Chilton Skis

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grainhog
Posts: 13
Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2016 12:33 pm
Location: Missoula, MT

Chilton Skis

Post by grainhog »

I'm in Missoula, MT. I have a background in fine woodworking and furniture design. I first resolved to build skis from local wood in August 2015, around the time I started grad school. Since then,
  • I raised a few grand to build some "prototypes",
  • Synthesized some info from this forum, integrated my own understanding of making stuff, built a pair in a buddy's wood shop, and skied the dog piss out of them, won some dough in a business plan competition, and built some more prototypes in another buddy's wood shop,
  • Made a promotional film and launched a successfully-funded Kickstarter campaign,
  • Did my best to optimally allocate the resultant $28,300 toward the achievement of my newfound obligations,
  • Bought an I-beam press from a guy in Driggs, ID, built kind of according to the Happy Monkey plans,
  • Almost burned out several times, whilst squandering more of the Kickstarter dough than I care to admit on shit that didn't really manifest according to plan,
  • Got some game-time assistance from a couple members of the forum,
  • Completed 25 subsequent pairs of (I'll call them version 1.3) skis, delivered half to Kickstarter backers, kept half for "inventory", and kept a pair of 174's that I proceeded to ski the absolute dog piss out of,
  • Devised a range of schemes to compete for public sector funding, which I continue to try to pull off, and
  • Did some other stuff, some of which I remember and some of which I don't.

Some of the facets of this hellatious process can be observed on www.chiltonskis.com and @chiltonskis on IG/FB.

I hope eventually to elaborate on some parts of the sequence of events outlined above in subsequent posts, for the potential benefit of the skibuilders community as well as I guess for my own documentary and therapeutic purposes, time permitting. To maximize the value of this effort, I'm appealing here to the community for any input as to what parts, if any, might be most useful, or amusing, to hear about. Thanks.
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