumped on them. The skis were standing like an U but they did not even give a sound of that I was reaching the break point. This day it was more than 30 degrees celsius in the shadow and you should not perform these tests when hot as glass fiber is much stronger when cold!

And about carbon, it is not very good in taking kompression!

Henrik

hi everyone!

i haven't had a chance to read over all the comments related to this thread, so i might sound out of place. but i do think the camber discussion is really interesting. i'll try to contribute more soon. i have a few words to say about skiing on the Kaffeines (25mm of camber) and the Stiff Upper Lips (same ski, but with much less camber).

anyway, i'm at Whistler, BC right now. i brought with me 5 pairs of skis. conditions are relatively nice for early season. groom runs are hard, with patches of ice in the high traffic areas. some groomers are definitely carveable though. between Blackcomb and Whistler, Whistler is my favorite. i spend most of my time in the upper bowls of Whistler (Harmony and Peak chairs for those familiar with the area). there's new snow, between 6-12" on top of a firm base in the bowls and on steeper terrain. the base layer, however, feels like a re-frozen melt-freeze, but in some spots the snow is deep enough and it's hardly noticeable. the base isn't thick enough to cover rocks yet...

the snow isn't deep enough for the Upper Krusts. instead i decided to test the difference between the Kaffeines and Stiff Upper Lips. both of these skis are made of the same materials and they have the same shape. the only differences are (1) the Kaffeines have at least 25mm of camber and the Stiffs have between 12-15mm and (2) the Kaffeines have a layer of titanal directly above the ski-base material (and below the wood core) and the Stiffs have it directly below the top-sheet material (and above the wood core). Kelvin did me a favor by base grinding the Kaffeines and putting a nice layer of wax on them (thanks Wu!). because of the camber, i decided to add a 0.5-degree bevel on the top and both third of the edges. underfoot was left untouched, at 90-degrees. i was hoping that the bevel would help compensate for the camber during turn initiation.

i started the first half of the day on the Kaffeines. before hitting the snow i noticed the camber! the Kaffeines have at least 25mm of camber ridiculous. i had a hard time carrying them around because the camber made them hard to "squeeze" the skis together; they stressed my hands and occassionally would "spring" apart. i finally had to use a velcro ski-strap to keep them together during transportation. anyway, remember this photo of Kelvin holding the Kaffeines?

the first run was from the top of Emerald chair down a groomed blue run. i wanted to have a chance to feel them before taking them on steeper and more varied terrain. the first half of the run i keep my heels down and drove them alpine style. the first thing i noticed was they had a smaller "sweet" spot than most skis i've been on. i had to stay more balanced over the skis to get them to turn. after ten turns or so i felt comfortable, but the skis definitely needed some attention. i noticed they weren't very comfortable going straight. they were happy on edge, turning, and with active pressure applied (most likely to "de-activate" the effects of the camber). but even during the turn they needed attention. i think Kaffeine is a good name for them because they definitely kept me awake...at all times. a few turns later i decided to let them run but still with my heels fixed. i was able to push them and they carved beautifully, but with attention of course.

for the second half of the run, i decided to tele turn them. the camber seemed to make them feel a bit awkward. at first they wanted to resist the style of turning, but with i found a balance and pressure point to get them to behave. again, they didn't not like going straight. i had to keep them turning.

my thoughts after the first run: a great ski, in terms of the turning radius, dampness, and stiffness. and when they behaved, they were great! (Kelvin, i think we have a winner here, modulo the camber). the only thing i didn't like was they felt a bit unpredictable. sometimes they had a mind of their own and would track off trajectory. turn initiation need some effort at times.

next, i took them into soft snow and varied terrain. they skied the 6-12" of powder that we found great, as long as i kept them turning. when i relaxed and tried to make more gentle turns, they wanted to submarine and run off. here's a video that Chris Cass made with his small point-and-shoot camera.

