allyson's skis

[allyson]

so, my 1st homebuilt pair of skis are coming along. base material is cut out, cores are profiled, and edges are glued on. if all goes well, i will be pressing them sometime this week. the skis are based off of a blend of rossi rip chicks and black diamond arc angels. dimesions are the same as the rip chicks: 120/83/110.

i'm still trying to decide on the graphics, but i'm leaning towards a girlified theme. pink? sparkly? with flowers? hmm, we shall see. any ideas?

[plywood]

i really do like pink - but i already liked it before it was mainstream. if you paint a pink design on a black ground it really looks killer. and not even too much "girly".



i like pink/black nearly as much as a shiny green on black ground just don`t overload it with pink flowers, then it can get too much of pink

[allyson]

that's quite a manly use of pink, plywood! i'd say both stylish and fashionable. i hadn't thought of combining pink with black though, and i like that idea. thanks!

[RoboGeek]

reminds me of a truck mud guard.. lol

[allyson]

the think pinks came out of the press just the other day, here is the link to a photo:
http://www.skibuilders.com/cpg/albums/u ... Skis01.jpg
i went with a light pink flowered flannel for the left ski, and a darker pink cotton for the right, with embroidered flower patches (which are hard to see on the right ski--the epoxy made them a lot darker). since most of the ski's anatomy is rossi rip chick, i thought they'd be almost identical. both are the same length, but the pinks are stiffer with a longer riding edge. we'll see how different they are when i get to take them out for a test drive...come on, winter!

[plywood]

they look nice!
every cloth gets a little darker when wetted with epoxy. a way to lighten it up is to put some white paper under the cloth. i used a heavier paper because they are thicker so they won`t get "transparent" when wet - worked fine. the cloth got still a little darker, but the result was way better than without.

[allyson]

that's a good idea with the white paper. i actually used two layers of the solid fabric, as an attempt to mask the wood from showing through, but it didn't completely work. for my next pair, i think i'll try your trick. might make the colors a little brighter as well.

[plywood]

yep, i`ve experienced that too.
here`s a pic of some tests i did for my second pair:



the original cloth is on the left, the one in the middle is with the thick white paper under the cloth and on the right side i just lamiated the cloth. i think the difference is visible. but it is really important to use a thicker paper. on the test with normal paper the paper got transparent again and you could see the wood shine through

[allyson]

i can tell the difference from your pic, the paper does make a nice improvement. what kind of paper do you recommend? do you notice that it affects the weight of the ski much?

[plywood]

the paper i used is...well... i think it`s made for drawing with watercolour. we often used it in kindergarten and primary school, so it`s really common. it is maybe two to three times as thick as normal paper for pc-printers (so it doesn`t get curly when the watercolour dries as normal paper does). furthermore it doesn`t have a smooth surface as the normal A4-sheets, it has a bit "texture" and you can see like...fibres if you look really close.

i think the best is if you start looking for paper adapted for drawing with watercolour or aquarelle.

i just weighted some leftovers i got. completely wetted a stripe of 15 x 45cm and after dripping of it was 25g. so it adds maybe 80g or so to a ski, inkl. epoxy.

maybe there are better solutions... you could take normal paper for sure, it would lighten up the background a little, but not that much. i`d recommend to do some easy testings, just wet the paper you want to use with water and you`ll see if it gets transparent.

[allyson]

cool, i'll give it a shot with the watercolor paper next time. thanks!