Vertically Laminated Composites

[amidnightproject]

vert laminated cores with carbon fiber are the bomb.

I was able to hold a laminated balsa and carbon piece of 'lumber' awhile back. I can't remember the name off the top of my head but it was insanely light. And extremely responsive.

[Dtrain]

If that is the flax, they also sell, between the wood strips. It may not be as bad as other things on tools. Planer, router bits, etc.

[FlamingYeti]

Dtrain, funny you say that now because profiling those cores was one of the biggest pains in the ass I've ever experienced. With the fiberglass, I was afraid it would break our planer or just go through like 4 sets of blades. So, I ended up using about 8 36 grit sanding belts on the belt sander per core. So, that sucked. If this is a new thing in ski building technology, somebody definitely needs to figure out a better way to profile these cores without either destroying your router/planer or spending hours on the belt sander.

[chrismp]

bcomp claims that the cores can be profiled with regular woodworking tools.

[FlamingYeti]

Interesting. I tried putting one of the cores through the planer once, but it just made a terrifying noise, popped the circuit breaker, burnt the cores, and chipped and dulled the blades significantly.That might have been because of the heavy weight of the fiberglass, though. It could be worth another try.

[twizzstyle]

Last year I used some foam core blanks from BlankSlateSkis that have roughly 1" wide strips of foam, stuck together with vertical strips of fiberglass. Awesome stuff, machined with ease on my CNC router.

[hamerhead]

We just finished a pair using Paulownia with some carbon between the stringers and bamboo sidewalls. 19oz fg above and below with a carbon uni strip on top.
184cm long 140 110 130 and only 1800grams per ski.
Definitely not noodles as well.
Seemed to be some advantage to having the carbon between the stringers as the core weight was reduced without compromising stiffness.
Quite a bit more work though.

[jono]

hamerhead-what accounts for your reduction in core weight? was it a thinner core or was it from the carbon displacing the heavier wood?

[hamerhead]

Definitely a thinner core. We monitor the deflection of our cores at profile stage.
The stringers that had carbon through them produced a thinner lighter core achieving the same deflection as other heavier/thicker cores.

[artski]

Question for you Hammerhead, did you test for, or did you notice any improvement in torsional flex?

[hamerhead]

Havent done that yet but i will and come back to you.
As it is quite a wide ski i dont think there will be much issue with torsional strength. Watch this space