Head Standard
Encyclopedia
The Head Standard was Howard Head
's first successful ski design, and arguably the first modern downhill ski. The Standard used composite construction, with a plywood core sandwiched between aluminum outer skins, steel edges tapering into the core, and a hard plastic base, sidewalls and topsheet. The only major change in ski design since the Standard is the use of a fibreglass torsion box in place of the aluminum layers.
The Standard was flexible in length and stiff in torsion, which allowed it to be easily turned while still holding a good edge. This combination was so impressive that it became known as "The Cheater" for the way it allowed beginners to turn like pros. The Standard, and models that followed it, were so successful that half the downhill skis in the US in the 1960s were Heads.
, the stainless steel Chris Ski, the aluminum Alu-60 (later known as the TEY True-Flex), the Dow Metal Air Ski, and the Gomme from the UK.
All of these designs had numerous problems. In cold snow, ice would freeze to the bottom metal layer and made them very difficult to move. The same was true for wood skis, but these could hold wax
that solved the problem. When applied to metal skis, the wax quickly rubbed off. Additionally, metal designs tended to be very springy, and were notorious for vibrating when running on ice. And a strong flex or collision could leave them permanently bent and unskiable. Skiers soon came to dismiss them as "tin cans."
took a job as a riveter at the Glenn L. Martin Company
in Baltimore
. Head worked his way up through the company during the war, eventually becoming a draftsman
. Here the company was pioneering the use of a plastic honeycomb material sandwiched between two thin sheets of aluminum to build the monocoque
fuselage of the B-26 Marauder
.
In 1947 he took his first ski trip to a "big mountain", Mount Mansfield
, better known today as part of Stowe Mountain Resort
. He was immediately frustrated by the weight of his rented hickory skis, which he felt were archaic in an era of modern lightweight materials. On the train back to Baltimore
, he was thinking of building a ski using Martin's aluminum/plastic sandwich. He was so excited about the prospect that he sketched the concept and showed it to his carriage mate. When he returned to work, he spend some time comparing the strength of Martin's laminates to the strength of hickory that he found in an engineering textbook. The answer was encouraging, "It looked like I could build a ski with the strength of wood, but with half the weight."
Investing $6,000 of poker winnings (a princely sum at the time), Head rented the corner of an electrical shop and started work. The main portion of the ski was built of the standard laminate, but this left the edges of honeycomb exposed. For protection, he capped the sides with thin sheets of plywood. The ski was laid up in pieces and covered with a liberal dose of a thermosetting shoemaker's glue. The glue required pressure and heat to bond, which normally required large moulds to provide the pressure. Head came up with the idea of placing the skis in a heavy rubber bag, pumping out the air to produce a vacuum to provide pressure, and then immersing the entire assembly in a barrel of boiling crankcase oil.
By December 1947, Head had completed six pairs of prototype skis. He arrived at Mansfield on 27 December and showed them to the instructors gathering to go out for the day. The instructors tried flexing the skis, and five of the ski pairs immediately fell apart. Most left for the day, but Neil Robinson kept his pair to try. He returned to Head and said that in the few minutes he was able to keep on top of them, he "felt something." Head took the remaining pair, and under the supervision of the instructors (he was still a beginner), managed to make it only a short way before this pair failed as well.
Head found that the plastic core was simply too weak to provide the strength needed to match the hickory skis. He replaced it with a sheet of marine plywood of much greater strength. Over the next year, he and a number of moonlighting Martin engineers, made 40 pairs of skis, shipping them to Robinson and Don Traynor at Mansfield for testing. When they failed, which they all did, the area of failure was strengthened and another pair was built.
By Christmas 1949 a set of ten greatly improved versions were ready to be tested. Head gave pairs to Steve Knowlton and Clif Taylor, formerly of the 10th Mountain Division
and now instructors at Aspen Ski School. They found they skied well in the powder at the top of the hill, but as they descended hit harder snow they simply wouldn't dig in and became impossible to turn. At the bottom, where it was warmer, the snow stuck to the skis and stopped dead, forcing them to walk them down the hill. Unimpressed, Knowlton suggested the shiny ski's best use was as a mirror in the local outhouse
. Taylor stayed long enough to tell Head that the ski needed real edges, and some way for the bottoms to hold wax.
