NateW

That's how I've always done it. Then get them centered side-to-side by moving the toe and heel blocks. Also, +1 for higher angles. With the angles shown it looks like you'd be digging the toes and heels into the snow before the board had a chance to shine. Then try to keep your butt toward the tail (not off to the side) and reach toward the nose of the board with your trailing hand. It sounds subtle, but I think you'll find yourself carving on another level.

My goal for this calculator (like the one before it) is to be able to answer questions like "is this board going to turn tighter or wider than my current board?" based on readily available information (tip / waist / tail measurements). I added the speed stuff because I was curious about what those speeds would be like in general, and also curios about how much the speed should vary with carve radius. I don't think anyone is measuring their trench depth, and I don't think anyone really cares much about the actual specific length of their turn radius, so I'm not inclined (no pun intended) to figure out how to use the former to estimate the latter. It might be interesting to model how much the board stiffness affects carve radius, but my guess is that it makes very little difference, so it's not a priority for me. It seems to me that stiffness affects feel much more than carve radius. By "feel" I mostly mean how sensitive the board is to edge-angle during skidded turns, and how much support the board gives me when my balance gets way off and I need to heave myself back toward the center of the board. I don't use any of the info from this calculator while I'm riding, but I do use it when I'm considering whether or not I want to buy a particular board. That's another reason I think it's useful to use board dimensions for input, but not trench depth. After you enter a number, tap on a different text-entry box. I made this on a PC where I press the tab key after I enter a number. But now you've got me thinking that I should just have it do the math with every keystroke... There will be some weird numbers in the output after you type the first digit of a two-digit number, but that's probably less confusing than the way it works right now.

How wide is the waist? What's the sidecut radius? What's the stiffness like? / How heavy of a rider was it intended for? Thanks!

Very cool board!

Thanks for the recommendations! I had good results with the FastStik warm rub-on wax too. Funny thing is, I completely forgot that I bought their cold wax at the same time... so I already have some, and I'll give it a try next time temperatures get this low again. And then the others, if FastStik ain't enough to make me happy.

If anyone has a favorite rub-on wax for cold days, I'd love to hear about it. It was 10F today and I used Zum's cold weather rub-on wax over a base that had my usual all-temp iron-on wax (brand unknown, I got a bag of sticks from a roommate years ago) and I was disappointed at how sticky the snow was. Especially after I switched boards and found that the iron-on wax rode exactly the same on its own. Zum's warm weather rub-on wax was plenty fast last spring, so I had high hopes for this stuff. But 10F is actually a little bit below the recommended range for the cold stuff anyway so that might be the problem. Anyway, I'm more interested in rub-on than iron-on because it rarely gets this cold and I've been happy with all temperature iron-on wax. I'm not sure it's worth the trouble to use an iron wax for just one day. Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

That looks like it would be repairable with epoxy and clamps.

This form of question always seems wrong to me, because the real question here isn't "is a skwal a snowboard" but rather "is it reasonable to use the word 'snowboard' for the thing that everyone calls a skwal?" In other words, it's not a question about skwals, it's a question about the scope of the word "snowboard." For competition purposes, the FIS makes the rules, and their rules say that a sub-135cm snowboard needs to be at least 14cm wide, and anything longer needs to be at least 16cm wide. They felt they had to draw the line somewhere, and that's where they drew it. But, I don't see any reason for that rule to exist. To me, "snowboard" describes a single board which is ridden with the feet attached front-and-rear (rather than side-by-side), regardless of width. So I'd say that it is reasonable to use the word "snowboard" for skwals. They're just skinny snowboards. There's no phase-transition that separates narrow snowboards from less-narrow snowboards like there is between -1C ice and +1C water. For boards, it's just a continuum. The FIS chose an arbitrary point to separate snowboards from not-snowboards, but nobody else needs to.

I guess I'm old-school but I thought the range of board length was supposed to be a function of rider height. If one board is good for a range of weights that vary by up to 30%, why do board lengths come in 2% increments? I'm fully on board with everybody who wants to ride fast getting the 165/12m board though. And it would come in 3 flex ranges to make that work for anyone.

+1 for larger sidecut radius. I'd recommend a custom board to anyone who wants to carve a lot, just for that reason alone. It boggles my mind that the industry thinks nobody would be happy with larger than 10m. Hopefully the 12m Commissioner gets people thinking. But it's still dumb that you can only get 12m on the largest (165). "Oh hi, you want to rail fast carves? We've got the board for you... oh wait, you're 5'6" sorry we just got slow boards for you." The ideal SCR isn't a function of rider height, it should be chosen based on how fast someone tends to ride. If I was in change, the whole Commissioner line would be 12m, maybe 13m. And like someone said earlier, it's also weird that the industry steers people toward such short boards.

Good observation. The original plan was to have the nose and tail truly start curling up as early as possible, but I started to worry about what would happen if I approached a jump with a transition radius tighter than my nose radius... So, I reduced the nose/tail radius to 1.25m, but kept the 5cm height, and that stretched out the flat section a bit.

I have a hunch that things like waist width, stance angles, and binding cants are all really just matters of personal preference. For me, the sweet spot is a 19cm waist with 60/55 angles - it just feels like the right alignment for my body no matter what I'm doing on the board. I've experimented with wider and narrower boards, and corresponding angles, and I just didn't feel as "at home" with them. Jacques and Patrice were fans of wider boards and lower angles, and it clearly works very well for them, but I'm not sure that means that it's the best setup for everyone. But I also agree with nextcarve's post above about the importance of a long sidecut radius. Laying out turns got much easier when I went up to a 13m radius. At 10m, the turns whip around so fast that I feel like I'm struggling to keep up. 15m also works well, but it requires more speed and thus more space, and IMO 13m works well enough, so 13m is the sweet spot for me.

