Last year we built this wooden press:
It bears most of the force with 9 2X6's on the top and bottom, connected by angle iron and threaded rod. At first i was skeptical about using a wooden press, as many of you are, and i believed it would not be sufficiently rigid. However, my dad kept reviewing the numbers and asured me that it would be strong enough. After an alarming but otherwise harmless catastophic blow out at the end of one of our hoses during a pressure test (sounded ~ to a gunshot), we were ready to test the press. Despite all of the creaking and settling the press retained its form up to something like 70 psi., above which we were unwilling to risk unnescessary damage.
Basically we followed the skibuilders tutorial for the actual ski construction (thanks for that by the way) and ended up with the skis pictured below. They were incredibly soft, utilizing a maple/poplar core and only 2 layers of fiberglass. They are pow skis, as should be readily apparent just by looking at them. The dimensions are 140-110-130 and 183 cm legnth.
My dad's are on the left, mine are on the right.
Of the four original skis, only two remain. These skis were made primarily for our trip to Utah. While at snowbird i broke a p12 heel piece and skied my dads skis while he rented or snowboarded. Here is a video from about the time when the binding broke: http://media.newschoolers.com/uploads/m ... tah056.mpg
I broke one of my dads skis just ahead of the binding on a lame cork 7 attempt off a booter slightly out of bounds near Brighton's Millicent lift. Here is a video of that: http://media.newschoolers.com/uploads/m ... tah107.mpg
As a result i ended up skiing one of my skis and one of my dads.
Then the first ski that we made (the one of mine in which the core is not even remotely centered) fractured slightly at the end of the trip due to not being flame treated and a general lack of stiffness. I am left with my more solidly constructed ski mount bindingless on my wall.
If anyone is interested here is the season edit i made of my friends and i last year: www.jibtheshit.com/itsCATseason.mpg
Now fast forward to the present
Currently i am in the process of building a pair of skis entirely without edges. These will serve as urban/backyard skis and also will be a test bed for the park skis i am creating, as they are the same dimensions. They will have no edges mostly to decrease the vandalism aspect of urban. I will use four layers of glass in each ski with the hopes of achieving a normally stiff ski as opposed to the big mountain skis of last year
Unfortunately my liscence for autodesk has expired so i cannot post cad shots. Currently i am in the template/ core blank phase. I am pleased to say that we now have a planer so i wont have to deal with the shitty profiling table i made anymore. I believe they will be 105-75-105 and 183 cm in legnth. I will update with pictures soon.
