Ski Builders Forum

Hi everyone, first post here and I'm already asking some stupid thing, I know...but..try to remember how enthusiastic you were when you started making your own skis and remember that when you'll think this guy is crazy!
I wanna make a ski for myself 'cause it's not in the market yet, or is too expensive so I will ask some help, in the way of ideas and advice, since I understand that probably no one have tried what I'm thinking...so:

I've got this crazy idea of making my first skis "spooned" and I would easily stole the idea from dps doing a band on the side in the taperd part of the tip..56cm long, 1cm wide that rise to the sdie 3mm.
I've done the project for the mold but I'm not certain about the actually ski construction, I was thinking of doing it keeping the core for the flat part, and doing the band that rise sideways with the tip spacer..what do you think about it?

Matteo

There are some Elan skis with spooned tips: http://www.elanskis.com/de/technology/tbt.html

chrismp wrote:There are some Elan skis with spooned tips

I've seen it, thanks Chris...I can guess that I already know all the skis with left to right rocker on the market, and dps way of achieving that, it seems to me the best..at least from what I've read...

Depends on what you want...if you're after a powder ski, then dps' way is probably the best.

There are some threads on here which might be helpful. However, no one on this forum has ever pressed a 3d shaped ski as far as I'm aware. Here's the most recent one: http://www.skibuilders.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4479

I'll say the same thing I say to every new builder - keep it simple the first time. If you get over ambitious. you won't end up with skiable skis, you'll spend a lot of money, and you'll give up the hobby.

Pair #1 should be a standard ski - you've got a lot to learn just to make a flat ski! Then pair #2 you can start getting experimental, that's when the real fun starts.

i agree with Twizz, that's high level shit bro. keep it simple stupid.


But the discussion is not a bad one to have.

I saw ignious skis in Jackon, WY doing a boat-hull ski. (i think that is a better description for this rather than spoon) It looked super sick and probably would be really fun to ski in deep shit.

Also i think head skis made some. The hull was fairly slight, which i think is a good idea. you dont want this boat-hull tip to be unreasonable. just a slight hull.

I remember that head-skis put an edge down the middle of the tip hull. See high-level shit bro.

i dig it though. one of the reasons i have been considering going back to vacuum bagging. (and that i just was gifted a tits-ma-gee vacuum pump)

We got a whole snowboard to have a 3d convex base by putting triax basalt on top and biax (0-90) carbon on bottom (or was it the other way around?) I've thought maybe we could spoon out a ski tip by tapering out the triax used for the whole ski, so that it comes to a point just above the bindings, and cutting the reverse shape out of biax carbon and continuing it out the rest of the ski. The issue i foresee is that a ski is not so wide so it may not create as much effect as you would like, but i don't think it has to be so exaggerated to get a good benefit.

Otherwise get a 3d mold milled out of aluminum, plus the exact reverse of it. glue the mold to your bottom cassette and the reverse of it to the top cassette and press it up with a regular cat track and press. your mold would have to be such that the ski base is still on the cassette and the mold just flares the edges up a bit. i'm thinking gradually from say, 600mm back from the tip here.

it will be expensive and time consuming and frustrating and demoralizing, and potentially rewarding, just like all aspects of ski building!

Im going to try spooning the nose of my next board by adding some carbon on top of the glass above the core.
Does anyone think 2 layers of carbon on top will pull more than one layer?

Goz, as by buddy said above . We build a board with a convex base. It rides awesome in all conditions. The 90 degree carbon was on the bottom, not the top. carbon will not pull when cured on top, it will do the opposite. Uni placed at 90 degrees on the bottom will give you your desisted effect of spooning. That being said. If the uni is place there ontop or below glass. The effect will be minimal, because it stacked on somthing with different thermal properties when cured. Our board had 0/90 carbon on the bottom only, no other composite. The top layer full triad basalt.

Cheers D.
Saved me from wrecking a board there ;-)
Since I only want to spoon the nose what if I cut the glass short, where the nose transition starts and used 90 degree carbon for the remainder?

Are you going to taper the biax or CNC the mould?

Im just going to use my regular mould and try to pull it with the asymetric layup

Goz...yes. That sounds right. I would also add some carbon in the 0 direction or you might have a really soft tip.

I have some 0/90 carbon that I will use.

I just tried to spoon a noboard with uni glas running the length of the board top and bottom and a layer of 90 degrees on top of the top layer. Heat form above. It came out the other way around.. Don't really understand it.
The aimed for full rocker came out just fine but the spoon turned itself inside out.

the uni glas has a few strands going 90 to weave it all together. 80% 0 degrees 20% at 90 or something like that.
Normal layups with triax top and bottom always come out flat and I usually use a flat form and heat for camber/rocker. any ideas to why it didn't work? Did I skip in class?