First industry to make a rockered product?

Luc.

Luc.

Active member
I noticed that Lib tech.'s new line has "banana" technology...aka...their snowboards are now rockered....(obv. not all but many models)...my question for you is...which industry started using this technology first? i am aware that people like seth and shane( both shanes) have been riding rockered skis for some time now...but which industry actually came out with it first?
 
Probably snowboarding. I'm guessing of course, but the snowboarding industry is older than the freeskiing industry, and a lot of freeskiing innovations are inspired by snowboarding.
 
for twins, line had early rise on their first prophet 130s. Although i think volkl had a ski a long time ago called the spatula that had reverse camber and used the same technology. At any rate it was a bc based ski that put the technology on snow.
 
Definitely all Shane's fault!!

I bet there were reverse camber models before spatulas, but Shane was all over that like 5 years ago. He was way ahead of his time.
 
Get your history right kids, if the discussion is between skis and snowboards, snowboards win. Back in 1984, remember that year? It was the Lamar Trickstick, and it was a rockered snowboard. Maybe earlier was the Checkered Pig too.

As for skis, Volant crated the Spatula, a rockered and reversed sidecut ski based on McConkey's ideas. When he came to K2, he helped us develop the Pontoon, a rockered ski with a regular sidecut.

Armada followed next with the ARG, and last year at SIA, we brought out the Hellbent, LINE had the EP pro and Salomon showed their 'Rocker' Ski...which is a funny name, because only the tip is raised. I assume you will see almost every manufacturer offer rockered skis.

Also last year, K2 Snowboards had their rockered Gyrator and Lib Tech had their Skate Bannana...which they refer to as skate technology...even though it was done on skis two years previous...hmmmm, nevermind.
 
Thanks for clearing that up!

So between ski's and snowboards it's the snowboard industry, is it them who introduced/invented the rocker? Don't know why, but something keeps telling me it was actualy surfing...

I'm surprised nobody took some sort of patent on the design, or did they and does every company who wants to use a rocker design have to pay for it, or is it impossible to do that for those kind of things?
 
yeah the beginning was surfing, to keep the tips popping up above the water.

Snowboarding probably came up with it first though, but McConkey could have came up with it a while before. People were probably messing around with skis in the mid-90s too. Who knows? It was all pretty unknown until a couple years ago.
 
I'm going to say surfing started it all in terms of rockered boardsports. Surfing was first documented by the eurpean in the late 1700's, and it was a huge part of hawaiian culture at that time.
 
Wasn't there a huge argument awhile back about how the Spatula was different than "rockered" skis because rockered skis are flat on the base longer than the spatula or some shit?
 
yeah, but it really is just nit picking.

People were saying that spats and praxis are reverse camber, not rockered, because they are a continuous bend thru out the entire ski.

Then skis like the DP Lotus, hellbent, and so on are only rockered because they have a longer flat section.

It is fucking dumb. They are all just rockered, so more than others. That is all that needs to be said about it.
 
We were talking about snowbaording vs. skiing. It is fairly obvious that surfing and water skiing used a 'rocker' type contruction previous to 1984 when that specific technology was being adapted to snowports.
 
Well Mr. K2,

I seem to remember my Burton backwoods and Elite models as having "early rise" technology and FINS as well. They definetly did not have camber. And anyone who skied the K2 TNC in moguls could testify to their "early rise" of the tip after just a few bump runs.

Have you guys considered placing a rope to the tip of your skis like the original burtons used to have?

 
Shane had crazy ideas back in the day. I remember when he was trying to get the companies to make a fat ski (around 90-100) and everyone thought it was gunna be a fad once he finally got volkl(i think it was, right?) to do it. Then with the spatula he got them to make a rockered ski to bad it sucked and had no pop and was about 50 pounds. Still he had the idea way before anyone in skiing
 
have you ever skied the spats? They didn't suck at all. They are

sweet. Not perfect, but pretty fucking far from sucking. Not

the kind of ski that you really need to have lots of pop for either.....

and yes, they were heavy, but it really wasn't that bad. I've seen lots of small people ski them without any issue

also, he didn't get the companies to make any fat skis. He was using a volant chubb, which was designed for non-experts to go heli skiing with so that they could actually get down the hill in deeper snow, and was getting a lot of shit from people for doing so.
 
Have you ever actually skied the Spatula? Go to Squaw on a powder day and tell the 50 or so people on Spats that their skis suck, and then try to keep up with them. In soft snow, those skis rule. And they are heavy in the hand, no doubt, but all the surface area (weight) is under your feet and not in the tips, so when you're floating in pow and turning, they don't feel any heavier than a park ski.

As far as who should take credit for rocker in skiing vs. snowboarding, I've gotta say that even though there was a rockered snowboard back at the start of the sport, that's simply because they viewed themselves as surfers on snow, so they made it like a surfboard. There wasn't any precedent. Then they realized camber was the way to go.

So as far as making an educated, conscious decision to have a rockered tool for powder, I feel you've got to give the credit to Shane. Snowboard companies are looking at skiing and realizing now, 'Yeah, that makes sense.'
 
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