Delamination, Bamboo core

[petemorgan(pmoskico)]

Pmo ski co had its very first delamination last weekend. the ski had about 20 days of skiing on them.

The skis used vertical bamboo flooring and i suspect that poor surface prep was the culprit.

The base is delaming at the tail, full width of the ski and about 6 inches long into the ski. you could easily peal the entire base off. the base and fiberglass are still bonded well to each other. the bottom of the core is fairly shiny still indicating to me that the surface prep was poor.

I had purchased some vertical grain bamboo flooring, as i know a lot of SB folks have. I sanded the finish coat, but maybe i didnt penetrate deep enough to fully remove the finish coat. maybe if i would have used a planner to remove the finish coat, but i didnt want to dull my planer blade. oh well.

my friend is going to reattach the tail and ride em until the wheels fall off (completely).

well, good thing i didnt make too many skis using bamboo cores... 4 pairs total. we shall see if it happens to any of the others. hopefully my surface prep was better on the others.

i just wanted to give folks a heads up about the surface prep being important.

side note: bamboo is my least favorite species of "wood" (its grass) to work with. it makes my skin itch and dulls my tools quick. now i have another reason not to use it. that said, i know alot of people are successful at using bamboo. it just sucked at its initial interview/internship with me.

[twizzstyle]

Buy unfinished flooring boards only. I have had zero issues and do no surface prep, straight from the planer (or now the CNC) to layup, no sanding.

[ProbsMagobs]

Unfinished is definitely better but you still don't need to use them. To save your planer you could joint the bottom of your cores or saw off the bottom 1/16" on a table saw. If its not perfectly flat after that you should be fine with 1 pass on your planer without too much blade wear

[falls]

Poor bamboo
I use a hand electric planer with cheap replaceable blades + belt sander to remove the finish. No Delams so far. You can use finished flooring boards, but its an extra PITA step that I would prefer to avoid.
It might be the finish on the boards that makes you itch. Either way I would steer clear of the bamboo fibre underwear that seems to be all the rage at the moment