Wood Core Designs

     New this season is a wood core design I'm working on that takes advantage of an extremely hard and dense wood called Ipe. Ipe is known by many other names such as Ipe Brazil, Amapa, Cortex, Guayacan, Flor Amrillo, Greenheart, Madera negra, Tahuari, Lapacho negro.

     Sticking with the concept of avoiding as much plastic as possible, I'll be using Ipe for the sidewall. It's 2.5 - 3 times harder than ash and maple. The wood core will consist of 5 stringers of your choice of wood depending on the firmness and flex you desire. Current wood offerings are poplar, douglas fir, maple and ash. You can also mix the stringers. However the Ipe should provide quite a bit of rigidity to the ski.
    
     So, I have 3 basic wood core designs. First is my tried and true blend of ash, maple and douglas fir. Second is an all wood core consisting of vertical and horizontal lamentations and now a new stringer design with Ipe sidewalls.


     I have a ski I'm building now with a 5 stringers of poplar for lightness and Ipe sidewall for durabilty. The ski will be an all mountain 178cm, ski dimensions are 125-82-108, wood core is 3-11-3. The ski should be a bit on the firm side. I'll be using 20 oz triaxial FG.

     I'll provide a full report on how it handles.

Theme for the season!

     Hate to say it but I haven't been in the ski building mode in the last 2-3 months. I've been busy winding down some other small projects. But now with the colder weather approaching I got some new ideas for topsheets.
   
     I received a lot of compliments on the "Day of the Dead" skis. So I'm adding 2 more topsheets to that theme.  Along with the 2 new designs I'm going to experiment by adding Swarovski  crystals to the eyes of the skulls in the tip and tail area. They should really add to the overall look of the ski. I'll do some testing over the next week to make sure they stay attached and to see how the epoxy coating effects the overall look.

Stay tuned!

 
BTW - Don't think this means I'm not offering wood veneer top sheets. I absolutely am!


I added some bling to my Dia De Los Muertos skis. I epoxied on some clear and red crystals to the eye sockets of the skulls. Also added some glitter to the top sheet for added effect on sunny days. Check it out:

Calculators for Ski Design, Cost, Profit/Loss

     Keeping good records during ski building is a must whether it's for your own personal sanity or if you want to run a small business making skis or snowboards.     

     I was getting tired of scratching numbers on a pieces of paper, punching numbers into a calculator, and making notes only to misplace them later, or realize I made an error and having to start all over again.

There were 3 things I found myself constantly jotting down, scribbling on the work bench or on scraps of paper. First, what is it costing me to make a pair of skis? Second, what are the key ski dimensions and what size is the core vs finished ski? Third, if I was to try to make a buck on a pair of skis, what's it costing me and if I charge $X amount what's my profit margin?

It was time to get organized so I created 3 Excel spreadsheets to help me with these tasks. I'm sure there's software such as Quickbooks to do most of this for you. But the spreadsheets are easy to use, maintain, and simple. Best of all they are free. Feel free to copy the spreadsheet and modify to suit your needs. I'm sure I'll be modifying them as time goes by to capture more information.

Here's the link to the spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AudcfxPSiyTWdHM3SmFmRF92UTAwUnptSUtXTlRJZFE#gid=0

The Profit/Loss calculator is pretty straight forward. Enter your values into the YELLOW boxes and the remaining boxes are calculated. If the numbers in the 'Estimated Profit After Tax ' are  RED you're losing money. If they are BLACK you're making money. You can make the calculator more sophisticated if you want by adding expenses such as utility expenses for the shop, tool maintenance, taxes, etc.

The Ski Core Calculator is designed for the way I make skis. Some of your default values and calculations may be slightly different. But using the calculator is easy. Enter your numbers  into the YELLOW boxes and the rest of the keys dimensions are calculated for you.  So now when I make a ski core I plug in the final ski dimensions and the calculator tells me the dimensions my ski core should be. I print off the spreadsheet, take it down to my shop, post it on the wall and I have my reference sheet at the ready.

This calculator is designed for 2 skis/boards but can easily be changed add all your skis. Enter all of your skis on the sheet, print it off and you have it ready when ever you need it.

Note: All dimensions are in MM. If your are using SnoCAD-X most of the dimensions can be taken from SnoCAD-X. 

Ski Length - Finished length of the ski
Tip Width - Finished width of the tip
Waist Width - Finished width of the waist
Tail Width - Finished width of the tail
Tip Length - Finished width of the tip
Tail Length - Finished length of the tail
Ski Ctr Set Back- I use 50mm  for set back.  
Running Length - (ski length) -  (tip length) - (tail length)
Ski/Boot Center - This is the length from the tip of the ski to the center. (Running Length/2)+Tip Length
Boot Center (Ski   Center) +50  - (Running Length/2)+Tip Length+50
Toe Mount Area Length - 130mm
Heel Mount Area Length - 230mm
Binding Area (toe mount + heel mount) - The binding area is the thickest part of my wood core. The slope to toward the tip starts in front of the toe and the slope toward the tail starts after the heel mount.
Toe Slope Length - This is the length of the ski from the front of the toe mount to the start of the ski tip.
Tail Slope Length - This is the length of the ski from the end of the heel mount to the start of the tail.


