Its been a long process but finaly my first skis are built and tested. The first pair works like a first pair should I think. I was stoked the first day on them just because they worked! but on the second day I started to find critic points and by the 3 I wanted to go back home and start up the next pair.
I think I kind of overdid the design on them. I had a baby daughter in december so I have had lots of time to think but not much time to build and that made the evolution of the first idea run up into overdrive. The next pair will be buildt with more care and modesty..
the process then;
I buildt my press out of left over materials. it was very time consuming but the end result works well. I used 6 boards of construction plywood for all basic parts with metal support for strenght and holding it all together. I pressed at 60 psi and it is absolutely stiff and strait!
The top mold has legs and the bottom mold can be moved with a pallet jack for easy loading of the casette. (pictures below)
I load the casette on the bottom mold and move it into position with the jack, jack it up and put on the metal bars. When loaded the bottom mold hangs in the top mold.
I havent had the time to build an edge bender but came up with another idea that works really well as long as I dont do wrap around edges (has probebly been done before, but I havent seen it). I put a strip of rubber (I guess any material with the right thickness would do) with the same thickness as the edge on a piece of plywood and attached it to the ski template with the base taped on to it. pressed down the edge between the template and the plywood and glued it in place. The edge fit is almost perfect!
The skis then!
they are buildt with an all birch core (100%, no tip and tail or sidewall plastics) and with a top veneer in birch. I made the top veneer myself and that was a mistake. I couldnt make it as thin as I wanted because the wood started chipping when I reached 1,7 mm ( I wanted it to be 1mm) the same thing happend to the tip and tail of the cores = the whole ski i s 1,4 mm thicker then planned and stiff as hell!
I call them Modern Antics and they turned heads everywhere!
"I have never met a skibuilder before, this is so cool!" haha
Again, Thanks everyone! I will keep reading this forum and my girlfriend will keep on looking at me like I'm mad.
- Petter
