WhiteRoom skis

Document your personal work here. Show photos, movies, and share your secrets.

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vinman
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Post by vinman »

top mold done and mounted on the press. I used eye bolts and some ratchet straps to hang the top mold. It worked really nice and allows me to adjust their positions very easily. Everything is coming together and starting to look like a press.
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I'll have to modify my cat track some, not pictured. It was made for 14 inches wide. When I made it I failed to think about my center posts only being 12 inches apart. So Not sure what I'm going to do there. I may just cut everything down to 12 inches... or possibly only the 3 pieces that are too long. and just run s short piece of cable though them. Not sure yet. Cutting them all down and re-drilling them sounds like a lot of work... but it would be done right...

I ordered the veneer for my tops this week as well. $0.98/sq ft. for Makore wood 6 inches wide by 110 long. 5 sheets for ~$36 plus shipping. very pretty reddish wood with very defined figures and grain patterns.

Skiing in N. VT is pretty good right now btw. no like what you guys on the west coast have been getting but good for this time of year around here.
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skidesmond
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Post by skidesmond »

Just make the cat rack smaller where the center post goes.

I use a solid piece of 3/4 mdf for my cat rack. The width of the mdf is 20in, a little bit wider than the inside dimension of my press which is 16in. The length of the mdf is the running length (130cm) of the shortest ski I can make which is about 150cm. I notched the mdf for the center post. On each end of the solid mdf I attach the typical cat track strips.

I've made 2 pairs of skis w/ this new cat track and it's worked well.
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vinman
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Post by vinman »

notched out the track and cut the running length for the mold. I was able to pressurize the press for the first time up to 20 psi. I think I'll have to extend my track by a few sticks and put some more spacers in to make the top mold deeper but that could change once I get all the alu and masonite in there.

Also I was able to hit 62 deg in the shop today with only the kerosene heater running. Granted it was a very warm day today, 34-36 deg and rain. I think when I turn on the electric heaters and build the hot box I should be able to maintain well over 70 deg.
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jvangelder
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Post by jvangelder »

Your shop sounds like our shop last year. We had all we could do to keep it warm in there on cold days, two propane heaters and a k1 going full blast..

cold fingers bending edges.. not fun
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EricW
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Post by EricW »

So, do you have black curtains, near the station?
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vinman
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Post by vinman »

Eric, not sure what that means.....
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EricW
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Post by EricW »

'White Room' is a song by Cream. Came out in 1968.
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vinman
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Post by vinman »

Ahhh got it now. Good one I was not thinking in the context of music. I did paint my press black. But only by coincidence.
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vinman
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Post by vinman »

cat track and bladder got hung with trampoline springs and core profiler re-tested. The test strip came out almost perfect this time.

I was using a 13 mm x 1800 mm strip of scrap pine hot glued to the profiler. I think it would have come out perfect had I done better at hot gluing it down. with 1 or 2 more passes to go the core measured 3.3 mm at the tip and 12.3 mm at the waist and ~3.4-3.5 mm at the tail when the glue came loose and the strip got pulled into the planer without the crib. Aside from an incomplete test my tip and waist we on target to hit the 2-11-2 profile.

I'll be ordering material and heat blankets within the next 1-2 weeks as well as collecting heating controller components.

Progress will come a bit slower now as our new baby boy just arrived last week.
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skidesmond
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Post by skidesmond »

Congrats on the new family addition!
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vinman
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Post by vinman »

glued up a core today with very good success. My final core design calls for a 118mm core with 10.5m sidewalls for a final width of 139mm.

I'm using maple and poplar. 3 14x14 mm poplar strips and 4 14x19 mm maple strips. To get an accurate cut on my table saw I ripped some scrap pine to something close to 14mm and planed it down to within a few hundredths of a mm. I used this spacer to set my table saw fence. This along with the use of a feather board to hold the material stable was enough for me to accurately rip a 14 mm strip. The poplar got planed down to 14x14 and the maple just ripped. I used titebond3 wood glue.

My final core width came out 120mm, this measurement held very close through the entire length of the core. So I was likely off by 0.1mm on a couple strips plus the thickness of the glue. All in all pretty good for my first go.
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vinman
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Post by vinman »

so I've now got 2 core blanks. For the second core I used both vertical and horizontal clamps.

I made the vertical clamps out of strips of 1 inch pine with carriage bolts, nuts and a washer on either side of the layup. I placed these about 18 inches apart and alternated these with F clamps. To account for any thickness irregularities in the strips I put a small section of rubber tubing under the top section of the clamp to make sure each strip got vertical pressure.
Image

This method cut the vertical alignment error from the first core in half. The next time I layup cores I'll add another 4 vertical clamps to further decrease the vertical alignment errors.

I planes both cores down to ~12mm. They just need to be cut to right length now and they be ready to profile.
Image
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skidesmond
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Post by skidesmond »

Looking good!
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vinman
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Post by vinman »

Wow a month since I've made any significant progress, but that's what having a new born will do for you, plus about 4 feet of new snow in the past 2-3 weeks doesn't help ski building progress either.

Anyway I have my controller completed. I designed it based off head monkey's design with some variations in the main power switch and individual blanket switches and PID types.

The enclosure is an old PC box I had lying around. The techy parts came from light object, wires and terminal strips from the auto parts store and switches from a local store as well. The outlets, plugs and main power cord from a local electrical supply place. The thermocouple wire came from ebay.

I'm going to have my electrician friend go over my work before plugging this in just to be sure I don't have some major safety error someplace.

anyway take a look and tell me what you think.
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My MEI blankets should be here in a week or two. I also have my epoxy from QCM. Time to gather the rest of my materials.

I'm in the home stretch now.
Fighting gravity on a daily basis
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Brazen
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Post by Brazen »

I'm jealous. Nice job...
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