Core w/o sidewalls (dimensions between the edges) - Just as it says, the ski core dimensions minus the sidewalls.
Finished Core Shape dims - This is the ski core with sidewalls. As you can see the dimensions are greater than the true ski dimensions. This allows for trimming to the final dimensions.


    The Material Cost is just that. All the costs of the actual material that goes into making a ski. I have a couple of variables depending on if I'm using a wood veneer top sheet or cotton cloth. I also have on there epoxy vs Poly-Urethane glue.

I hope you find these calculators helpful. Feel free to send questions or comment.

R/D Carbon Fiber vs Fiber Glass

8/1/2012

Well, I haven't done much in the way of R/D in the off season until now. You may wonder why ski companies use such exotic materials in their skis. Does it make much difference? What am I really getting and what is it really doing for me other than emptying my bank account. I'll try to demystify some of those questions. Skis are very subjective. A firm ski for one person maybe soft to another. I've skied skis that had great write ups and were supposed to be a very firm "East Coast" skis but in my opinion were too soft for me. Bottom line is you don't know how the ski performs until you're on the snow.

Materials such as carbon fiber, kevlar, titanal (IE it's really an aluminum alloy, no titanium at all! Don't be fooled), some skis do claim to have real titanium. Wood core vs foam core (yuk, foam?? you're kidding me!!). AND what wood core is better than another?

Much of it depends on the type of skiing you do. If you are a back country skier you'll most likely want a lighter/wider ski that can have skins attached to them for climbing. So maybe a foam core is what you want. Weight is a huge concern for back country skiers. For the average East Coast skier you may want a ski design for carve-ability. Maybe you do a lot of glade skiing, that could be different style of ski. And if you're a park rat, that's another entirely different design and ski characteristic.

So back on topic.... The last couple days I made up some test samples of Carbon Fiber (CF) and compared those samples to a set of Fiber Glass (FG) samples I made last year. All test samples measured 3in x 36in.

The materials used for this test were:

                 Uni CF 9.4oz
                 Poplar veneer 1.6mm
                 QCM epoxy (resin EMV049 and hardener ECA032)
                  Ptex base
                  Fiber Glass 20oz
                  Cork .8mm thick

See my detailed write up on skibuilders.com, http://www.skibuilders.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3868

Feel free to ask questions. That's it for now!

Be A Mentor

            I've been slacking when it comes to ski building recently and haven't done much R+D to date. But a nice little project developed over the last few months where I volunteered to mentor a high senior for his ski building project. I decided this project was worthy of a write up to give other fledgling  ski builders a peek at what's involved.

When some one asks if you'd be their mentor, how can you say no? Especially when you share a common interest or should I say obsession, ski building!

I met Jordan Saffer a high school senior, ski instructor and future ski builder through a friend Peter Bradford who I made skis for last season. To make a long story short, a family friend of Jordan's knew Peter and Peter kindly put Jordan in touch with a few months ago.

Jordan had an idea for a senior project to build a pair of skis. He asked if I would mentor him for this ski building project. Sure why not I thought. Now, it's hard to describe all the difficulties and challenges of ski building, I could fill a large book of gotcha's, oopsies, oh $#1t blunders. I can honestly say it's on par with renovating your first house or re-building a car from the ground up.  For anyone who's watched a DIY home renovation, the 30/60minute show is really months of hard work. Ski building is no different. Many times I’ve stood there looking at what's in front of me and wondered "what the hell did I get myself into".  And it didn't seem that I could change his mind.

If he's willing to work hard it'd be fun. He also had his high school shop teacher as a mentor. But here's a new challenge. Jordan lives in Virginia, I'm in Massachusetts. But I figured with the power of the internet, we could do it. Hell maybe I could make my first youtube video....

On his first visit to the shop I gave him a 15 min crash course on ski building. I think his head almost exploded. There's so much knowledge to transfer. And we didn't even talk about how to make a ski press. But he was still psyched to march on. We exchanged more emails. I gave him a starting point and the holy grail of ski building info, www.skibuilders.com and  Sno-CadX an easy to use CAD style software tool for designing boards.

So I really didn't think he could get all this done in about 3 months time. Even for an experienced builder, 3 months just isn't enough time. I think he realized that at some point along the way. So he asked if I would let him use my ski press. Sure. If you're willing to drive 7hrs from Virginia, that’s really hard to say no to. It showed me a level of commitment. So a few more emails were exchanged, he got his ski designed, the template made, p-tex base cut out and edges attached, and the wood core made and shaped.

