He thought that if you could ski on snow, you could ski on water. Of course, everyone thought he was nuts, but he experimented anyway. Samuelson did not figure out how to waterski overnight. He first tried being towed behind a boat using barrel staves.
Barrel staves are the narrow curved strips of wood that make up a barrel.
They did not work. He tried snow skis next. They did not work well either. Finally, Samuelson decided to make a pair of skis himself. He then boiled the boards' tips in his mother's copper kettle.