Thanks Kelvin - you heat prior to mixing with the hardener I take it?

~$3500 for the first pair!

:-)

No real damage done - I saw it melting and stopped using it immediately - because it evaporates so quickly there was only a very small area affected and it was just surface damage. Generally the layup went well. I have the following observations on layup: 1) Alignment: I used 2 small dowels to align...

another reason to avoid acetone...

... it melts ABS :-(

Not too much damage done!

B.

What solvents/detergents are people using to clean components prior to layup? I have been handling bases with sweaty palms and my edges are bound to have some grease from the bender bearings. What do you use for cleaning and why? T.I.A. B. P.S. After a very slow year long build process (interrupted ...

Thanks Teleman - I will try some hammering...

B.

Thanks Hafte, I just read the post about only going 3/4 way round the tip. This largely solves the problem for me as it is the final bit that seems to cause me hassle, so I think that I will take this approach! I would still welcome pictures of how you actually manipulate the edge in the bending too...

OK, So we built the press, made a custom heating system with temperature controller, I pursueded CAMAX to do a run of M5 inserts, crafted six sets of beautiful cores with ABS edges attached, ordered all the fibreglass and resin and it was all going sooooo smoothly until... ... I tried to bend the ed...

This is great stuff...

Thetradwoodboat - Did you have a flat 'platform' underfoot on either of these skis or did you start the taper from the CC? If a platform what length was it?

No offense taken - too be honest my spreadsheet is way ahead of where I am in reality which is looking to press my first pair and judging how thick to go, hence my desire to get some gross input.


B.

Endre, I understand that the flex varies along the length of the ski (give me some credit I wrote a fairly in depth spreadsheet analysing the things :-) I think you are missing my point. While skis have many different flex patterns, my experience in testing is that the gross deflection from a point ...

Thanks Endre, I got that, but it doesn't really answer my questions above. I am seeing from my spreadsheet model that to replicate the deflections/stiffnesses seen in commercial skis that the underfoot core thickness should be close to 13mm. There are a lot of approximations and some of them (notica...

P.S. - I have now updated the SS to address a couple of things (wrong weighting of fiberglass layers). and added the plots of a couple of outliers from commercial skis.

Find the new one here:

http://ben.arlett.googlepages.com/Skidimmsexe.xls

B.

Apologies for posting this twice - I didn't notice this thread before posting a new one! Anyway: I have done a bit of work looking at the deflection profiles of some of my commercial skis in comparison with my theoretical model before my first build. Two things have come out of this: 1) The commerci...

I have done a bit of work looking at the deflection profiles of some of my commercial skis in comparison with my theoretical model before my first build. Two things have come out of this: 1) The commercial skis that I have tested vary surprisingly little. Differences seem to be confined to having so...