There was also a few firsts for me as well in this build. The ski design is a twin tip. We used a different epoxy (West System) from what I use, I wasn’t sure how well it was going to bond. There are hundreds of epoxies each have their only characteristics. The top sheet is art work his grandfather made so we didn’t want to mess that up and the wood core was made from stacking/glueing layers of ash veneer and then shaped. These were all first for me. So I'm a bit nervous if the epoxy will bond properly to all the materials especially the art work. And it has a very long cure time, 24hrs.

Jordan arrived Friday evening (6/1) with all his materials. I was impressed with what he had made so far. We made some minor adjustments to the wood core. The tip and tail were a bit too thick so we sanded it down to about 3mm. After that we laid out the materials on the work table, mixed the epoxy and got to work. One thing I kept reminding myself, this was his project and I was here just guiding and assisting him along the way. And he really did 95% of the work once I did a quick demo of what to do. It took us about 45 minutes from the start to finish.  The epoxy had a very long working time so we were able take our time and thoroughly wet out each layer with epoxy. Before long we had the top sheet on and the skis were ready for the press. I placed the skis in the press which can be a little tricky. And now we waited the long wait.

On Saturday morning I checked on the skis. They were in the press at 40psi for 10 hrs. I checked some leftover epoxy in the mix jug and the epoxy still had not cured. It was very rubbery. The epoxy I use would have been rock hard by now. So now I’m a little worried. If I pull the skis out too soon, the skis could relax and the tip/tails and camber could loose some of it curvature. I decided to leave the skis in the press for the rest of the day. I checked the epoxy later Saturday night and it had firmed up some. I had my fingers crossed. Things were looking better. At 10:00pm Saturday I turned off the air compressor. The skis have been under pressure now for 25hrs. If they haven’t cured by now, well, they probably never will.

I pulled the skis out of the press Sunday morning around 8:00am. I left the actual unveiling (ie removing the skis from the metal cassette housing) for Jordan.

Jordan arrived about noon and removed the metal cassette and wah-lah, skis look great! We got the shop set up for all the finishing work which entails separating the skis from each other, trimming off all the excess material (flashing), belt sanding the side walls, then beveling a 20degree bevel on the side wall, hand finishing with a light sanding and then a coat of linear polyurethane. The only part that I did was the beveling, which required very careful use of the router and I did make a minor goof which we were able to sand out. The finishing took about 4hrs or so.

Overall they turned out great! I would gladly ski on them. There were some minor imperfections that are all cosmetic and will not affect the performance. Here are some pics from the build.

(the time and date on the pics are incorrect)

                                        Jordan take pics of materials 

Layup table with the materials ready to go

Measuring and mixing epoxy.

Layup just about complete. One more layer, the top sheets on the left of the table, they're face down.

After being in the press for over 35hrs......

I let Jordan do the unveiling, although I had to peak before hand.

They look really good!

Time to separate the skis

First rough cut

Trim the flashing

Tedious edge grinding.

Protective layer of linear poly.

Signed, Sealed, Delivered!

Over all a huge success for his first skis! I think he learned a few things the last couple days. 

Jordan, good luck with college. Send me pics when you get them on the snow.

Ski Offerings

     I passed out a number of business cards at our final race wednesday night 3/7 and at the PSIA event. Below is my current list of ski offerings. If you're interested in a ski contact me at the email address below for a current price list. Allow 2-4 weeks for delivery:

DesmonD Custom Skis

Hand Made in the USA

Crafting hand made skis one pair at a time.

Currently I’m offering 3 lines of skis and a “green line”. If you don’t see something you like below contact me about a design you have in mind.

Northeast Series -  Ski Lengths               Ski Dimension             Radius

168cm                     124-72-108                   12.5m

174cm                     124-72-108                   13.5m

180cm                     124-72-108                   14.5m

Master Series –    Ski Lengths                   Ski Dimension            Radius

166cm                     125-82-108                   15.5m

172cm                     125-82-108                   16.8m

178cm                     125-82-108                   18.1m

GSComp Series – Ski Lengths                  Ski Dimension            Radius

170cm                     114-68-100                   14.4m

175cm                     114-68-100                   15.4m

180cm                     114-68-100                   16.5m

All wood cores are a blend of vertically laminated ash/maple/douglas fir. For a ski that's a bit firmer I can make a thicker core. For an extra firm ski all maple or ash is used. After all this is a custom ski made to your liking.

Green Line Series – A Green Line ski is primarily an all wood ski. No fiber glass here. The wood core is the same as above, then it’s horizontally laminated using poplar veneer topped off with a top sheet of your choice. Base is P-Tex Durasurf 4001 and metal edges.


Custom Top Sheets


Make your ski one of a kind by choosing a top sheet of your choice.


