Twizz 2012/2013

twizzstyle · Post by **twizzstyle** » Sun Sep 16, 2012 5:01 pm

Finally finished my first pair of the season, so it's time for my journal!

For those who aren't regulars, this past spring I designed and built a CNC router from scratch. I've done a few things with it since then, but up until now no ski stuff.

This is the first pair of skis made using the CNC router, and coincidentally the first pair of skis I've made for someone else! I've helped one person in the past make skis for himself, but this time I made the skis, and am handing them off to... my wife!

(we got married 3 weeks ago)

She is an ok skier on the groomers, but has had virtually no time in powder. I decided I'm changing that this year, so I made her some powder boards.

I give you - the Pinky Sticks! I took my powder skis, the Piggy Sticks, made them a little narrower at the tip and tail, and a lot more sidecut. Same length. I used the same mold, which is flat with a lot of early rise, but I heated from the bottom instead of the top. My piggies are entirely reverse camber, where as the Pinkies came out with just a TINY bit of camber under foot, which will be good for her.

The topsheets are sublimated nylon from Miller Studios. I can't say enough good things about the quality they put out, and their excellent customer service even for one-off hobbyists like me.

Dimensions are 160cm length, 145/120/135 (I think... something close to that anyways, I don't have the exact numbers in front of me)

His and hers!

Camber comparison. You'll notice the tiny amount of camber on the pinkies, and slightly less early-rise.

Gratuitous colorful lotus inclusion

twizzstyle · Post by **twizzstyle** » Sun Sep 16, 2012 5:10 pm

Some notes on this pair:

Bases need more grinding, they are just slightly convex, but I think I can grind them flat.

They came out slightly longer than the Piggies, wtf? Not sure how I managed that, supposed to be 160cm, but whatever.

I got a little ugly wrinkling in the topsheet at the tips (see the Stumpysticks picture above). The picture makes it look worse than it is, but its still there.

I tried something new for sidewalls... I had a 2" wide slab of pink sidewall, I profiled it on the CNC and then ripped it into four sidewalls. I tacked it too the cores at the center with some superglue and then just did the layup like that. Turned out good, nice bonding with no delam anywhere, but in one spot the sidewall got pushed away from the core a little too much, enough that cutting off the flashing removed all sidewall in about a 2" long area. In the future I will do more superglue tacking along the entire length, similar to how most of us do edges, rather than just the center. The tips were stapled to the tip spacers so they were held in there fine.

While I'm not much faster with the CNC now, since I spend more time messing around on the computer, and getting things aligned and clamped and tested on the router than I did just cutting things by hand, the accuracy and general quality went up by many orders of magnitude. I used to have a motto "don't worry, it'll fill with epoxy". Tiny gaps between the edges and the base for instance were common place on my skis, hard to see on the finished ski, but there none the less. Now everything fits together TIGHT with no gaps anywhere.

If I can just figure out how to stop the top sheet tip/tail wrinkles, I'd say I'm ready to start selling these bad boys.

vinman · Post by **vinman** » Sun Sep 16, 2012 5:12 pm

Congrats and great job on the skis, they look great.

twizzstyle · Post by **twizzstyle** » Sun Sep 16, 2012 5:14 pm

Next up is some new powder skis for Kevin (KevyWevy... who never comes on here anymore). We CNC'd the cores today and epoxied on the sidewalls. Should have those pressed in a couple of weeks. I've also got another pair in the works for myself that will be some sort of park/spring/rainy day ski I guess. I'm running out of types of skis I need, so at this point I'm just building for the sake of building and trying to come up with snow conditions to justify them...

More · Post by **More** » Sun Sep 16, 2012 5:50 pm

Awesome man, I need to make some his / hers skis to continue the gf's evolution. She's ok on groomers now but we've got a fair way still to go before I can ski with her all day before starting to get twitchy.

artski · Post by **artski** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 6:31 am

Great looking skis Twizz, are you designing your graphics in rgb color wheel? If so how are you converting to cmyk for printing?

amidnightproject · Post by **amidnightproject** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 6:33 am

artski wrote:Great looking skis Twizz, are you designing your graphics in rgb color wheel? If so how are you converting to cmyk for printing?

Depending on what art software you are using you can just go up into the settings and change the color profile. For the most part it will be "similar" though some colors (namely brighter colors) will change slightly. But you can tweak it after the color profile change.

twizzstyle · Post by **twizzstyle** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 7:21 am

^^^^This.

I do everything in Photoshop and Illustrator, and its just one click to change to CMYK.

twizzstyle · Post by **twizzstyle** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 9:43 am

A few more photos

Profiling the cores, I profiled one piece of bamboo wide enough for both cores, and cut the shape after.

Sidewall slab profiled

Bases cut with homemade drag knife

amidnightproject · Post by **amidnightproject** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 9:51 am

So friggen jealous of that CNC twizz

amidnightproject · Post by **amidnightproject** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 9:52 am

also, if you wipe your equipment down with bounce dryer sheets it'll help keep foam/plastic bits from stickin to your gantry

skidesmond · Post by **skidesmond** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 10:47 am

Nice skis and the CNC is not too shabby either! I too am running out of reasons to make skis for myself, with the exception that more is better :-)

deepskis · Post by **deepskis** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 10:51 am

The skis look super cool! You will have a happy wife for a long time Twizzstyle

chrismp · Post by **chrismp** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 11:13 am

show us that diy dragknife pleeeeaaase!

great job on the skis!

about the wrinkles in the topsheet: are you using parchment paper on top of the ski? if so, i found that attaching it to the aluminum with spray adhesive helps with that. you can leave the parchment on there for a couple of pressings as long as it doesn't get damaged.

twizzstyle · Post by **twizzstyle** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 11:38 am

Dryer sheets, seriously??? I'll have to give that a shot! That's awesome!

I also realized that my dust collector was clogged, so it was hardly sucking... once I cleared that it did a much better job of keeping stuff clean.

I'll take some pictures of my drag knife tonight for you Chris. It's just an $8 carbide drill blank from McMaster that I ground into a knife-like shape, and I just leave the router off and let it free-caster... seems to be doing a pretty great job, although I think it could probably be sharper, and there's probably a better shape for the blade. I just winged it.

Ski Builders Forum

Ski Builders Forum

Twizz 2012/2013

Twizz 2012/2013