I'm not sure how much vacuum they will produce and you would still need some motor and a belt to turn it. Aah... of course. It hadn't occurred to me at this point how to power it. :) If I didn't want to spend the money I would be looking at converting a fridge compressor. It wasn't really a questio...

They seem to be either for AC systems or braking. Listings don't really say much about them e.g. http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/BRAKE-VACUUM-PUMP-CITROEN-AX-VISA-C15-FORD-GRANADA_W0QQitemZ160175418999QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item160175418999&_trkparms=72%3A1299%7C39%3A1%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C240%3A1318&_tr...

Probably a stupid question - but I noticed on eBay there are a lot of car vacuum pumps available for cheap.

Anyone know what they do, and could they be used for ski building?

Wow. I'd not seen that cloth method before - that's amazing.

I'm tempted to try that.

Edit: the more I look at it, the more I can't believe it stands up to 40psi. Great work guys.

Lol. Best of luck mate.

Keep us informed.

Just getting started myself, but maybe its best not to think about the price of it all.

Kind of a "if you need to ask then you can't afford it" situation? Lol.

That's good to know - sounds like either of those two methods would be worth a try if I decided to mix woods that way,

Not sure I ever will - I anticipate having enough problems with the regular cores.

iggyskier wrote:you could also finer joint them....

Would that be strong enough? It looks like it might be a little flimsy given the relative thiness of a core - but I don't know enough to really judge.

Had to Google that one

But its genius - thank you for mentioning that. Why can't I think of solutions like that!!!

Ah that's cool.

Thanks for the link. Even more ideas to play with now.

I was reading a skiing catalogue last night and noticed that some manufacturers use a different wood near the tips and tails than they do in the middle. Is the join (which presumably goes across the ski) actually going to be strong enough to cope with the amount of flex the ski moves along its lengt...

what the hell does cross-grained mean? (excuse my language) Er.. I think it means that the wood has some irregular fibres running across the regular grain. Or something. (Do those things break at all?) Well apparently Groove made a batch of them a few years ago that had a tendancy to break. And Lin...

Hello. :D I've been lurking here a little while but finally decided to sign up. In a few months I'm moving house and should have a fair bit more space. So I've been thinking I might actually get around to building some skiboards (I am a skiboarder and make no apologies for it ;) ) and am starting to...