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Skwal Riders General Discussion


mikel45

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I thought that I could initiate a turn and get it to flex and turn more. That was not the case. I got it up on edge and in about 20 feet of down hill movement , I probably got the board to move about 3 inches in a turning direction. At 32 m scr, it just did not turn at all. Bottom line , there is no substitute for correct side cut, Also, I am used to a 9.0 m scr.  I do not think a "ski" exists that will function as  a skwall board, A skwal needs correct scr, decambered tip/tail, correct flex, and proper insert placement and width. To find all of these design details in a ski , at a ski swap meet is near impossible. It was fun to try on the  cheap.

 The good part of the project was the adapter plate to use a TD1 regular as a TD1 skwal w/zero.zero. Said plate is 3/8" thick/height.

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Don't give up quite yet. Try it on a powder day. I have a 185 Nordica "Yah Luv" ski that I mounted Skwal. It RIPS in the fresh. It's a 29M sidecut. Dimensions: 167 tip, 140 waist, 157 tail. (round tail), 185 long normal camber wood core/metal ski. I centered and "T" nutted Cateks according to marked boot center. It will lay a decent carve in fresh/soft groom as well. Put it on edge and bend it. I think that the length helps in that regard.

Don

Feed the Addiction... :eplus2:

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Maybe side to side will help me ?  Does riding a Skwal require a higher level of fitness than an alpine board. We have had 6 weeks of ice virtually no natural snow so conditions are buffed boiler plate. I'm huring after each outing. Can't seem to get comfortable enough to relax when scanning the ice for a safe place to turn.

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I tune everything I ride 1* off the base and 3* off the sides for an edge angle of 88*. Works better on the firm/ice conditions. This set-up requires more maintanance of the edge but has numerous benefits. In the boiler plate conditions almost nothing works. Edge initiation is very critical. Most "pull/lean" their body up the hill and tip the board less. That translates to poor edge hold, if any. It also leads to poor body position and you use muscles to maintain balance. Angulate, stay "stacked" over the edge, and keep an "aggressive" stance.

Don

Feed the Addiction... :eplus2: 

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Does riding a Skwal require a higher level of fitness than an alpine board.

My legs are burned out after 6 runs, but I am out every morning and am in a constant state of fatigue.  When I was riding "normal" alpine boards a couple of seasons ago, it was much the same so I don't know if Skwals are inherently more tiring.  My riding style is to turn as hard as I can, all the time, just because I'm not comfortable with building fall line speed.  Sometimes I run out of speed and have to consciously focus on making bigger turns.  It's exhausting.

 

My legs are so tired that I often wonder if I'm doing something fundamentally wrong.  But it's a good kind of tired, not a painful kind of tired.

 

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I was wondering about canting in a Skwal stance just because I have been doing some fooling around riding one-footed on really shallow trails.  I might futz around with how my front foot is aligned to see how well I can optimize for one-footedness, then work on the rear foot.  Right now I am running toe/heel lift only on my Cateks.

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I thought I'd post this here first, I have a 183 Thias skwal that I bought from Don when he found the mother load last year. Right after I bought it I suffered a concussion while boarding and haven't had the balls to get on it yet, so I thought it would be best to sell it to get it on the snow. I'll get some pictures if you need them. It looks like it is in great shape and has the Thias bail bindings. I'd be looking for what I paid for it, I think it was about $340 + shipping? I'll check the details and if no interest here I'll put it in the classifieds. I also have a set of Catek OS1step ins in great shape I'll be selling as they seem to be popular with skwals if anybody wants the whole package.

 

Thanks, Ron

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Shipping to Canada just costs about 2X what domestic shipping would be for a similar distance. Us postal is just cheaper all around and usually doesn't incur huge brokerage fees. I don't pay import taxes because Thias Skwals were originally made in Canada so you need to write in large letters Made in Canada on the package. Yes they do insurance. Message me with costs and payment details when you get it figured out. Repost the binding and see if you get any bites if not i'll take them if your afraid of being stuck with them. 

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This morning I went to the bunny slope to futz around riding with only my front foot in.  It's pretty awful, but I had a feeling that I wasn't able to engage heelside well when in this mode.  "Engage" is way overstating it, because it isn't at all like I was carving turns.  I was just doing slow traverses on a crazy shallow trail.  I added a little outside cant to the front foot and that seemed to help. 

 

After that I moved the binding forward one step (one cm?) on the baseplate to take out a little setback, something that I commonly did on Donek boards.  My Oxess has only single fixed inserts.  I'm not sure what this did, but it didn't seem to hurt. 

 

Then I added a little more toe lift to get my front leg more upright.

 

Then I moved the rear binding forward one step to match the front binding.

 

Now riding it with both feet in, it definitely feels a little different.  I made a couple of runs down New Bowl at Dollar Mt, which is a modestly steep tight bowled-out trail.  It seemed to work well, but I'll have to take it out on my normal runs to really make a comparison.

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