Wow, 100 degrees is pretty hot with that much humidity! I just finished pressing my 7th pair of skis in my single ski press. So far, I have only had one pair of skis that lost their camber or tip height (the bremallows) but that was my first pair and there were lots of other problems with those skis...

I believe that the edges are rolled while hot before they are heat treated. I suppose this could be done with the metal cold, but edges have a pretty high hardness. I am guessing that they are made of some sort of low alloy high tensile steel. I work in a machine shop at a shipyard, and the closest ...

That's great to hear that the skis are doing so well. As for rivets, I use them if I think the bonding is at all unquestionable, or if you are making a pair of skis that are going to see a lot of slapping (like landing jumps or skiing moguls, yuck). I love the way homemade skis ski, but one thing I ...

I use an old delta contractor table saw. I have been really impressed with it, and would say that the older equipment is often as good if not better than a lot of the newer power tools. I agree with Kelvin that a good thin kerf blade (carbide tipped is a must) is the key to good cuts. Next though, i...

My press is an end loader that is 8' long. The idea is that I can make skis up to about 230cm if I wanted to! So far, most of my skis have been in the 190-200cm range, and there is lots of room to work with in the press.

I am currently building a pair of skis out of pine as well, and so far I think it should work out alright. I am going to use knife threaded inserts for the bindings to make sure they don't pull out, but aside from that, they are looking good so far. On sidewalls: I have only used wood sidewalls, but...

Lennart,
Thanks for the great info. I can't wait to get over there!

Hey all (especially you Swedes) I just got accepted to graduate school in Lulea, Sweden (way up north). I am wondering if any of you are familiar with the snow conditions they get up there so that I can build a couple pairs of skis to take with me. Mostly I am wondering how dry the powder is there, ...

I used some similar, much lower quality though, inserts and they have worked great. I am using salomon downhill bindings and the inserts hold them extremely well. One thing to note is that it took a lot of effort to mount the inserts compared with just mounting a pair of bindings using the normal way.

In my opinion, making a really good ski is getting the layup just right, and thereby improving the reliability of the ski. Second to that is building a ski that is just plain fun in whatever conditions you ski. For instance, if you ski a lot of powder, you should build a fat reverse sidecut ski, if ...

I to have had those issues when doing woodworking. And, I think you are dead on in that grinding material off of the base removes material that is in tension (the base) and allows the remaining base material to stretch more. This would cause the reduction in camber that you saw, but it sounds like y...

I mount alpine bindings straight into the skis, without a metal binding sheet, and I have only had one screw pull out (I drilled the hole oversized though, so it was to be expected), I have not mounted with softwoods though (just maple, ash, and mahogony). One trick you can do is to load up the moun...

with gregs method you could mark 3 points of the curve...either end and the midpoint then bend to those 3 marks and that would give you a more consistent...known...curve. That's pretty much what I do, I just use pins at the ends because I am not coordinated enough to hold both ends, bend the stick,...

I don't use CAD to draw my skis, but to draw a radius, I put a pin at either end of the radius. Then I take a long thin piece of wood and bend it to the curve I want. Then, I take a pencil and trace the curve. It is a pretty primitive method, but it seems to work really well, and produces pretty nic...

Those dimensions should make for a pretty good powder ski. I am pretty convinced that 150 to 160 mm wide is about as wide as you ever want in a ski. Much wider and you have to really keep your legs spread just to keep the skis from running over each other. You will probably have to put leashes on th...