These are my first pair. I wanted to start with something I was familiar with (as a sort of baseline) so I patterned them after my Volkl Racetiger RC's.They're a slalom/GS hybrid, so the waist is pretty narrow (67mm) and they have fairly aggressive sidecut (17m). In the picture though, both the narrowness of the waist and the amount of sidecut appear more pronounced because I beveled the sidewalls.
Vacuum press and fairly standard construction. The core is poplar/cherry and I used a planer/crib to profile. I haven't profiled cores with a router and sled, but using the planer was quick, easy and resulted in very smoothly profiled cores. Took less than an hour to build the crib. Rather than build in sidewall material (and therefore, cut the cores to shape), I decided to go with epoxy coated wood sidewalls (more later). This allowed me to press both skis at the same time as a single double-wide core blank with both bases kept in place using pins. Other than speeding up the production process, it also helped ensure that the tip/tail/camber profiles of the two skis were identical. For a topsheet I used a quilted maple veneer.
For the most part the pressing went well, except that I got some air bubbles under the center sections of both skis. The air bubbles appear to be both between the p-tex and glass, as well as between the glass and underside of the core. I did try to roll out any trapped air, but.....is it possible that epoxy which got into the pins started to set before I got it into the bag and under pressure, preventing the core from being fully pressed against the base? Or, could the pressure on the excess core areas, where it wasn't supported underneath by the bases, have caused the core to "bow" over the bases? BTW, the pump I used was pulling around 27" of Hg.
The other problem which became apparent at this point was that the skis are very soft. I profiled the core to 2mm at the tip, 10mm at the waist and 3mm for the tail. I also only put one layer of glass (biax of unknown weight that I had kicking around) between the base and core, and between the core and topsheet. There's the general narrowness of the skis as well....Oh well, considered this first pair as a trial run, anyhow....
For the sidewalls, I was concerned that even if I beveled and epoxied them, the epoxy coating would, more and more, get ground off as I sharpened the edges. So, I replaced the bearing on the bevel bit with one that was 1/8" smaller which added a 1/16" rabbet to the bevel. 1/16" looks awfully small on a ruler, but I think, now, more than I needed. Next time I'll try a 1/32" rabbet instead. In any case, after bevel/rabbeting the sidewalls, I set the skis on edge, but not quite perpendicular, so that the sidewalls were level, added some tape extending off the edge of the topsheet to create a barrier and then "back-filled" the rabbet until the epoxy was flush with the exposed metal edge. This gave me a 1/16" coating of epoxy over the wood sidewalls.
Something that came out kind of cool, but completely unplanned, was that the sidecut just barely cuts through the outer strips of poplar in the cores and exposes a cherry strip under the center section of the ski for a two-tone effect.
After sanding the veneer tops, I applied two coats of epoxy and then a couple coats of spar urethane for UV protection. Applying a smooth coat of epoxy was difficult and required a lot of sanding after. I found a suggestion for a curved squeegee type applicator that will hopefully help next time.
For graphics, I simply printed them out on large clear packing label sheets (from Staples) and put them on before the epoxy coats.
