@odin: i saw your skateboard press frame made of osb boards on your myspace.
awesome idea...i wonder what pressures you're using and maybe if you could use it as a ski press as well (maybe with some reinforcements).

yeah, that was him...but he built it himself "ghetto style" ;) mine is a standard product used in industrial heating applications. width is about 59cm, it's supposed to reach 90°C at 100V (at least thats what the letter that came with it says) and the max. temp is 130°C. only downer is tha...

my new carbon heating blankets have arrived today! (the cheap and energy saving ones )
i'm in a lot of stress right now due to some upcoming exams, but i should be able to have them up and running till the end of may.
will post a writeup on them asap.

if the blankets i'm getting samples of are working as a press heating, they would be a cheap alternative to the silicone blankets at approx. 15eur / m at 50cm width.
i'll make a post on them as soon as i have them up and running!

you can get it from some european suppliers like www.swiss-composite.ch or www.r-g.de
don't know any US suppliers though.

or try www.basaltex.com in belgium.

btw, do you know which type of basalt fiber (type of roving e.g. biax, triax, ud,... and what weight) to use best?

i hope you're going to post some details on the construction

ratchet straps might be hard to get the pressure distributed evenly. but you could use bags made of cordura which shouldn't be hard to come by (i'll be getting mine from montucky madman from this great forum). have a look at this thread to get the idea: http://www.skibuilders.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.ph...

haha, why not make the whole board out of jb weld...hell, it might be even perfect to build a press frame

i've already found their patent on the net (only in german though). didn't bother to read it. i've talked to a guy who sells WPC = wood-plastic-composite ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood-plastic_composite ) which is used as terrace flooring. he'll send me some samples so i can test the bonding wi...

here's a pic showing the sidewall of my völkl squad prime 08. it looks like the sidewalls consist of horizontally laminated veneer (dunno which wood, i guess bamboo). they seem to withstand the regular park abuse pretty well. http://666kb.com/i/b7xjdawnivou2e14r.jpg edit: i've talked to the owners o...

well, thats what i was looking at. but the bamboo flooring i found is always some kind of laminate or only 5mm thick if it's not laminated.

i'm planning on using bamboo sidewalls in my snowboard. problem is i have a hard time finding solid strips of bamboo that are big enough. the standard bamboo strips (used for bow building mostly) are only 5mm thick (my core is 7mm max.). so the sidewalls would be only 5mm thick which is a tad narrow...

SI-Cores is in Slovenia ;) there are a couple of others out there (all in europe). one is hessco from switzerland ( http://www.hessco.ch/website.php?id=/index/en/Produkte/ski-snowboardkerne.htm ) and the one i'll buy my snowboard cores at (standard 160cm poplar core 7mm thick for 7 EUR / core!) is t...

i think so...they are made like thickness planers except that they have a sanding drum instead of blades.

you should go to your local woodshop and see if they have one you could try out.
but i think it could work pretty well, since it doesn't tear the wood apart like a regular planer blade does.