The stiffness of a beam is the cube of the distance between the midline of the two skins. If you want to increase the stiffness without changing your layup I would add about a mm to the thickness of the core. You can add thickness with more composite but you will gain little in terms of performance ...

I think Quad does little or nothing for you. I would look at Triax Braid from A & P Technologies. Braiding does really cool stuff with short fiber crimping. Best bang for the buck strength to weight - wise.

Good tip on the distilled water. Good point about the increased surfaces area for the flaming, I still feel like the abrasion does improve the mechanical bonding to some extent. A good article on gluing plastics and the resource for my statement on flaming within 30 min of layup. http://www.epoxywo...

Flaming is not hat hard to do, but yes to do it right can be tricky, ask most any of the builders here who do it, but it can be done successfully, ask most any of the builders here who do it. Abrade with 60 grit belt sander, flame with a propane torch using the hottest part of the flame but careful...

As for bonding of UHMWPE with PU glue. It is only being used to provide enough of a bond to attach the sidewall to the wood core long enough to get the core profiled and into the laminate. To achieve even this bond, it needs to be abraded and flamed to get the PU glue to stick. Once the profiled co...

Yup that's what happened, the glue found places to cure and it did. I did not use heat during the pressing and from what you said it wouldn't have made a difference. Tony, I know you are an expert in adhesives, so help me understand why poly-U glue will or should not work (outside of the problem I ...

Update on the Poly-U glue experiment.... I made a pair of all wood skis the other day using Gorilla glue, no FG in the layup. The core was vertically laminated and then I used a layer of poplar veneer above and below the core. I also use a thin layer of cork on the base in between the edge tynes as...

SkiTheNortheast wrote:sounds like a great setup, if you get it to work I´d like to try making a similar one

I broke my collar bone in a fall this past Saturday, so when I get some function back I will send you some drawings.

Cheers,

Bloefeld

The reason for multi zone heating is to cure the resin at as close to the perfect heat load as possible and take into account the change in thickness of the ski.

Cheers,

Bloefeld

Then I control them with PLC's and a cheap desktop computer. With thermo-couples inserted into the centre of my fiber matrix and ramp up each section of each zone on each side until I get to my optimal cure temperature and then start the ramp down. It would even be possible to control the ramp-down...

essentially what you are describing is about the way the $100K Austrian made presses work. The nice thing about a multi zone heat is you can for instance ramp the temp in the forebody and tip of the ski on the top only to give a nice gradual rocker profile to a long radius pow ski without having to...

read this. http://www.skibuilders.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2690 Make them 220 and your controllers also. MontuckyMadman, Thank you so much for the link. It does seem pretty straight forward and a lot cheaper than buying the stuff. So here is an idea. I build my press and use the idea of two alumi...

why go through all that trouble with heat tape and not build a blanket yourself? it's cheap and not that hard. I was under the impression that heating blankets were too expensive and that a lot of builders were only heating one side of the ski, or not heating the ski at all. So, I suggested an alte...

Tape will leave an impression on your base using vacuum as well. I think the 1/2 inch aluminum would work but would probably cost more in the long run as every different ski would need new plates. Plus the bending to shape you'd need a good sized slip roll. Probably cheaper and more effective to ju...

Ok... Well, if you position the tape anywhere over/under the ski itself and it is in the press or vacuum it will leave an indentation on the ski. Believe or not I placed making tape on the bottom of a ski, pressed at 45-50 psi and it left an impression on the base, ever so small but noticeable. Jus...