The solution to the turning problem had already long been used in the ski industry, the used of spring steel edges. Normally these were thin strips held onto the ski using small screws, but this was not suitable for the laminated design. Head designed a wider edge with a flange that extended sideways about 1/5th of the way into the base of the ski. The edges were laid up and bonded into the base as the ski was being glued together. The new version not only fixed the problem of soft edges, but was found to greatly improve the overall performance of the ski as well.
To solve the problem with sticking snow, Head adapted another solution being widely introduced in the industry. TEY, creators of the earlier True-Flex design, faced the same sticking problems and had started selling a tape-on plastic sheet that could be used with any ski and eliminated the need for waxing. Head took this one step further, using a thicker phenolic plastic
sheet and bonding it to the ski along with the other layers.
By this point it was late in the spring of 1950, and Head took them to the only place left in the east with good snow, Tuckerman Ravine on Mount Washington
in New Hampshire. He knew that Taylor would be coming east, and arranged to meet him with a pair of the new design. Taylor skied them for five days on all types of snow, and then Head asked him to really run them out at high speed. They worked flawlessly, and Head noted "When I saw Clif coming at me, that fast and that surely, I knew deep inside that I had it."
. By the end of the year, 300 pairs of the $85 shiny metal skis were sold. One last problem needed to be solved; the mirror-like topsheet was distracting in the sun, so a thin sheet of black plastic was added to the top. The new Head Standard would remain largely unchanged for over a decade.
On the slopes, skiers found they could turn the ski far easier than wooden designs. Head later noted that "...lightness is not what makes a ski better. In trying to build a lighter ski, I accidentally created a ski that was stiffer in torsion, one that would turn and track more easily. That was the magic difference." The Standard was three times as stiff torsionally as wooden skis, which held the edge to the snow much tighter, improving turns. The effect was so pronounced that they became known as "The Cheater" because it made beginners look like pros. News of their ease of skiing spread quickly, and over the next winter 1,100 pairs were sold, improving to 2,200 for 1952-53. This was in spite of them selling for $75 to $85, roughly twice the price of high-end wooden designs.
In 1956 he developed the first damping system for skis, inserting a neoprene
layer under the top aluminum sheet. This had reduced chattering at high speeds as well as enabling the ski to "snake" over bumps. In 1961 he introduced this improvement in the Head Competition line. In 1963 Joos Minsch won the downhill at Innsbruck on a pair. The next year Jean Saubert skied them to two medals at the Winter Olympics in Innsbruck. Two years later a third of all skiers in the top 10 of every major race were on Competitions, winning a total of 18 gold medals and 15 each silver and bronze.
Several new models based on the basic Standard model followed. These included the Vector, Master and others. In 1967 the last major introduction in the line was the Head 360, an intermediate based on the Competition design. It would go on to be one of the best selling skis in history. Several versions were spun off from the 360 line, including the 720 and 180.
However, it was during this period that the fibreglass torsion box design started to become popular, and improved rapidly. Head hated the concept and refused to consider studying it, claiming "Fiberglass is a flash in the pan. It will be gone tomorrow." Head finally saw the writing on the wall for metal skis after Jean-Claude Killy
continued winning races on the Dynamic VR17, one of the first successful fibreglass racing skis. Head responded by hiring Killy and his ski technician to help them tune up a new fibreglass design of their own. The resulting Killy 800 almost killed the company when the plastic used on the new bright-red topsheet started cracking in dry climates. Worse, tuned by Killy the ski turned out to be far too stiff for the intermediate skier it was sold to. The product was improved and became the basis for Head ski designs in the 1970s.
Head was also infamous for interfering in day-to-day operations of the company. In 1968 a management team was brought in to run the company, leaving Head as the chairman. Head was the hands-on sort, after being pushed from the ski operations he lost interest and turned his attention to tennis. He started development of an aluminum tennis racquet, but in 1969 he sold the entire company to AMF for $16 million.
Taking up tennis in earnest, his trainer quit in frustration and told Head to keep practicing with a ball throwing machine. The machine broke constantly, so Head tore it apart and re-designed it. Approaching the company with some improvements, instead be purchased Prince Sports
outright. Continuing development of the aluminum racquet, Head invented the modern oversized design that revolutionized the industry.
Howard Head
Howard Head was an aeronautical engineer who is credited with the invention of laminate skis and the over-sized tennis racket. He was the founder of Head Ski Company in 1950 and later became chairman of Prince Manufacturing Inc. The U.S...
