All Mountain Snowboard for Hard Boots

[mark]

...or at least that's the plan.

Made up the core blank today...


Started with pine, bass, and ash for the insert stringers.





Checking to make sure the core will be wide enough with the inserts centered in the ash.





The glue up.





Slices of the laminated block, book matched and ready to be glued together.





The finished blank.





Naturaly I wore my safety glasses.
The wire mesh side shields work great for keeping the sawdust out of the eyes and they look way,Way creepier than ski goggles.

[rockaukum]

Core looks great. What process did you use to rip the core in half? Was it in a bandsaw or what? Detail the process if you would. I would think a bandsaw, but how do you get it all square and not wandering?
ra

[mark]

Table saw.

I squared up three edges of the glued up block on the jointer, raised the blade on the saw to near max, and made two passes (flipping the piece between passes) for each 1/2" slice.

This method chews up quite a bit of wood due to the saw kerf and slight misalignment of the blade between the two cuts, but a band saw is liable to wander that much anyway, and bandsaws can do tragic things to something this tall (excepting, of course, if they are monstorous big and set up just so).

[doughboyshredder]

Nice. Once I get a functional press going I might build a hardboot carving board. Been a long time since I rode a pair of hardboots though. Are you going to swallowtail it, like the old sims burners? Nice book matched core! Damn, where did all the wood go? Seriously. I am surprised that you could only get one core blank from that many boards (1"x4"s??).

[G-man]

Hey rockaukum,

Thought I'd share my band saw experience with you. I managed to score a really old and heavy (about 500 lbs) cast iron band saw about a year ago ($150). I think it has 16" wheels, so it's not super big. It came with a big box full of brand new re-saw blades. With this set-up, I can cut a 6 1/2" depth with absolutely no wandering. A 1/32nd follow-up cut on the planer is all it takes to make the surface perfectly smooth. I bet I could cut very nice 1/16th thick slices (6 1/2" deep) if I wanted to. The band saw is only about 3 1/2 feet tall, excluding the wooden rolling stand that it sits on.

I have 3 band saws, one a bit smaller than the above saw, and one a lot bigger. The biggest saw has 36 inch wheels and is a big (old) scary monster that stands about 8 feet tall. It'll cut 12" deep, but it wanders like crazy, as does the smallest saw. I think it's the heft and the more precise construction of the mid size saw, and (maybe mostly) the special re-saw blades that makes it cut so well.

Anyway, if you happen to be cruising a garage sale and see a big old cast iron band saw that no one wants cause it's so heavy, grab that dude (with a block-and-tackle). I'm betting that there are other site members who have mid-sized band saws that cut well, too. Maybe we'll hear from some of them about there rigs.

Oh, I'm still planning on turning the smallest saw into a wet band saw for trimming flash from the pressed skis... either that, or set up a monstrous dust collection system. I can't believe that in many (most?) of the factory videos that I've seem, the guys that are operating the band saws are not wearing any kind of breathing protection. I'm guessing that this means that their dust collection systems are capturing all of the glass particles that are generated from the cutting operation. I hope that's the case.

Didn't mean to drift so much. Great work, Mark.

G-man

[mark]

Are you going to swallowtail it, like the old sims burners?

Nope.

Nice book matched core!

Thanks!

Damn, where did all the wood go? Seriously. I am surprised that you could only get one core blank from that many boards (1"x4"s??).

3 1/2" wide, so the same width as a 1x4. I got 3 cores out of it. The plan is to make 2 snowboards and one pair of skis. I was thinking I'd build them one at a time so as not to make the same mistake 3 times.

[mark]

G-man.

You're not suggesting that a 500lb band saw with wheels wide enough to take a proper re-saw blade isn't "monstorous big" are you?

I've got motorcycles that weigh less than that!

I'd love to see a photo of how you have it set up. Do you use a typical fence or a vertical bar for re-sawing?

