Hey dude, I have been building skis for a while, and will be home (in the 'ham) over the holidays if you wanna check out some of my ski designs. I currently don't have a press in b'ham cause I am living the dream in Sweden (have a press and am building here). But, if you wanna see some wicked skis, ...

Sweet to see that it all worked out with the first pair!

The first thing I thought of when I saw your heating system was something else Tennessee is famous for... MOONSHINE!

Way to turn the still into something equally useful

Cross-country skis should be the same method as downhill skis, just no edges, and less complicated sidecut. You will want to add a lot of camber though, and use a stiffer core. I am planning on building some in the next few months, but I was going to pre-shape the camber in the ski by building the c...

Well, at least you didn't get any garbage between the layers... I had one pair that somehow managed to pick up a piece of dowel material under the top sheet... when the ski came out of the press, it had a giant wart! So, like a human wart, I sliced the top sheet, retrieved the cancerous piece, and p...

I guess I should have qualified my remark about "touring out the back door"... I consider a "successful" ski tour as getting at least 50m of total vertical, including 1 turn. But, where I am living, that usually means about 10 km of touring, and the turn is usually one really lon...

I'd like to be able to answer you with experience, but I would bet that the space bags would work for the vacuum bag. As for the vacuum cleaner as a vacuum pump... I don't think anyone has tried that before. I recommend testing it out. You could have just found the "holy grail" of vacuum p...

It probably adds a little bit of rigidity, depending on what it is made of. It also could add a fair bit of damping. Mostly my experience has been that topsheets just add weight though.

Stenmark, I think you just need to come up to Norrland. I took a ski tour from my front door last weekend.

I am just going to second the "no poles" thing. I have been doing more and more skiing without poles the last couple years and have found it very liberating. People who care to much about how they look may tell you that "you must use poles" but they are 100% wrong for most of the...

For further confirmation of the fact that epoxy is waterproof, just ask yourself... would you build a boat out of epoxy and fiberglass if the end product wasn't waterproof?

Wow, I really like that idea. That could have saved me a lot of hassle with nails and such. Thanks for posting the picture!!! It was worth a thousand words.

I have used 2x4's and they worked great.

My next one is going to be done with plywood or masonite, and made extra fancy.

The one time I used MDF, the MDF collapsed under the load of the fire hose, so I have been trying to stay away from materials that consist mostly of glue.

If you can get it, QCM is really awesome stuff. Plus, they are pretty supportive of skibuilders, and they actually have engineer folks you can talk to.

That, and a smaller wimpier press can be a little more difficult to work with, and less reliable. This especially goes for my experience with presses fit for 1 ski. It just plain takes a long time to make a pair of skis, and a lot of effort to get matching pairs. You might start with a vacuum press ...