Top sheets are either light weight cotton fabric of your choice or a wood veneer. For cotton fabrics the sky the limit. See the  "Ski review 2011-2012"  for a great example of how cotton fabric makes for an outstanding one of a kind ski.


Current sample of wood veneer top sheets. There are many more types I can order and I'll be adding to the list. See the "Ski review 2011-2012" for samples of wood veneer.


In the future I'll be offering original art work by Missy Ashton as top sheets as well.


Olive Ash Burl 

Sapele 

Man Made Teak

skidesmond@gmail.com

PSIA Level I Examine

3/9/2012


A slight diversion from ski building... 



     I passed my PSIA Level I (Professional Ski Instructors of America) test yesterday 3/8. Spent wednesday and thursday skiing at Wachusett Mtn. Learned an incredible amount about skiing techniques, learning techniques, visual ques, and coaching. Brain was full by thursday afternoon. WE SKIED A LOT!, from simple wedge turns (volcanoes!), "pizza delivery", to demystifying mogul fields AKA "spread the peanut butter"! All great ideas, which by the way I'm stealing and bringing back to Blandford :-)


Met some great folks from Wachusetts Mtn and Yawgoo Mtn in RI, hey Mike and MaryBeth congrats as well! Who knew RI had a ski area? 


Skied with Wachusett instructors (hi Monica send me an email and I'll send some pics of the penguin skis), Riley, Laura, Adian, Olivia from Wachusetts  who were also taking the test/passed and they had some great games and ideas for teaching. Mark from Blandford also got his hardware and certificate. It was a lot of fun skiing with the group!


I have some great take aways to bring back to our local hill.


Kudos to Harold Smith our PSIA examiner for keeping us relaxed during our test and making the examine fun and inventive.

Time for R and D for 2012-2013 season

2/26/2012-
     I have 1 more ski in the works for the season. I'll be making a ski for our Wednesday night ski league for the end of the year dinner/raffle on 3/7. It will be an all mountain ski. Still haven't decided if I should go the traditional layup route (epoxy and fiber glass) or make a laminated all wood style ski.

     Either way, it's time to start thinking about next season. There's plenty of things to tweak in the process of ski building but I'm also thinking about making a 2 deck ski, similar to what Atomic is doing, but of course this will be made of wood and possibly cork for a dampening effect. My idea will also incorporate a plate for the binding in the deck and allow the deck to slide when the ski is flexed. I think this will also allow me to expand my use of bindings and binding types.

     As I'm thinking of this, I'm already thinking I can make the base ski (lower deck) from a light wood (douglas fir, poplar, etc) with hard wood (maple) sidewalls, but make the upper deck from an ash/cork or poplar/cork laminate for additional stiffness.

    And this is why ski building is fun!
:
:
:

     I made a sample cork/poplar veneer layup this afternoon using my ski press. It measures about 10.5-11mm thick. The poplar veneer is about 1.5mm and the cork is about .75mm. I used 5 layers of poplar and 4 layers of cork. It's surprisingly strong.

    Now I'm thinking of working this into the core in a vertical fashion instead of using it as the 2nd deck. Although I'm still pursuing the 2nd deck idea. I think it will plane out ok in the planer crib. Not sure I want to use it as the entire core with sidewalls OR just use it in place of the douglas fir I'm using now. I'm wondering about binding screw retention. Chris Bagley told me about Quiver Killer Binding Inserts. So that could be my answer. The ski industry has used foam cores for years. I think the cork/poplar would be stronger yet still light.
   
     See pics below. First pic is the side of the layup. The dark lines is the cork.

I ran the end of the layup over my joiner to see if the cork would rip/shred. Held up ok.

   

Ski Review for 2011-2012 season

Ski Review for 2011-2012 season

I made 3 sets of skis this season each to accomplish something new or different. Here's a review of each one:

Dia De Los Muertos - (Day of the Dead skis)
 



These skis have been 100% great, not a single disappointment. I made them to be on the soft side yet torsionally rigid. I built them exclusively to be the ski of choice for teaching. The topsheet held up ok. They got more banged up the ski storage room at the hill than on the slopes. These ski carve on any condition and hold beautifully. At times I could practically get my hip to touch the snow when cranking out turns and these skis held up. Very happy! 

Lot's of compliments and questions about the graphics :-) 

And being the season it's been here in the New England, I could not have asked for a better ski. So this ski design is a keeper! 


Next the Poly-U ski: 








Another great ski that I'm extremely happy with this season and another keeper! This ski is an experiment in using poly-urethane glue (Gorilla Glue) in place of epoxy. All the tests I ran said it would bond to the materials so I gave it a try. So far this ski has stay bonded! No delams at all. Now I just need more days on the ski for durability but I think it will hold up. 

