Ski press ?

[Guest]

Just wanted to say how great of a site this is... very informative

A quick question though: Is it possible to make the ski press without the use of the fire hose? I was planning on making the molds and then just pressing them togeather with a farm press. To distribute the pressure i was going to put a big steel beam on each side. Will this distribute it enough or is the hose a vital component??

[kelvin]

Thanks, welcome to the board.

You don't need a firehose, but it is probably the easiest way. The nice thing about the firehose is that it puts even pressure along and across the ski while conforming closely to the bottom mold. You can build a hydraulic press and have a really stiff bottom and top beam. You would also have to make a bottom mold with an exact fitting top mold. The top mold would also need to have space for the ski material. This is fine for production skis, where you make a lot of the same exact ski, but for our purposes, it's not really feasible, since you would have to make a new mold every time you changed ski design.

If you want to see a hydraulic press, take a look at the video from claw skis. They use car bottle jacks.

http://www.clawskis.com/movie.htm

Kelvin

[MonkeyButt]

Thanks for all the help. I would go fire hose but we are trying to be as cheap as possible being we are both college students. Anyway, thanks again and i am sure there will be a myriad of questions to come

[kelvin]

Another option and probably the lowest cost is a vacuum press. You won't be able to get the same pressures as a pneumatic or hydraulic press, but it should be workable. All you need to build is the bottom mold and have a way of vacuum baggin it. You can buy a vacuum pump or build one out of an old refridgerator compressor.

http://www.berkut13.com/sucker.htm

kelvin