http://www.skibuilders.com/gallery/kaffeine/2005_1125_Kaffeines@Whistler.wmv

for whatever reason, on more or less flat terrain like cat-tracks and traverses, the Kaffeines were so slow. i wonder if the camber has any affect. i struggled to keep them moving when the terrain eased off. they skis were freshly waxed.

at half-day, i switched over to the Stiff Upper Lips. this is pretty much the same ski. i immediately noticed how easy they were to turn; they were significantly more predictable and fun to ski. i didn't use as much energy to keep them under control; i didn't have to "fight" as much compared to the Kaffeines. however, i did notice that the Stiffs were not quite as "positive" as the Kaffeines in terms of carving on hard snow. i almost want to say that i like the feel of the Kaffeines better (except the camber); they felt more solid. but the Stiffs were more forgiving. i wonder if it's related to the camber or the location of the titanal or both? as for gluiding abilities on traverses and cat-tracks, the Stiffs were great. in contrast, the Kaffeines were slow for whatever reason...

in summary, between low and high camber, i think low camber skis are more user friendly. they feel more predictable. in terms of skiing in powder, based on my experience, high-camber skis tend to submarine when they are not actively turning. i got into trouble when i was trying to straight-run or when i was trying to make more gentle turns (applying less pressure). again, i found they were slow too on flat stuff - i'm not sure if this is a camber-related issue.

the next thing to try is a soft ski with lots of camber....

_________________
Professor!

It was probably a step sideways bk, but a very informative step!

-May be the cambered skis felt more solid because all the camber braught a lot of power to the tips.. and this power (like pre-tensioning a spring) made the ski more damp when you skied uprised?

If I remember well, camber is used to keep pressure on the edges from tip to tail. This is something you need if do World Cup slalom turns. For everyday skiing, having less pressure on the tip and tail, make easier to turn the skis, and it makes much easier to make sliding turns.

In powder there is no need for pressure along the edges, so flat or even negative camber skis work great. Actually a ski with too much camber and too stiff is useless in the powder. The ski turns in the powder only if it is bent to a negative camber and you can not bent ski that is too stiff (or with too much camber) just because the soft snow is not applying enough pressure to the ski base. I suppose that a very stiff ski with 10mm camber is a nightmare in powder, while the same skis with 10mm negative camber would be just wonderful.

By the way, if you go back to the groomed with a negative camber ski, you can still enjoy it: the contact length between the edges and the snow is reduced to maybe 1 meter. It is enough to have some fun (think about bigfoot, snowblades), but it is not something you would choose to compete against Hermann Mayer.

What do you think?

Thats what I thougt to Davide but WC skiis have very low camber. If you have a look at the core profile on WC skis you can see that they have a more stabel center and very flexy tips and this is probably because they want high edge pressure under foot for grip and tips are more for steering the skiis in to turns.

Here I think we come in to emperical experiences!

Time to change name? Big Cam! That is some camber!

Thanks for good work!

Henrik

I took a closer look at my Elan SLX this weakend and i realiced (whish i have never reflected over earlier) that they have only max 5mm chamber.

Im not sure I agree with world cup racers breaking skis to lose camber---after 15 years of ski racing I have never heard anything so contoversial. World cup racers today go through dozens of skis because after only a few weeks they lose their camber and "pop" out of a turn...(correct me if im wrong here). Also, in terms of jumping, I think camber is irrelevent. First of all, the "pop" would come from the stiffness of the ski, and the skiers ability to compress the ski. Secondly, I think a skis contribution to "pop" off a jump is a misconception. Knees and legs should do the poping, unless you are a fresstyle bump skier.

well actually newmie, camber does effect pop, because when you load up a ski it wants to rebound to its natural shape, therefore when you have alot of camber your weight alone loads the ski a certain amount.

Also, on jumps pop is crucial for how the ski behaves due to the fact that the ski is loaded by the curve of the jump, and it definetly effects your jumping . I really noticed when i went from absolutely dead skogens to relatively new troublemakers, it makes a big difference off jumps, especiall when you carve off jumps which further loads the ski through the sidecut.