I'm using this ski as a racing ski for out beer league racing. It performs great and I'm having a great season on them. It's a bit shorter than last year GS skis I raced on. That was a 180 all maple skis and a very firm flex. This ski is a 175cm. It's also a bit softer in flex but still torsionally rigid. A great combo!! I think this ski has allowed me to turn quicker and get over to the other edge quicker.... at least it feels that way and my times/placement have improved slightly from last year. No Olympic or World Cup medals on the horizon but a lot of fun! 

So this is another design that is a keeper. As for the continue use of poly-u glue, I'll wait till I have more time on the ski. But it seems to be working. 

Lastly the "Woodie"- 

This is the all wood ski with a typical wood core that's vertically laminated and then poplar veneer horizontally laminated in place of FG. For me this is a fat ski. Patterned after the Rossi S86. It also came out very firm since the wood core was +12mm, layering 2 layers of poplar each being 1.5mm made the ski pretty firm. Torsionally I'm not sure the ski can be bent/twisted :-). That's the part I like. 

I had the chance to ski all day on it yesterday at Stratton Mtn Vt. Conditions were packed powder with loose top of 1-3in fresh snow and frozen granular. Typical N.E conditions. Got quite a few inquiries about the ski. People are very intrigued with hand made skis. That's goes for all the skis in this post. 

What I liked: 
- Carved very nice. 
- Great at nice big GS style turns 
- Great edge hold 
- Shorter turns ok, but more work 

What I didn't like: 
- Chatter. I noticed on my first run I hit a steep and hard pack area (not quite ice, but that white hard pack snow) with some speed. When I tried to hit the breaks hard the ski chattered hard! Like going over mini ski bumps very fast. I quickly changed my edge. Since there's no dampening material to speak of I'm contributing that chatter to that. However, I also noticed the chatter subsided when I stayed balance on the front of the skis. When I was up to straight or in the back seat even a little bit, the chatter came back. So once I discovered that I just stayed forward and balanced and that took care of 90% of the chatter. So the chatter only occurred during heavy braking for the most part, or when side slipping on hard pack too fast. 

- Retrospect I think a 10mm core would have been plenty. I may make another ski like this next season. I would like to pursue this all wood ski concept more. 

Not sold on the wide ski for typical N.E. conditions, takes some getting used to the wide ski after skiing on 68mm or 72mm skis under foot. If there was say 6in of fresh snow I think this ski would have been perfect for that type of snow conditions. I have skied the ski in soft snow and it's perfectly fine. Of course I'm basing my experience of fat skis solely based on this ski so take it with a grain of salt. 

So a full day of skiing on these was great and it was nice to get some vertical in for a change. Skied from 9:30-3:30 non-stop (15 min lunch, pee break) was pooped at the end of the day but with a fat grin! 

This ski was also made using Poly-U glue. 

Overall a thumbs up. When I found the sweet spot, which is narrow, I was happy. I'll make more all wood skis next season but try a GS or more traditional width ski. 

That's it for now. SKI ON!

GS Comp 175

01/05/2012-


     I'm starting a new ski build this week. The ski will be used for racing and all around skiing. And if we get snow I may even have a chance to test it out this season. Here are the ski specifics:

P-tex base with metal edges
22oz fiber glass
Wood core - ash under the bindings, douglas fir in front and behind the binding area, maple side walls.
Top sheet - Olive Ash Burl
Ski Length - 175cm
Ski Dims - tip 114mm, waist 68mm, tail 100mm
Wood core dims - 3-12-3

     This ski will be made with 1 big difference. I will not be using epoxy. Instead I'll be using polyurethane glue. I've been performing tests with the glue and all indications say it should work just fine. I've used it to make all wood laminate skis with no problems. It bonds to all of the above materials and appears to be strong. So now it's time for the real test.

    I'll post pics of the material list later.


01/15/2012-
     The skis are in the press as I type. Been lazy about keeping the blog up dated. I have high hopes for this ski since I'm using polyurethane glue instead of epoxy. And I'd really like to get it done by this wednesday night to race on it..... Doubtful but Ill try. I don't want to rush through the build.
   
     My sample piece I made held fine. I put it in the freezer for a few hours and then tried flexing it. No delamination occurred. So it all should work..... should...... Here's pics of the sample layup for last week:

     The sample layup below consists of the p-tex base, fiberglass, 3mm wood veneer, fiber glass and 2 strips of Olive Ash Burl veneer. It has not lost it's shape or relaxed at all.

    Here's a list of the ingredients in the pic below. Starting from the bottom: 

     1. VDS - Vulcanized rubber. Used as a shear layer between the metal edge and Fiber Glass

     2. Fiber Glass 22 oz weight.

     3. Polyurethane Glue in the bottle

     4. Ptex - The blue strip. It is used for the base of the ski

     5. Metal edge on top of the P-Tex

     6. Olive Ash Burl veneer. It will be used for the top sheet (I'm going to hate it when it gets chipped for the first time.

