Chopped up some OLD skis to see the construction

[MontuckyMadman]

Alotta different woods and metal and plastic.
The one on the bottom is a double stack core and composite in the middle, crazy.
The one above that is like ply wood or particle board and very light, Atomic. Full plastic cap.

Tough to see with my awesome cell pic but some have metal top and bottom.

Remember how stiff those old skis were. I guess because they couldn't get torsional rigidity any other way?

FLASH BACK!

[sammer]

Montucky, can you get a better picture?
or try it again with the skis held a little farther away(notice the stuff in the background is fairly clear).
I'd like to get a better look at that.
Also can you tell us what skis those are?

thanks
sam

[MontuckyMadman]

meh, maybe. Its more for mystery and excitement. We got rossis, vokles atomics, olins, some unknown no names. All really old. Like 80's vintage.

[EricW]

FOCUS!

[MontuckyMadman]

FOCUS!

SHITTY CELL PHONE!
suck it.

[gketcham]

That "big mac" core is nuts. Do you know of a good dealer to get aluminum or steel plates for skis?

[MontuckyMadman]

I always thought these people could potentially provide metals for us on this side of the pond, even perhaps coat it for bonding but I have no idea.

http://www.aerospacemetals.com/aluminum.html

[gketcham]

Have you made any skis with a metal layer? I figure it would be aluminum and not steel for weight and flex. I am just new at this and trying to find advice.

[EricW]

I'd stick to basics until you get a feel for it. Then try experimenting.

[gketcham]

Thanks for the advice. I didn't plan on using metal right away, more of a curiosity thing. I have skied a couple of Nordica skis that have 1 or 2 sheets of metal in them.

[teleman36]

I am with EricW on getting a feel for your materials. You will soon find out that even the smallest change in core dimensions can have a huge effect. I am now putting aluminium in a lot of my skis. This is just a simple softish temper straight from the mill .032 thick. Not all of the big guys use titanal, and I have had no issues with bonding, although scrubbing with a beartex pad just during layup is not the most pleasant job. I do not carry the metal edge to edge or tip to tail, but set inabout 8mm from the edges and rounded off at tip and tail spacer lines. Metal .goes right over core.With .032 cores have been reduced buy atleast 2mm in the beefy part of the core. Good Luck, Mark (FOG)

[gketcham]

'nother question... I read about a ski that had what I think was a steel plate from tail to 3/4 of the ski so there was almost no flex except in the tip. Has anyone tried anything like that?

[OAC]

I thought we were getting away from the metals? (except the edges... )

[MontuckyMadman]

whoa teleman dropping the FOG warning. NIce.

Do you do an etching treatment on the AL or just polish pit back to non-oxidized AL surface?
Heavy abrasion I would assume.

[teleman36]

No chemical etching. Abrading with 40 or 60 grit, or sometimes course wire wheels. Then immmdiatly scrub in epoxy with scotchbrite pad. I went to metal in order to get more torsional stiffness and more importantly to dampen the ski. Later, Mark FOGWR WR=who rips