Ski Builders Forum

Hi,

How to decide to have a single radius, biradius or triradius.
What can multiple radial design bring to skis ?
How to handle the radius as it is asymetrical from tip to tail as the center of the skis is not really at the middle of the length ?

Thanks a lot

Cheers

I really don't have any science to back this up. Only experience.

I used to snowboard a lot & my favorite board is from a small manufacturer (glissade) and it is a simple single radius board. I love it. I demoed a Burton which was billed as a big mountain board & should've ridden much like my Glissade but is sucked so bad I couldn't believe it. It felt like it didn't want to hold a carved turn. The tail simply didn't want to follow in the track the tip created. Every turn wanted to skid out. After some investigation I found out that burton has a complex variable radius edge geometry which I'm sure makes the board forgiving & predictible, but it didn't suit me one bit.

Now for the last few years I've been skiing most days and I found the same experience as I described above with some Rossignol RPMs. They seem to want to skid every turn. No turning radius was locked it. I suppose that this allows the claim of performance though multiple turning radus(es) but it is a compromised performance. I like a ski that locks into a medium/long radius turn like its on a rail. I can always skid a shorter radius turn when the situation dictates. My current favorite ski is salomon's Pocket Rocket '03-'04. Screaming long radius turns at any speed, width for powder & soft enough to be nimble in the tight spots.

My first garage built skis will be in the dimensions of the Pocket Rocket.

thanks a lot for the info.
i used to snowboard a lot on Scott and now I am a fan of Scott skis. I like their concept of short radius. But it seems that the radius finishes very early before the tip.
For my skis, I would like to have something close to the Santiago Pure 193.

The PRs and the one of my other favorite snowboards (Lamar Gibson 1994) have a unique side cut quality in common. The radus contunues even after the running surface ends. So the tip & tail lift up off the snow while the ski/board is still getting wider. I couldn't tell you specificly how this make the product perform different, but I'm pretty sure I prefer it. Perhaps I will vary the running length relative to the side cut on my first few skis and see how they differ.