It all started a year ago, september 2009 actually, I was out running and as usual thinking of the upcomming winter and skiing. It suddenly appeared to me that why not try to build my own skis? When I got home I switched on my computer and searched google. The first thing comming up was skibuilders.com. And I had no idea that this site even existed before. I thought that this must be one of the best accidental occurrence of my life! Every info I needed in one site, fabulous!
First of all I'll have to thank everybody for a great site and a special thank to OAC who have helped me out with the core and some other tricky stuff!
Off to the budget then. My economic situation isn't the best since I'm studying and got some other projects aswell. My goal was to keep it as simple as possible and I can't say that I failed! I've saved every receipt from everything I've bought for the project and my calculation gave me a result of about 7000 swedish crowns, which is about 1000usd today. And I got material for three more pairs!!! (maybe I need to buy some extra epoxy, but whatever)
The buiding:
Press
My press is a clamp style press with firehose and cat-track (inspired by schoeckl(name?)) Instead of using a compressor I filled it up with water.
I figuered it was a lot cheaper to do it that way(pretty safe too).
Unfortunately I lost my camera in Italy last year and it had all pictures of the progress so far
Anyway, here's some images from the press progress after.The top and bottom mold together
(Success! After an hour I finally found out how to post pictures!)
The press is made for one ski only so it's pretty narrow, (15cm)
It's made for pressing rocker skis, but I started off building a mold for low-profile rocker.
The mold is made of one single mdf board, 12mm thick. Cant remeber the other dimensions but it was about 2440mm x 1220mm (something like that).
Added two clamps and ran a test.
Closer pictures of the tip/tail section of the press.
The test was OK but to be sure I added two more clamps for more pressure.
Material:
Got a package from skibuilders
Started to cut the base material and put the edges on with some super glue
Some triax
Cutting
The finished core with spacers
As you can see I did a "minor" failure when drilling for the binding inserts
I drew, for some reason, the lines on the core the wrong way round. Still can't see how I could do such an easy mistake... Fixed it by cutting the spacers in different sizes. And yes, the flex is a bit different between the skis after that faux pas... Preparing the topsheet
Pressing:
Preparing everthing before pressing
Skis in the press for 72h, (another benefit with the clamp press, I could leave it pressing for weeks if I want to. No electricity needed!)
It was kind of messy in the workspace afterwards!
Some days later, opening it up!
The ski!
The pair!
The layup:
Clear skibuilders topsheet
Triax 750g fiberglas
maple-poplar core (maple sidewalls)
Triac 750g fiberglas
Durasurf 2001 base (skibuilders)
Ski dimensions:
138-116-133
Full rocker
The finished ski
Now for the problem
For some reason the ski "turned round its own axis" (if you can say so) (check picture)
Got to figuere that out until next pair!
Read somewhere that I should ride them, and ride them hard when testing. So I did!
Brought them to St Anton last week and skied them. Unfortunately we the snow quality was the worst I've ever seen. The first days I found some pow but after that we had rain so no more powder skiing. What I found out was that they skied powder just as I could imagine, floating and surfing. Thet felt unsinkable! What suprised me most was the piste performance. When I was pressing on the edges they carved nice and big GS turns! Had some smaller delaminations but got it superglued so I don't think that there should be any more problems with that.
Finishing of with some nice mountain pics from the Austrian Alps
Questions and feedback please!
Happy skiing!
// Richard