[SRP]

Mark, Great work on the cores. I have done a little resawing on my bandsaw (18" old laguna) and have been able to resaw to 10" with out much wandering. I do use a fence similar to what Mark is describing. It's made of 3/4" ply and mounts to my regular fence. The ply fence comes to a rounded point just before the blade, this is the only point of contact when I resaw. Go slow, have a good blade and proper tension. I'm just learning, but it has worked for me. I will try to post a pic later tonight.
Scott

[mark]

Thanks for the replies everyone.

Got a little more done this week.

Cut mdf for the camber mold, thickness profile jig, and templates. Used the saw at work.





The finished template. I spray adhesived a paper template to mdf, then bandsawed, belt sanded, planed, and scraped to the line.





Once the template was made, it was used to mark the inside edge of the sidewalls by shifting it 10mm off center for each side. Then I used the jigsaw....





... and cleaned up the cut with a hand plane.



I plan to use cherry for the sidewalls.


Oh, and here is the shape I'm building.

[mark]

Finished up a little more on the core this week.

Epoxied the sidewalls on.



I'm using cherry, primarily so I don't have to worry about bonding issues on my first board.



The core with side walls.





My profiling jig. As you can see, it's super complex.



The one piece goes on top of the second piece, and that other piece goes inbetween. The thickness of the inbetween piece is determined by subtracting the thickness of the tip or tail from the the under-foot thickness of the core. The length of the taper is determined by where the row of screws, shown to the right in the photo, are placed.



The core was held in place with some well counter-sunk screws in the exra bits beyond the tip or tail depending on which end was being worked.





Running through the thickness planer. The 3/4" mdf held up fine for a 34cm taper. It produced a profile with a very slight wave to it. The core bridged a bit on the shorter tail taper (shown in photo). For this one I decided to leave the tail a bit thicker to compensate. In the future I'll try countersinking screws in the core at the start of the taper and filling the holes afterwards.






The tapered core.

[plywood]

solid work!
why did you use an other wood for the sidewalls? has it something to do with the woodgrains, so do you think with such wooden sidewalls you get stronger sidewalls than if you just took the normal core?

[MartinJern]

Nice work there!

I guess the reason for glueing the sidewalls on after cutting the shape is to reduce the amount of exposed endgrains, right? and ofcourse it looks great!

Running through the thickness planer. The 3/4" mdf held up fine for a 34cm taper. It produced a profile with a very slight wave to it. The core bridged a bit on the shorter tail taper (shown in photo). For this one I decided to leave the tail a bit thicker to compensate. In the future I'll try countersinking screws in the core at the start of the taper and filling the holes afterwards.

Nice and simle profiling crib!
This method seems to be the way to go, but i've seen people doing it withot screwing down the core just using griptape to hold it in place.
I would have been worried that i ruin th planer with the screws...

and why do u think i got wavy? is it the planer or the crib?

[mark]

Thanks fellas,

You're both right about the sidewalls. They are a seperate piece of wood in order to not have exposed endgrain and also to give a little more strength to the edge.

I used screws instead of grip-tape because it's what I had on hand. My plan for building this jig was different and far more complicated originaly. This design was thought up just as I walked down to the basement to build it. There I was with the jig complete in 10 minutes and no grip tape on hand.

The wave is just a slight rounding of the transition areas from the tip to taper and taper to plateau under the feet. It's actualy a good thing, not like chatter or any thing like that.

[mark]

Got a little more done this past week:

Routed the base material



I clamped the material down one side of the mdf template and cut the other side, then clamped the cut side so nothing would shift before cutting the other.



Used the mdf template to pre-bend the edges







Tacking the edges to the base



I glued the running length on both sides before wrapping the tip and tail.




The camber mold





I cut one piece by hand and used it as a pattern to make the rest with the router, then glued and nailed them together. It's wide enough to bag a snowboard on and will probably accomodate two skis as well.




Getting close to the lay-up, but in the mean time, here's a puppy and an alligator.






-Mark

[alexisg1]

what the f..k !
I almost got scared

Your work seems very clean, almost professional !
Cant wait to see the results