     7. Douglas Fir wood. This wood is used in front and behind the binding area. It has a very tight vertical grain,  is light weight and provides a balanced flex with the other woods.

     8. Ash wood. (white in color) This is a very hard wood also with a vertical grain. It's very hard and is used in the binding area to provide excellent screw retention for the bindings and/or binding plate. Also gives a firm flex under foot for good edge hold.

     9. Maple wood. (reddish in color) This wood is used for the side walls. It's also a very hard wood.

    That's it for now. Tomorrow I'll post  some pics as they come out of the press. If all goes well I'll spend the day finishing the skis.

     Stay tuned.

01/16/2012- 

     

     Took the skis out of the press this morning. Surprised that some of the glue still had not set up 100%. I think I either used too much is some areas or because I didn't moisten the materials according to the directions on the bottle. I didn't moisten the sample layup either and that came out fine. So next time I'll make sure to moisten the fiber glass and the ski base.

     Here's a few pics:

     Here's a shot of the base. As you can see I haven't remove all of the glue. I waxed the base with hard paste floor wax so the glue would not stick. It comes off easily.

The top of the skis. I'm going to let them sit over night before I start cutting the flashing off.

Close up of the wood veneer. This should finish nicely. I initially wanted them done for this wednesday night (1/18) but there's no way to get them done in time. I want these to be show room worthy so I'm going to take my time.

1/23/2012-

     The skis are just about done. Here's some pics of them with 7 coats of linear polyurethane. I'll buff them out later, mount bindings and clean/tune the base for wednesday night race, assuming we don't get postponed again.

      I think they will be good for the type of GS racing we do which is basically NASTAR. Fairly wide open course with 2 or 3 gates that require good timing. 

     I raced a GS course saturday with the Ski School Ski, aka Día de los Muertos skis, and had a very successful run. Even though they are on the soft side they responded very well and held great. The course was very turn-y with a nice rhythm. That ski is a 168cm with a wood core of 3-10-3. The ski below is 175cm with a wood core of 3-12-3. It's a little firmer but not drastically. We shall see.

     I'll update with more pics tomorrow and with feedback on how the skis handle later in the week.

.

1/26/2012- 

     So I skied/raced on the ski last night and I like everything about them. They have a great edge hold, responsive, a little bit softer in flex than the 180's I used last year which is a good thing. Torsion-ally firm which is why I think the ski runs as well as it does. Conditions were frozen granular and hard pack. 

After the race I took on a few runs and really leaned over on them. The skis never washed out and carved really nice. 

Inspected the skis this morning. No delams, tiny cracks or places where the edge might pull away. Checked the base where it may bubble up or loosen away from the core, nothing so far! 

So time will tell now how they hold up. I'll be racing on them for the remainder of the season and will post any degradation issues along the way. I think this combination of wood construction is a real winner.

Probably the last ski I'll make for the season, they're starting to pile up  :-) (unless I get a request).

Now it's time to start working on the website, fine tune a few things!

Stay tuned. 

2/11/2012-

     The GSComp skis are still holding up great! I took them out yesterday for a full day of skiing at Butternut in Great Barrington, MA. Conditions was frozen loose granular. The skis held a great edge all day long. No signs of delam or any other problems. Also took out the The Woodies (all wood skis). They also held a great edge all day. They were a bit stiff for the conditions, it's a better ski for longer radius turns. The width under foot on the Woodies is 86mm while the GSComp skis is 68mm so they ski quite different. The GSComp has a radius of 15.4 and the Woodies 16.25. Not that big of a difference in radius yet it felt much bigger since the Woodies were more stiff and it takes a little more effort to get the ski over on the edge.

     

Ski School Ski Review

12/26/2011


     Today I was able to put the skis through a work out although somewhat limited because of the limited ski conditions. We need some natural snow and some cold weather for snow making. That aside, the skis do exactly what I wanted them to do. It's a bit soft in the flex but torsion-ally fairly firm. Great for cranking out turn after turn. They hold extremely well on both hard pack and soft snow and hold the edge great.

     The conditions this morning were what I would call frozen granular. By mid morning the trail softened up nicely and by 2:00-2:30 the conditions started to freeze up again. The skis worked great in both conditions. And the graphics were a hit!

     Very happy with the skis and I think the size and wood combination is a real winner. The ski dimensions are 168cm length, ski core profile is 3-10-3 and ski dimensions are 124-72-108. The wood combination is 20inches of ash under foot, douglas fir down the middle, maple sidewalls, ash veneer for tip fill.

     As I get more skiing time on these under more conditions I'll report back.

