I just ordered a bear. Now I just have to find something to do while I wait for it to be ready.

I've had wooden sidewalls get sticky when I tried to coat them with epoxy and then seal them with spar varnish. It took several months for the sidewalls to feel fully cured and not sticky. It could be that you just had a bad mix with your epoxy/hardener due to the small batch required for a top coat...

scklandi, Poplar is not always too soft for screws, even tele screws. I use a layer of Al window screen in the binding areas of my skis. You could also rout out a bindings area in your core and fill with 4-5mm of maple or oak. The kind of inserts used in the how to section require pretty exact place...

I've made a few pairs without tip/tail spacers with no durability issues. The only thing I noticed was that skis without tip spacer material had more relaxing in the tips and tails.

Spar varnish will seal the exposed area and block UV rays from breaking down any exposed epoxy.

Oliver, I think the wood in your core is relaxing back to its default shape, even in your softer skis. You wrote that the carbon is +/- 45. Does this mean there is no carbon running along the length of your skis? Your idea to re-vacuum with unidirectional carbon or glass might solve your problem. Yo...

Dan, doughboy shredder has a mold with adjustable camber. From the looks of it he can make any camber shape he wants. http://skibuilders.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1465&start=15 behold its simplicity and beefiness. Are you prepared to build such a thing in your quest for adjustable camber? The a...

I avoid this issue by not wrapping edges around my tips and tails. If you tape your tip spacer material to a flat piece of plywood or mdf you should be able to safely rout out a space for your edge teeth on a router table or with a guide and a router from the top. Don't forget to flame treat the tip...

I'm in the process of leveling a new mold with a belt sander, straight edge and a level. It is amazing how many irregularities there are once the mold pieces are glued/bolted together. The irregularities creeped into my process when I used a single piece of mdf as a template for the mold. I think th...

If you had put a straight edge across the base of the ski how much space would've been between the straight edge and the base? Ski shops have base welding guns that heat the base material by melting it into the base. It is superior to ptex sticks. I bought some from a shop and it came in 2mm thick c...

nice work!!! Your basic approach looks great. You'll undoubtedly work out the kinks in subsequent attempts. How edge high were you? Were you edge high all the way across the ski or only in the middle? What would a cross section of the base have looked like? A better way to fix your edge high situati...

If you end up with a ski that is too soft you can rough up your no top sheet ski and run your ski through the vacuum bag process again and do the diamond of fiberglass montucky madman is talking about. The thick part of the diamond goes under foot and the points end where you want the ski to resume ...

I have 6 thoughts on pop. 1)Would it work to just measure the percentage of camber lost when the ski is set on a flat surface? It seems that my skis with more pop are less prone to losing camber when set down on a flat surface. This would be a measure of how a ski's flex interacts with its mass and ...

You would need to obtain slightly thicker base material to do this. I've pondered using a router table to do this but I have no thick base material. You could also use regular base material and edges and then use a routed out base material (abraded on both sides) for a second layer of base above the...

UV can break down epoxy. Use a spar varnish on top to block the UV.
Idris posted a minimalist touring ski that did not seem to have a topsheet on it. He posted it on this site and on TGR.

http://www.skibuilders.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1316