Been just over 2 years since my last post here.
Wow time flies!!!
I finally got around to building a new pair of skis.
These are a revision of the Portlys shown above.
I'm donating these to the silent auction at our local ski clubs comp banquet in early march.
We are trying to raise enough money to buy an air bag for next winter.
The square tip and tails, while they looked cool, had too much drag.
They weren't bad if you were just skiing pow
but when you went from groomed/hardpacked into the pow you had to be prepared for it or they would send you over the handle bars. (if skis had handle bars that is)
Just pulled these out this morning!
Note the rounded tips, tails are pretty similar.
This was a pretty long process.
I replaced the vacuum membrane on my press as the old one was getting pretty beat up.
Thought I'd better test it out, it just got to full vacuum when the press table broke again.
This had happened before, I had propped up the tip and tails of my mold to get a bit of early rise.
The vacuum pulled the table into the void under the mold and broke.
Last time it just cracked the table and I managed to pour some watered down white glue into the crack and it was fixed.
This time it broke! But not in the same place.
I tried to seal it up, as my weekend was almost over, but after dicking around with it for 1/2 a day I realized I had to rebuild it.
Got a fresh piece of 3/4" MDF and fit it in there. Put a coat of varathane on it, wouldn't hold a vacuum.
Ended up having to do 3 coats before it would stop bleeding air. By then I was back to work and a week behind.
I have 2 more pair to build in the next week or so.
A pair of all mountain skis for the boy and a little pair of mogul skis for the silent auction.
The mogul skis I was planning on building for the boy a couple years ago but ran out of time.
Now he's long out grown them and the core and all the materials have been sitting in the basement since then.
Just have to slap a mold together and off we go.
Will post more once I've made some progress.
sam
You don't even have a legit signature, nothing to reveal who you are and what you do...
Best of luck to you. (uneva)