Not a typo... I seem to have run out of upload capacity so I put my CAD sketch here: https://imgur.com/a/sD8aZd9 170cm x 19cm, 13m sidecut. My initial draft had a longer nose/tail rocker radius and shorter flat section, but I started to worry that if the radius is too long, it might be too prone to digging in / hanging up on bumps and jumps, rather than riding over them. Well after I placed the order, I saw the profile diagram of Rad-Air's rocker/flat/rocker design and kinda wished I'd thought of that. They use a larger radius from the binding to about halfway to the tip/tail (to keep the flat middle short) and a shorter radius from the halfway point to the tip and tail (to help it get over rough terrain). But I'm optimistic about how this is going to work. I probably should have mentioned that I like very stiff boards. My last two daily-driver Donek boards were very very stiff, which makes them great for carving, and I like the extra support if my weight gets too far over the nose or tail in moguls or landing jump... I can just heave myself back to the center without the board curling up and letting me fall over the front or back. Plus, the stiffer my boards are, the longer they last. The drawback to a very stiff board with a 13m sidecut is that low-speed maneuverability gets a little awkward. Every bit of that edge wants to carve. I had a powder board a couple years ago that had a flat center and 13m radius, and I just loved how nimble it was at low speeds, mostly due to the short effective edge. So the goal here is to get that nimbleness and still have enough stiffness and effective edge to be able to carve the same as ever. This board came out less stiff than expected, but Winterstick has offered to make a second one, stiffer, at no charge if that turns out to be a problem.

It took over a year but it's finally HERE!!! 170 long, 19 wide, 13m sidecut radius. "Twin tail" shape. Fully symmetrical, flat between the bindings, the nose and tail curl up just outside of the bindings with a 1.25m radius. The idea is to have the effective edge start short for low-speed skid maneuverability, and then the edge grows longer the more you lean into a carve. I've been wanting to do this for a couple years, and I'm so stoked that this board exists now. Can't wait to ride it.

I'm in the park pretty much all day every day, because getting air is my favorite thing ever, and carving is the most fun way to get from one jump to the next. IMO carving in there is fine, as long as you stay out of the way of the people that are using the featurers for their intended purpose. The rules are a bit different - the park is to the freeway what the rest of the mountain is to residential streets. There will be people who waited in line to hit a feature, or who come off a feature at high speed and halfway (or fully) out of control because they're pushing their limits, and if you get in their way, you're the asshole. Get familiar with the traffic patterns, so that you can either blend right in with them, or keep your distance from them. Do not behind a big jump unless you either hit that jump or waited your turn to use that feature. Going around the jump and getting air off the landing is no big deal IMO. But do not go around the jump and then carve up the landing. It's dangerous for you and for whoever has the misfortune of landing on you - or landing right above you then slamming into you because they're moving faster with less control because they just dropped out of the sky. But if you grok the traffic patterns and ride responsibly, you're fine. https://www.facebook.com/nate.waddoups/videos/10222139695744102 https://www.facebook.com/nate.waddoups/videos/940091907011769

You're welcome!

My Kessler is 174. It basically rides like my Donek 170 / 13m board except that at low edge angles the SCR feels bigger, like 15 or 16m. I might like it more if I hadn't been riding 13m radial boards for so long that anything else feels weird. At low speeds / low angles, where the sidecut acts like it's more than 13m it feels unresponsive. I'm pretty sure that if I had a board that rode like 11m in some conditions, then it would just feel twitchy to me. To be clear, I don't hate it - it's a fun change of pace, just because it's different. But when the novelty wears off it will show up in the classifieds. *

On second thought, I have seen it before. But I only know that because it contains a reply with my name on it.

I hadn't, thanks.

I sidestepped that issue by being disappointed in the only variable-sidecut board that I've tried so far. It's a production Kessler GS board that I bought used a couple seasons ago, and just felt weird to ride a board that behaves like a long radius at low edge angles and shorter radius at high edge angles. I liked that idea in theory, but on the snow it just didn't feel right. So I'm still using an old-school constant 13m sidecut for my custom boards, at least for now. But I also want to try a more variable sidecuts, just out of curiosity, so that got me looking at (used) production boards, which got me wanting a calculator again. I'm trying to keep the approximate radius close to 13m, on the theory that whatever I get will behave approximately like a 13m board.

Once upon a time I had a web site, which had a sidecut calculator. Then the PC that was hosting the web site died, and that was the end of that. After two decades, I finally got around to making a new calculator. Click here. It's not pretty, but it works.

What size are you looking for?

Heelside turns: reach forward with your rear arm. Not because your arm actually matters, but just because that helps pull the rest of your body to where it should be. I don't consciously move my weight forward or backward in carved turns, but now you have me wondering whether I'm doing it subconsciously. I do however put the center of my stance as close to the center of the board as I can get it. With production boards that usually means putting the bindings somewhat forward relative to where the inserts are. With custom boards I just ask for the inserts to be centered, to keep things simple.

5. Insta360 cameras are really fun, but one should really ready the owners manual before using one for the first time.

I'm interested, but...