     Tomorrow I'll be testing another pair. The skis are 178cm length, 3-12-3 maple core profile,  ski dims are 130-86-116, sidewalls are alternating cherry and maple. This ski is what I call a green ski. It's an all wood ski, no fiber glass or epoxy. There are 2 layers of poplar. One layer below the core and one above. The top sheet is a teak veneer with a walnut stain. P-tex base. Some pics I took awhile ago, which are also posted on www.skibuilders.com :

12/28/2011 -

     Yesterday I skied both skis. The ski school ski (now known as the "dia de los muertos" skis) was awesome. Got to spend some time on them and really leaned into them, they never gave up. It's a keeper!

      The all wood ski ("Wicked Wood"??) also was good. Didn't get to spend as much time as I would have liked skiing on them as I wanted. The first I crashed and burned, the heel wasn't adjusted for properly and I had too much play and as soon as I cranked my first hard turn I went down and ski took off. Once I go them adjusted all was fine. The radius is about just under 17m. Big difference from dia de los muertos skis. Also the Wicked Wood skis much firmer. It's all maple core with a 3-12-3 dims. Holds very nice so far.

     Hopefully I'll get some more time on them this week and will report back.

The Ski School Ski

     Welcome to my first blogging session. 


     I've been building hand made skis for a couple years now and I'm starting to get the hang of it.  I hope to have an e-commerce website soon to sell custom made skis, a standard line  and "Green" line skis.
     I’m taking a new approach to ski building by taking a glance backward in time and bringing the tried and true methods and materials into the modern ski designs. And that material is wood.
    At the heart of every ski is wood, running from the tip to the tail which will provide a fun lively ski with just enough damping. The species and blends of wood varies depending on the your specifications.


     Interested in a hand made ski just for you? Contact me and lets talk.


    Ok, so this ski I'm building now will be used at the Blandford Ski Area SnowSports school where I work part time, www.skiblandford.org.
     I hope to have it done by the time we report for our orientation on 12/2.
     Next I'll start documenting the steps to get this ski built.


Here's the basic set of materials that will go into this ski:

The stack of wood will be the wood core. It consists of ash which will be under the binding area. Douglas Fir for the tip and tail sections, and maple for the sidewalls. I'll glue this up and profile the core tomorrow (sat  11/19/11) .

Saturday 11/19/2011

     This ski will be 168cm in length. The core will be 3-10-3, meaning 3mm thick at the tip, 10mm thick in the middle and 3mm thick in the tail. I made the core a few inches longer on each end to account for planer snipe.
 
Some basic terminology:
     Running Length (RL) - the length of the ski between the contact points of the tip and tail. Generally it's the length of the ski, minus the length of the tip and the tail.
     Boot Center - Generally it's the 1/2 the RL. This can vary depending on personal preference or the type of ski. So if the RL is 1480mm, the BC is at 740mm.
   
There are specific reference marks that I retain through out the process. They are:
1. where tip starts and stops
2. where the binding area will be
3. where the tail starts and stops.
4. The most important is the Boot Center (BC). This is the location where the center of the ski lines up on the ski. Every ski boot has a mark indicating the center of the boot.

This is the wood core that I glued up the night before and it's ready to be profiled using my planer and a planer crib.

Here's the planer crib. The middle of the crib is lower than the ends. When the crib and wood core passes through the planer the rollers push down on the wood core, therefore taking more wood off the ends than in the middle. The black strips are grip tape to keep the wood core from sliding/moving while being planed.
The brown panels are adjustable. They are wedge shape and go from 12mm thick on the very end to 2mm toward the center of the crib. I adjust the correct position depending on the length of the wood core.

After about 15-20 passes through the planer the core is done.

The wood cores are placed on the planer crib and it's ready for planing.

Here's why I make the core extra long. It can be difficult to get down to 2-3mm some times and the planer can snipe or take a gouge out. Luckily I had extra material in the tip and I could just cut the core to it's final size.

Here is the final wood core. I always label the core so I know which is the top and which is the bottom. During the layup process I'll add in 2 thin layers of ash veneer on each core for the tip area. This will bring the ski to it's final length of 168cm.

Now that the core is done the next step will be to shape the P-Tex base and apply the metal edges. That's done by using a CNC template that I designed and had cut but EastMountain Woodworking in Holyoke  http://www.eastmountainwoodworking.com/  . The template is basically the ski flattened out.

That's it for now. Check back in a couple days.

Sunday 11/27/2011
     So it's been more than a couple days but made some minor progress. Today I hand bent the edges, cut the base material out, cut the fiberglass. Here's some tools I used today to accomplish some tasks.
The pliers on the left I use to fine tune the bending of the edges. The box cutter is used to rough cut the p-tex base. The rotary cutter is super sharp and is used for cutting material and fiberglass. The blue handle pliers or dykes are used for cutting the metal edges to length.
     All the little black specs are from the p-tex base when I routed out the base.

