What I’ve learned is to research and plan as much as possible, which I did and this forum was a tremendous help. Thanks to everyone who has posted their experiences. I realized everything takes longer than expected. If I thought it was going to take a month it took 2 months. I think I started in May. I thought by the end of July I’d have a set of skis made. Well here it is in September and I’m still working on the ski press. But eventually I had to start, and make adjustments as I went along.
What would I do differently? A lot of things. I would have preferred to make the ski press from tubular steel or I-beams. But I didn’t have the resources ($$$) nor do I know how to weld. I went with wood and I would have preferred to use glue-lam or LVL beams. It would have been a big time saver.
Since I work with wood (mostly furniture) as a hobby I went with what I know. I’ve seen other presses made using wood and they looked robust enough, at least most them did.
I decided not to use dimensional (2x8x96) lumber since most of the lumber at the big box store is crap. I sifted through a stack of lumber to find ½ dozen useable ones. I would have had to run the lumber through the planer and joiner in order to make them flat. Too time consuming.
The Wood beams:
Instead I opted to rip OSB plywood in 8 inches strips. I use 3x4 - 4x8 sheets of OSB. This turned out to be time consuming since I had to rip 7 sheets. Not to mention OSB is heavy. I made a jig in order to drill the holes evenly in every strip. I used ½ inch threaded rod to bolt the plywood to make the beams. Did some sanding and it was done.
Steel Re-enforcements:
Now that the wood beams were made (and heavy), I realized that making a wood frame to hold the beams probably wasn’t going to work. After reading about the stresses and forces when using a pneumatic style press, steel was my only option. Actually my press was originally going to use 2 - 6 tons bottle jacks instead of pneumatic style. Since it seemed most presses are pneumatic, I made the switch.
Lucky for me a friend of mine had a stash of 4inch steel U channel. We discussed dimensions and he welded up the 2 steel supports you see in the pics. Thanks Chet! They weigh about 85 pounds each.
Ski Press Assembly:
When working with so much weight you have to work carefully. I had both wood beams lying on their sides on a platform. I slipped the steel over each end of the wood beams and attached beams to steel. I used a 12 inch drill bit to make the holes in the wood beams so I could attach it to the steel plates on the U channel frame. I used 12 bolts for the top and 12 bolts for the bottom. That was the easy part. Now I had to stand it upright on the base platform. I estimate at this point the press is weighing about 650 – 700 lbs. Well there was no way I could stand it up on the base platform. Luckily I had the 2 6-ton jacks and they came in handy. I jacked up the beam high enough where I was able to cautiously tilt it upright. Whew! I was done for the night.
Wood beams laying on base platform with steel framing.
(ignore the 2007 date on the pics. I hadn’t reset the date/time)
Tools I used to upright the press, 2 - 6ton jacks, wood blocking. I was going to take pics as I went but once I started I didn’t want to stop.
The opening between the beams may be too large (16 inches). I may have to unbolt the bottom beam from the steel frame and pad it with wood blocking to close the opening.
Bottom Adjustable Form:
I wanted an adjustable form so I could make skis from 150cm – 185cm. There was a post already on how to make a simple one. So I used that one as a model. The camber is about 1 inch. Sounds like a lot but from reading other posts the ski tends to relax after it is pressed, so hopefully it will. I used snoCAD-X to get the basic design of the bottom form.
I used MDF and it machines nicely but what a mess it makes. Luckily my router has a dust pickup attachment so the flying dust was minimal. Where a mask! I made a jig to drill out the holes evenly. The MDF is 3x4 thick so I used my ½ inch plunge router to drill the holes. They came out perfect and assembling the bottom form was easy. I used 1/2inch threaded rod and bolted it together. Yet another heavy piece of equipment.
Still need to attach the end blocks so they slide.
Top Adjustable Form:
This was more difficult to design. I couldn’t really find a design that would fit what I had so far. I was able to look at a few in the forum and work out a design that fit my press. I didn’t want to use MDF this time as it is heavy and thought I’d have a hard time attaching that much weight to the top wood beam. I chose 2x6 lumber instead. It worked out ok.
I still need to do some minor shaping on the form and attach it to the top wood beam. I’ll post more pics so you can see how it will slide to different lengths.
Here’s a pic of the top form in front of the press looking at the top of it that will mount to the top beam. It’s not fully completed. The center bolt is ½ threaded rod. It holds the finger boards in place that are in between the finger joints of the form. This design will allow the form to expand and contract as needed.
I still need to slot the outside frame (the 2x4) and run threaded rod through the form and the 2x4 frame, then attach to the top beam. I'll post more detailed pics once it's competed showing how I built and assembled it.
Ski designs:
While I was thinking about how to work out details on the ski press I designed some skis. I designed the skis using snoCAD-x. I have 3 different designs 177cm 12/66/96, 174cm 116/70/102 and 168cm 118/65/104. Primarily the designs are for skiing east coast conditions. The cores vary from solid maple (no glue up but a solid piece of wood), solid ash, and poplar/maple and polar/ash.
I lucked out again with the wood. My friend Chet had a stash of maple and ash at his at his parents’ house. The wood came from his land he cleared when he built his house, about 15 years ago. The wood had been sitting in the basement since then. At one point his father was going to use it for furniture and other projects but never got around to it. Unfortunately he died last year. They had no use for it and they knew I made furniture and cutting boards (and now skis) as a hobby. So they offered it to me. Thanks again Chet!
Ski Cores:
At first I tried making a core using the router/bridge method. I spent a lot of time carefully making the jig and bridge. In the long run it was just too difficult and time consuming. I have a planer so I used a planer crib and could make decent core in about 10 minutes. I need to tweak the crib design but it’s much faster. Of course a CNC machine would be great!
Other stuff:
I did some experimenting by mixing acetone and Plexiglas as a sealant and glue. Acetone melts Plexiglas. It didn’t work as a glue. I glued 2 small pieces of ¼ inch plywood. After a day of drying I was able to pry the boards apart with out too much trouble. Wood glue would never fail like that. Seals wood nicely though. However I’m not sure if it will crack in cold weather under stress. I’ll try more tests… paint a thin strip of wood with the mixture, let it dry then put it in the freezer for a day or so and see how it flexes. I’ll post the results.
I also tried using it on cotton cloth. I did not glue or epoxy the cloth to wood but just painted it on the cloth. It dried hard as expected but the cloth did not dry flat. Kind of curled up and shunk. I don’t think it would make a good sealant in place of top sheet material as the acetone would probably weaken the epoxy on the ski.
I did graphic lettering on vellum paper. It’s a semi-transparent paper. The supply store (Staples) didn’t have rice paper. I put the acetone/Plexiglas mixture on a piece of wood then the vellum paper and sealed it with acetone/Plexiglas mixture. It dried ok and the paper was almost transparent but the paper wrinkled. I don’t know if vellum paper will work with epoxy.
So unless the top sheet is a wood, acetone/Plexiglas probably won’t work.
So this is it so far. I need to do some finish work on the press, purchase the pneumatic hose and hook it up, buy expoxy. Already have base material, fiberglass and edges from WWW.SKIBUILDERS.COM.
More pics to come after the weekend.