's first successful ski design, and arguably the first modern downhill ski. The Standard used composite construction, with a plywood core sandwiched between aluminum outer skins, steel edges tapering into the core, and a hard plastic base, sidewalls and topsheet. The only major change in ski design since the Standard is the use of a fibreglass torsion box in place of the aluminum layers.
The Standard was flexible in length and stiff in torsion, which allowed it to be easily turned while still holding a good edge. This combination was so impressive that it became known as "The Cheater" for the way it allowed beginners to turn like pros. The Standard, and models that followed it, were so successful that half the downhill skis in the US in the 1960s were Heads.
Early attempts
A number of metal skis were introduced over the years, among them the 1942 All Magnesium, a post-war run of 1,000 Metalite aluminum skis from Chance VoughtChance Vought
Chance Vought may refer to:*Vought, aircraft company*Chance M. Vought, founder of Vought company...
, the stainless steel Chris Ski, the aluminum Alu-60 (later known as the TEY True-Flex), the Dow Metal Air Ski, and the Gomme from the UK.
All of these designs had numerous problems. In cold snow, ice would freeze to the bottom metal layer and made them very difficult to move. The same was true for wood skis, but these could hold wax
Wax
thumb|right|[[Cetyl palmitate]], a typical wax ester.Wax refers to a class of chemical compounds that are plastic near ambient temperatures. Characteristically, they melt above 45 °C to give a low viscosity liquid. Waxes are insoluble in water but soluble in organic, nonpolar solvents...
that solved the problem. When applied to metal skis, the wax quickly rubbed off. Additionally, metal designs tended to be very springy, and were notorious for vibrating when running on ice. And a strong flex or collision could leave them permanently bent and unskiable. Skiers soon came to dismiss them as "tin cans."
Head fails
In 1939, Howard HeadHoward Head
Howard Head was an aeronautical engineer who is credited with the invention of laminate skis and the over-sized tennis racket. He was the founder of Head Ski Company in 1950 and later became chairman of Prince Manufacturing Inc. The U.S...
took a job as a riveter at the Glenn L. Martin Company
Glenn L. Martin Company
The Glenn L. Martin Company was an American aircraft and aerospace manufacturing company that was founded by the aviation pioneer Glenn L. Martin. The Martin Company produced many important aircraft for the defense of the United States and its allies, especially during World War II and the Cold War...
in Baltimore
Baltimore
Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...
. Head worked his way up through the company during the war, eventually becoming a draftsman
Draughtsman
A draughtsman or draftsman , is a person skilled in drawing, either:*drawing for artistic purposes, or*technical drawing for practical purposes such as architecture or engineering...
. Here the company was pioneering the use of a plastic honeycomb material sandwiched between two thin sheets of aluminum to build the monocoque
Monocoque
Monocoque is a construction technique that supports structural load by using an object's external skin, as opposed to using an internal frame or truss that is then covered with a non-load-bearing skin or coachwork...
fuselage of the B-26 Marauder
B-26 Marauder
The Martin B-26 Marauder was a World War II twin-engine medium bomber built by the Glenn L. Martin Company. First used in the Pacific Theater in early 1942, it was also used in the Mediterranean Theater and in Western Europe....
.
In 1947 he took his first ski trip to a "big mountain", Mount Mansfield
Mount Mansfield
Mount Mansfield is the highest mountain in Vermont with a summit that peaks at above sea level. The summit is in Underhill; the ridgeline, including some secondary peaks, extends into the town of Stowe, and the mountain's flanks also reach into the town of Cambridge.When viewed from the east or...
, better known today as part of Stowe Mountain Resort
Stowe Mountain Resort
Stowe Mountain Resort is a ski resort near the town of Stowe in northern Vermont, comprising two separate mountains: Mount Mansfield and Spruce Peak. The vertical drop from Mount Mansfield of is the fifth largest in New England and the fourth largest in Vermont. The resort is primarily owned by...
. He was immediately frustrated by the weight of his rented hickory skis, which he felt were archaic in an era of modern lightweight materials. On the train back to Baltimore
Baltimore
Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...
, he was thinking of building a ski using Martin's aluminum/plastic sandwich. He was so excited about the prospect that he sketched the concept and showed it to his carriage mate. When he returned to work, he spend some time comparing the strength of Martin's laminates to the strength of hickory that he found in an engineering textbook. The answer was encouraging, "It looked like I could build a ski with the strength of wood, but with half the weight."
