I drew up the sidecut in my CAD program which took quite awhile and I wasn't really sure how much magnatraction to give it. I never skied the Praxis ski or even saw it in person but just guessed how much sidecut deviation to give it. Skis measure out at 131-108-124 with an effective radius of 22 m, 186 cm long.
I shimmed my mold with scrap pieces of base material to make the two camber sections fore and aft of the binding mount area. The camber sections are about 2.5 mm of camber relative to the center of the ski and the overall camber is 4 mm.
Cores are all bamboo which made the build that much quicker. The bamboo is definitely softer flexing than most of the hardwoods I usually use.
For the graphics I used old logos from the Alpine Meadows ski area dating back to inception. The new owners of Alpine killed off their logo all together and are trying to make it Squaw Valley. So these graphics are basically a big FU to the clueless corporate ski world who are trying to erase decades of skiing history.
So now on to the ride report. I only got to ski these in May, June and July on old spring(summer?) snow so I didn't get to try them in a variety of conditions. I found that they didn't carve as well as I had hoped. They definitely gripped and released easily off piste and were fun and playful. At high speed they were stable on a few laps down the Chimney. But on groomers they didn't lock into a carve like a normal ski. Possibly less magnatraction would solve this and different placement of tip and tail rise relative to the sidecut.
I have a few people that want to buy them based on the custom graphics alone so I think they are being sold. I doubt I would ski these again over the other skis in my quiver. I do plan on using the same graphics for a more conventional ski for my next build.
