Ski Builders Forum

Greetings fellow ski builders. Although I've been designing and building skis since 2007, this is my first post in the Journals section. Shown here are two new designs for the 2014-15 season.

The pair on the left are my daily drivers. A conventional camber design with subtle early rise tip. Ski length = 185 cm, width = 135-98-125 mm, sidecut radius = 20.5 m, effective edge length = 160 cm, running length = 139 cm.

The pair on the right are my powder skis. Early rise tip and tail with moderate camber under foot. Ski length = 185 cm, width = 140-112-129 mm, sidecut radius = 24.5 m, effective edge length = 145 cm, running length = 111 cm.

Cores are full-length vertical laminated bamboo with Ipe wood sidewalls and P-tex tip/tail filler.
Composite are uni-glass, uni-carbon, and biaxial carbon.
Durasurf 4001 base with full-wrap edges.
Resin Research Composite Pro epoxy system.
Top sheets are sublimated PBT material by Chad at CODA, graphic designs by SHIF.
Base tuning expertly performed by Todd at 7even Skis in SLC.

IMG_0434_DxO by SHIF ski, on Flickr

IMG_0432_DxO by SHIF ski, on Flickr

IMG_0433_DxO by SHIF ski, on Flickr

IMG_0440_DxO by SHIF ski, on Flickr

Cheers,
SHIF

Hi,

looking great! I really like the camber/rocker combination on your daily driver, looks truly all-mountain.

Two new pairs for the 2015-16 ski season

Both pairs have conventional camber with subtle early rise tips. Ski lengths = 185 cm, effective edge lengths = 160 cm, running lengths = 139 cm.
The Flamers: width = 136-95-125 mm, sidecut radius = 18.5 m, mounted with Rossi Axial 2 bindings.
The Tread Plates: width = 135-98-125, sidecut radius = 20.5 m, mounted with Dynastar PX12 Demo2 bindings. These skis are a duplicate of my Purple Snakes from last year. Those skis perform magnificently, I want a second pair to let my friends test them too.

Flamers have a killer fluorescent orange sintered P-tex base, Tread Plates have bright blue (matches my logo). Base and edge materials sourced from Kam at Ski Lab.

Same core design and lay-up as last year's skis.

Both graphic designs were derived from high-resolution photographs; Flamers are an image of a cotton fabric print, Tread Plates are the aluminum floor inside the Deer Valley gondola.

IMG_1754_SHIF skis 2015 by SHIF ski, on Flickr

IMG_1748_SHIF skis 2015 tips by SHIF ski, on Flickr

IMG_1749_SHIF skis 2015 tails by SHIF ski, on Flickr

Pray for snow!
-S

looking great Shif

Great looking skis. Love the flames!

Two new pairs for the 2016-17 ski season

Same ski shapes and camber/rocker profiles as the past couple seasons. Powder skis on the left and all mountain carvers on the right. Specs are listed in prior year's builds.

Got some Look Pivot bindings this year, should work well on the powder skis. Mounted PX Demo bindings on the carvers. Boot marks on masking tape, should have removed that already.

Same graphics as on prior builds but on the treadplate design I flipped the shaded color to be in the center. And the green snakeskin graphic was purple in the past.

The powder skis have fluorescent green sintered P-tex bases, they will glow in the snow. Snakes have black bottoms.

Some new construction techniques for me; partial wrap edges on the tails and chopped the cores off square and using full coverage tip/tail fillers. This saved a lot of time during the build.

Base and edge materials sourced from Kam at Ski Lab.
Same core material and composite lay-up as before, I think it's dialed-in perfectly.
As usual, expert base prep and tuning by Todd at 7even Skis in SLC.

IMG_2394_SHIF 2016 by SHIF ski, on Flickr

IMG_2392_SHIF 2016 by SHIF ski, on Flickr

IMG_2393_SHIF 2016 by SHIF ski, on Flickr

/Shif

they look great! What is your resort of chose in PC?

My original photo hosting site crashed and went out of business so the journal had no images for over a year. I just uploaded these pix to Flickr so I could rebuild the journal.
I haven't been active with the ski building projects for about five years, I have too many skis! In fact this past summer I cut up and trashed about a dozen pairs of my earliest builds.
The six pairs shown in this journal are in my active rotation. Some have almost 100 days skiing on them. They have all been tuned regularly and the demo bindings have been replaced with Look PX 12 non-adjustable bindings.
I ski 80-90 days every year so I may start up the building process again in the near future as these skis get beat up.
My home-built skis are either all-mountain carvers or powder skis. For those firm corduroy mornings I prefer either my Head Super Shape i.Speeds or my Head World Cup Rebels i.Race skis. I simply can't build skinny racing skis like those. I know my buddy Todd at 7even skis successfully builds real GS racing skis with Titanal reinforcements so I know it's possible, just not in my garage.

SHIF

Thanks for reuploading - the forum is only half the fun without pictures. Alternatively, you can now host the pictures directly on the forum through the attachment function below the field where you type your posts (limited to 1 MB filesize).

Regarding the race skis - I am 100% sure you could build a great titanal race ski! Titanal can be cut with regular wood router bits, they just dull quicker. You also want to make sure that you always handle the titanal with gloves in order not to contaminate it.