Investing $6,000 of poker winnings (a princely sum at the time), Head rented the corner of an electrical shop and started work. The main portion of the ski was built of the standard laminate, but this left the edges of honeycomb exposed. For protection, he capped the sides with thin sheets of plywood. The ski was laid up in pieces and covered with a liberal dose of a thermosetting shoemaker's glue. The glue required pressure and heat to bond, which normally required large moulds to provide the pressure. Head came up with the idea of placing the skis in a heavy rubber bag, pumping out the air to produce a vacuum to provide pressure, and then immersing the entire assembly in a barrel of boiling crankcase oil.
By December 1947, Head had completed six pairs of prototype skis. He arrived at Mansfield on 27 December and showed them to the instructors gathering to go out for the day. The instructors tried flexing the skis, and five of the ski pairs immediately fell apart. Most left for the day, but Neil Robinson kept his pair to try. He returned to Head and said that in the few minutes he was able to keep on top of them, he "felt something." Head took the remaining pair, and under the supervision of the instructors (he was still a beginner), managed to make it only a short way before this pair failed as well.
Head succeeds
Head returned to Baltimore, and on 2 January 1948, quit his job at Martin to work on the ski design full time. He started by trying to find out what had gone wrong with the prototypes. He applied a full stress test to a pair of commercial hickory skis, and found that the real strength of the wood was two times the number found in every engineering text. Head had designed his ski to match the strength of a wooden ski, but based incorrect numbers, his version was not nearly strong enough.Head found that the plastic core was simply too weak to provide the strength needed to match the hickory skis. He replaced it with a sheet of marine plywood of much greater strength. Over the next year, he and a number of moonlighting Martin engineers, made 40 pairs of skis, shipping them to Robinson and Don Traynor at Mansfield for testing. When they failed, which they all did, the area of failure was strengthened and another pair was built.
By Christmas 1949 a set of ten greatly improved versions were ready to be tested. Head gave pairs to Steve Knowlton and Clif Taylor, formerly of the 10th Mountain Division
10th Mountain Division
The 10th Mountain Division is a light infantry division of the United States Army based at Fort Drum, New York. It is a subordinate unit of the XVIII Airborne Corps and the only division-sized element of the U.S. Army to specialize in fighting under harsh terrain and weather conditions...
and now instructors at Aspen Ski School. They found they skied well in the powder at the top of the hill, but as they descended hit harder snow they simply wouldn't dig in and became impossible to turn. At the bottom, where it was warmer, the snow stuck to the skis and stopped dead, forcing them to walk them down the hill. Unimpressed, Knowlton suggested the shiny ski's best use was as a mirror in the local outhouse
Outhouse
An outhouse is a small structure separate from a main building which often contained a simple toilet and may possibly also be used for housing animals and storage.- Terminology :...
. Taylor stayed long enough to tell Head that the ski needed real edges, and some way for the bottoms to hold wax.
The solution to the turning problem had already long been used in the ski industry, the used of spring steel edges. Normally these were thin strips held onto the ski using small screws, but this was not suitable for the laminated design. Head designed a wider edge with a flange that extended sideways about 1/5th of the way into the base of the ski. The edges were laid up and bonded into the base as the ski was being glued together. The new version not only fixed the problem of soft edges, but was found to greatly improve the overall performance of the ski as well.
To solve the problem with sticking snow, Head adapted another solution being widely introduced in the industry. TEY, creators of the earlier True-Flex design, faced the same sticking problems and had started selling a tape-on plastic sheet that could be used with any ski and eliminated the need for waxing. Head took this one step further, using a thicker phenolic plastic
Phenol formaldehyde resin
Phenol formaldehyde resins include synthetic thermosetting resins such as obtained by the reaction of phenols with formaldehyde. Sometimes the precursors include other aldehydes or other phenol. Phenolic resins are mainly used in the production of circuit boards...
sheet and bonding it to the ski along with the other layers.
By this point it was late in the spring of 1950, and Head took them to the only place left in the east with good snow, Tuckerman Ravine on Mount Washington
Mount Washington (New Hampshire)
Mount Washington is the highest peak in the Northeastern United States at , famous for dangerously erratic weather. For 76 years, a weather observatory on the summit held the record for the highest wind gust directly measured at the Earth's surface, , on the afternoon of April 12, 1934...
in New Hampshire. He knew that Taylor would be coming east, and arranged to meet him with a pair of the new design. Taylor skied them for five days on all types of snow, and then Head asked him to really run them out at high speed. They worked flawlessly, and Head noted "When I saw Clif coming at me, that fast and that surely, I knew deep inside that I had it."