 

     The metal edges are below. They have only slight bends to conform the shape of the template. I'm only doing a 3/4 wrap of the edges in the tip and tail sections. This simplifies the build and the attaching of the edges.

     This is the router I used to cut out the final dimensions of the p-tex base. The router bit has a bearing on the bottom that follows the shape of the template, thereby giving the base it's shape. Even with a vacuum pickup on the router it still doesn't capture everything.

     Here the base (the long black shape) has been cut out. I fasten the base to the template using thin double stick tape is just a few places on the template to hold the base to the template so it doesn't move while I'm cutting out the shape.

 
OOPS almost forgot the secret ingredient... :-) It "brings out the best" in everything!

 
    Tonight I will cut the topsheet material and lay out all the material in reverse order to get ready for the layup. More pics to follow.
     I took the day off from work tomorrow, so I'll be pressing the ski first thing in the morning.

Monday 11/28/2011

    I got the skis in the press this morning. Couldn't take pics while laying up the skis but here's some pics I took last night of the materials laid out in reverse order:

Here's the top sheet material:

Then the fiber glass:

The wood core. The white wood on the far end are wood (ash) tip spacers.

Another layer of fiber glass followed by VDS. VDS is thin strips of vulcanized rubber. They go over the metal edges and act as a sheer layer between the metals edges and the fiber glass.

   So when the layup starts, the bases and spray glued to the metal cassette (just in the middle of the base) The cassette is 1mm sheet of aluminum. I guess I should have took pics of that......

Once the bases are attached, the rest goes as follows:

p-tex base
epoxy
VDS over the edges, coat VDS with epoxy on both sides.
Fiberglass
epoxy
wood core
epoxy
fiberglass
epoxy
top sheet
thin skim coat of epoxy
top cassettes (another 1 mm sheet of AL)

I tape the cassette together or use zip ties, then insert the cassette into the press. I start pressurizing the press to about 45-50psi. It looks like this:

I'll press the skis for 10-12 hrs. Waiting is the hard part because at this point you hope everything has gone well. While laying up the skis something didn't look right so I waited a bit for it to dawn on me. After about 10min I couldn't figure out what didn't look right unitl I poured on the first layer of epoxy. Then I saw what I forgot. I forgot to pre-bend the tips! Hopefully it won't make too much of a difference now that I'm pressing at a higher pressure. Wait and see.......



Tuesday 11/29/2011



   I let the skis press for 10hrs, turned off the compress and then let them sit in the press over night. First impressions this morning look good. One core shifted slightly but I think I may not have placed it in the exact position. Shouldn't be a problem since the ski is a full wood core and wood sidewall.

     The top came out beautiful, no wrinkles.

Good edge fit in the tips. Looks like not pre-bending the base didn't cause a problem. Although I still think it's a good idea to pre-bend.

The tail and edge fit looks good too. The bases are relatively clean.

   I'll let the skis cure for a few more days before I start cutting the flashing off and the finish work. I'll use linear poly-urethane instead of exterior poly.

    I wanted to get the skis done for this weekend for our ski/snow board instructors meeting at Blandford Ski area since we're supposed to be on the snow, but since it's been in the 50's - 60's all week and no cold weather for the next 3-4 days. So there's no rush to get them done, except to show them off... :)


12/4/11 Sunday
          No snow still, been warm in the 50's all week. In theory we'll be training on snow next weekend and the skis will be ready for it.
          Flashing removed and ready for poly. I'll be using System 3 linear polyurethane.
          Update with pics:

Monday 12/5/11

     I started the applying the linear poly-urethane. With the graphics being what they are I don't think a decal will be noticed. So I hand signed them instead. The serial number is yymmddski#, I doubt you'll ever see a ski# greater than 1 :)

     I'll buff out the tops tonight, base clean up and mount the bindings.

I got the bindings mounted tonight and they are ready for the weekend!, assuming it gets cold enough for Blandford to make snow. We had another day of temps in the upper 50's. Not good! Keeping my fingers crossed!

So a for all practical purposes the ski building part is over. I need to clean up the bases but that's boring and not much detail to provide. Scrape off some remnants of epoxy, flatten the base w/ a file and hot wax.

I'll give an update on how they skied as soon as I can. Stay tuned!


Sunday 12/11/11
 
     I was hoping to test the skis this weekend at our ski instructors meeting on saturday but the weather did no co-operate and we had no snow. Hopefully next weekend they'll be enough snow to teach the new ski instructors and give the skis a test.

    So I have some ideas for the next pair of skis I want to make in the next couple of weeks. I have some ash burl wood veneer which I really favor and some more but different skull material that is bad ass. For those that are following what do you think? My next ski will probably be a 175cm all around ski or a GS ski.
 
     I fixed the comments section so anyone can post comments, just make them so everyone can read them. Here's some pics of the burl and skulls for the next skis. Let me know what you think.