Ski Builders Forum

for less than I paid online metals for 6 skins I got 18 skins and drops from alaskan copper.

Thanks again for the tip!

Thanks for all the great info., not only in this post and on your website, but all the insightful reply's over the years at skibuilders. The new info. on the website would have made things much easier if it had been available a few years ago when I got started. Scott

I'm glad you guys are finding this helpful. It's my pleasure... honestly.

Doughboy, glad you got hooked up with Alaskan. Those guys are great.

Hey Mike, it's me again for another stupid question...
I looked at your press pics and noticed something interesting on your bottom mold (the one which gives the camber). From what I see it's made of MDF ribs (no spacing between them) with a thick metal (Aluminum ?) plate over it. I was wondering what's the advantage of this metal plate compared to an MDF sheet ?
Also I don't remember exactly, and can't check from work (stupid safety policy with Internet), but I found you use a lot of Aluminum sheets over your MDF mold : one under the blanket (why ?), one on top (OK), lower cassette, layup, upper cassette, Al sheet, top blanket, another Al sheet (not sure of this one) and then bladder... could you explain why all those ? I can understand the one over the bottom blanket to protect it and have a smooth surface to slide the cassette on... but the one between the mold and bottom blanket is a mystery...


I have a pretty similar mold setup and I noticed that my camber mold is slightly concave (meaning it would make convex bases on my skis). I had a small problem of convexity on my last pair but there are some factors other than the mold that could explain that : edge recess too deep, skis pulled out of the press when still hot. Yesterday I took the camber mold out of the press for an inspection. That's when I found out the top surface is concave but I also noticed the bottom side is slightly convex... meaning when under pressure it might get flat.
I had big trouble having my ribs CNC cut... I know they're far from being perfect but I have no money to have them re-cut for now but I believe they're good enough so when I add 2 sheets of 5/8 MDF on top of them (1 fixed full length + 1 between tip & tail molds) I should end up with something pretty flat anyway...

The extra thick piece of aluminum is 1/4" thick, and the length and width of the camber block. It's an experiment. It's there to smooth out the top of the camber block, as an alternative to sanding it perfectly smooth. Even though the ribs are CNC cut, they're hard to line up and get perfect, so there are a few small ridges and valleys. I only added it recently, and I think it might be overkill, I need to do a few more experiments to see.

The extra skin along the bottom, between the mold surface and the heat blanket, is to protect the blanket. There is a tiny gap between the 3/4 MDF along the length of the camber and where that meets the nose and tail blocks, and I don't want the blanket to get pinched or pushed into that gap and cut it.

The extra skin along the top, between the cat track and the heat blanket, is for the same reason: guard against pinching of the blanket in the track.

I've added information about how I trim flash, cleanup sidewalls, base grind, and cleanup inserts here: Overview of cleanup and finishing. I've also reorganized the site a little bit, hopefully there aren't too many broken external links! I'll go through my recent posts on this forum and update any links I see that may have accidentally changed.

Also, for those that are interested, I've stopped selling snowboards to the public as of today. A bit of an explanation can be found here: www.happymonkeysnowboards.com. I will continue to build a couple of boards a year for me and my homies, and to contribute to our community of snowboard and ski builders.

Hi, I was reading your blog and I noticed this>




could you tell me about it?
Did you build it?

Thanks

I was wondering the same thing.

While we wait for the resposne. I'd say it is a Fontaine Ski Tuner grinder. Just my guess based on the looks.
ra

rockaukum wrote:While we wait for the response. I'd say it is a Fontaine Ski Tuner grinder. Just my guess based on the looks.
ra

Oh yeah, are the cheaper then the grindrights?

This look light duty and portable, no?

nevermind

viewtopic.php?p=12769&sid=0390a74ca58e7 ... 34caf95dda

wow that sucks
http://snowboarding.transworld.net/1000 ... agreement/

I've moved all of my information about snowboard construction off of my blog and into a new wiki: http://www.happymonkeysnowboards.com/MonkeyWiki

I find that a wiki is a much easier way to organize and edit information that needs to be updated over time, which is a great description of my snowboard construction info. The wiki has very rich history so you can see updates to this stuff over time. As blog posts, the date never changed when I modified the post which was really unfortunate. With the wiki you can see everything that has ever changed over the entire wiki, or on a single article, at any time. Check it out here: http://www.happymonkeysnowboards.com/Mo ... /Main_Page

I've left all the old blog posts so there are no broken links, but each one has changed to a stub that points over to the wiki. That way there's not old out-of-date information in the blog, which would be confusing. I'll find all of the links to the old posts here on SkiBuilders and update them to point to the new content sometime soon.

Note: while I've use real wiki software (MediaWiki) this is not necessarily a wiki in the traditional sense: I'm the only one who can edit it

I copied each of the old posts to the wiki directly, then updated them from there. Many of them have new/updated information here and there, look on the history page for specific articles to get a feel for what might be different.

Finally, one thing I really like about the new format is it gives me the ability to stub out future content that I've always wanted to add. If you see a placeholder you'd like to see me add sooner rather than later, drop me a PM and I'll try to do it.

I missed the questions about the base grinder. Sorry guys, I left you hanging for a while on that one!!

Rockaukum was right: it's a Fontaine base grinder, made by Fontaine and sold by Wintersteiger. 15x49 belt I believe, 240v, friggin' 4hp motor on the thing. I'll get some more pics sometime soon and put up proper info here: http://www.happymonkeysnowboards.com/Mo ... se_grinder

nice work mike

Information on my base grinder is up here: http://www.happymonkeysnowboards.com/Mo ... se_grinder

A few notes here to help with forum searches: Fontaine 1404 base grinder, which was sold by Wintersteiger as model SNB 55. Supplies from SVST. Coolant is Kool Kut Ski Grinding Coolant. No autofeed. Ghetto side edge guide built out of scrap.

Edit: double post after server errors.