Starting sales
The new design was introduced in the winter of 1950-51. Head shipped pairs of skis on consignment all across the US, and took to the hills himself, selling them out of the back of his station wagonStation wagon
A station wagon is a body style variant of a sedan/saloon with its roof extended rearward over a shared passenger/cargo volume with access at the back via a third or fifth door , instead of a trunk lid...
. By the end of the year, 300 pairs of the $85 shiny metal skis were sold. One last problem needed to be solved; the mirror-like topsheet was distracting in the sun, so a thin sheet of black plastic was added to the top. The new Head Standard would remain largely unchanged for over a decade.
On the slopes, skiers found they could turn the ski far easier than wooden designs. Head later noted that "...lightness is not what makes a ski better. In trying to build a lighter ski, I accidentally created a ski that was stiffer in torsion, one that would turn and track more easily. That was the magic difference." The Standard was three times as stiff torsionally as wooden skis, which held the edge to the snow much tighter, improving turns. The effect was so pronounced that they became known as "The Cheater" because it made beginners look like pros. News of their ease of skiing spread quickly, and over the next winter 1,100 pairs were sold, improving to 2,200 for 1952-53. This was in spite of them selling for $75 to $85, roughly twice the price of high-end wooden designs.
In 1956 he developed the first damping system for skis, inserting a neoprene
Neoprene
Neoprene or polychloroprene is a family of synthetic rubbers that are produced by polymerization of chloroprene. Neoprene in general has good chemical stability, and maintains flexibility over a wide temperature range...
layer under the top aluminum sheet. This had reduced chattering at high speeds as well as enabling the ski to "snake" over bumps. In 1961 he introduced this improvement in the Head Competition line. In 1963 Joos Minsch won the downhill at Innsbruck on a pair. The next year Jean Saubert skied them to two medals at the Winter Olympics in Innsbruck. Two years later a third of all skiers in the top 10 of every major race were on Competitions, winning a total of 18 gold medals and 15 each silver and bronze.
Several new models based on the basic Standard model followed. These included the Vector, Master and others. In 1967 the last major introduction in the line was the Head 360, an intermediate based on the Competition design. It would go on to be one of the best selling skis in history. Several versions were spun off from the 360 line, including the 720 and 180.
Moving on
By 1966 the Head Ski Company had more than 500 employees and was grossing $25 million a year on the sale of nearly 300,000 pairs of skis in 17 countries, by far the largest manufacturer of skis in the world. Sales continued to improve throughout the 1950s and 60s, until at one point 50% of all skis in the US were Heads. The competition was quick to introduce similar models of their own, but Head continued development and maintained a leadership position throughout.However, it was during this period that the fibreglass torsion box design started to become popular, and improved rapidly. Head hated the concept and refused to consider studying it, claiming "Fiberglass is a flash in the pan. It will be gone tomorrow." Head finally saw the writing on the wall for metal skis after Jean-Claude Killy
Jean-Claude Killy
Jean-Claude Killy was an alpine ski racer, who dominated the sport in the late 1960s. He was a triple Olympic champion, winning the three alpine events at the 1968 Winter Olympics, becoming the most successful athlete there...
continued winning races on the Dynamic VR17, one of the first successful fibreglass racing skis. Head responded by hiring Killy and his ski technician to help them tune up a new fibreglass design of their own. The resulting Killy 800 almost killed the company when the plastic used on the new bright-red topsheet started cracking in dry climates. Worse, tuned by Killy the ski turned out to be far too stiff for the intermediate skier it was sold to. The product was improved and became the basis for Head ski designs in the 1970s.
Head was also infamous for interfering in day-to-day operations of the company. In 1968 a management team was brought in to run the company, leaving Head as the chairman. Head was the hands-on sort, after being pushed from the ski operations he lost interest and turned his attention to tennis. He started development of an aluminum tennis racquet, but in 1969 he sold the entire company to AMF for $16 million.
Taking up tennis in earnest, his trainer quit in frustration and told Head to keep practicing with a ball throwing machine. The machine broke constantly, so Head tore it apart and re-designed it. Approaching the company with some improvements, instead be purchased Prince Sports
Prince Sports
Prince Sports, Inc., based in Bordentown, New Jersey, is a manufacturer of equipment for racquet sports, primarily for tennis, badminton, and squash....
outright. Continuing development of the aluminum racquet, Head invented the modern oversized design that revolutionized the industry.