Pheeps - Building Progress

[Pheeps]

Thank you to everyone who has contributed to this forum through the years. It's educational, entertaining and inspiring. I continue to read and learn from what you documented, which helps greatly throughout my own building progress.

Basically, this is just a hobby for me, no real expectations or aspirations other than to build some skis and make some turns on them. I started skiing young, raced when younger and have done plenty of back country, which has me designing/building skis for groomers as well as skis for powder. Like most here, just posting to share my application of knowledge gained from this site back to the community. Maybe someone else will find it useful; hopefully I'll get some more tips from others.

My first attempt was in late 2018, a powder ski (about 120mm under foot?) which never got past the prep of materials. I made a template. I got the cores profiled, shaped, rabbeted. I cut the base material and a few weeks later attached edges. Then I learned the hard way about base warp. Base material had warped significantly prior to attached the edges and, being my first time, I used way too much super glue to attache the edges. Oh well, I still have those cores and bases just in case for later on.

No further work on skis that year.

Second attempt. Started way too late in 2019, but really wanted to try them out during a mid-January trip to Montana. So, it was a bit rushed. Not many photos, but it was a good learning experience on the full process and the finished pair skies way better than expected. Since none of my skis are powder skis (Volkl Mantra being the closest) I wanted to give that a try again, plus I was thinking powder skis might be more forgiving of mistakes and imperfections, not sure how true this is. I searched online for a ski to emulate and decided to use J Skis - the Friend. I used sno-CAD and came up with a 182 with side cut of 143-118-133. I was able to print at work and glued the template to some MDF.

Then I just lined up a piece of flexible pine to the outline of the template side cut and drilled it into place to use as a router guide. Nothing fancy, but it worked.

The guide worked well with my home made table router and a flush trim bit with top bearing. I got a nice clean edge right on the printed side cut line. For whatever reason, I was thinking I needed to have both sides trimmed perfectly, I ended up modifying this later.

Warning: my workshop is a small, 0ne car garage and we are continuously renovating our house which takes priority and never leaves enough time to clean up. It's not the cleanest nor organized.

template.jpg (640.69 KiB) Viewed 14532 times

...more to follow

[Pheeps]

Cores.jpg (551.23 KiB) Viewed 14521 times

Laminating cores. I used poplar and pine, partly because I had some and it's not expensive and partly because I wasn't sure if I'd get to actually finish this pair. Mostly I just wanted to get through the process and learn how to improve, so didn't want to invest too much into the materials if I didn't have to. That said, both the pine and poplar were light and springy, all strips used were vertical grain, 3/4" wide and about 15mm tall. I can't find any other pictures of the cores through the process. Basically, after the glue dried I ran them through my planer just to get them flat prior to trimming to shape. I've now learned not to bother too much about getting both sides smooth/flat. As long as the bottom is flat, the top will be fine after tapering. This is only a little important due to wanting to reduce waste as much as possible. I've made 8 cores now and tend to get the overall thickness too thin in the end. I start of with 15mm tall strips, which after laminating are not flat; in the process of flattening with the planer I lose 2-3mm. Shooting for 12mm under foot, this doesn't leave much for the tapering process. Anyway, just a thought for later. I do have a jointer, which I plan on using moving forward to get the rough cores flat on one side, then use the planer to taper down.

More photos later with the next pair of skis. But, the planer jig is based on a few different examples I've found searching this site.

[Pheeps]

Like I said, I was moving fast trying to get this pair done, so not much for photos.

I added maple sidewalls, tapered shooting for 2.2 - 12 - 2.2, but ended up a little under that, rabbeted for the edges and trimmed the excess with straight cuts.

Bases: In an effort to avoid base warp this time, heated with heat gun just a little prior to cutting to rough shape. Let them relax prior to routing to final shape.

Attaching edges, after this I bought many more clamps. No real issues here. Not attempting full edge wrap, so tip and tail to be cut to shape with flashing. Matched original template exactly this time.

bases.jpg (601.35 KiB) Viewed 14518 times

Rushed through lay-up and into the vacuum press without any photos. But here they are in the press:

vacuum press.jpg (425.57 KiB) Viewed 14518 times

Real basic camber rocker rack. I had a 14" wide sheet of aluminum bent with a somewhat tip-shaped curve and adjusted camber and rocker with shims under the aluminum. Nothing too precised, but tried to get as close as I could.

basic layup was: base with edges, vds, 22oz. triax, core, 22oz. triax. I used the epoxy and resin from snowboardmaterials.com, mostly due to not have a heat method. That said, I did build a box from foam insulation to get at least some heat.

Out of the press:

top.jpg (844.62 KiB) Viewed 14518 times

bottom.jpg (770.54 KiB) Viewed 14518 times

and cut to shape:

cut out.jpg (466.48 KiB) Viewed 14509 times

They cleaned up fairly well, but don't win any awards for overall finish. Bases were relatively flat and just needed a couple passes on the grinder. One issue which confused me was a few little gaps between the to of the edges and the core. Thought is the rabbet was either not deep enough or wide enough, or being a vacuum press I just didn't have enough pressure. I did make the rookie mistake of mixing too much epoxy in one pot, which resulted in the epoxy setting up faster than expected.

I learned a lot in the process. I did ski two full days on these out in Whitefish, mostly tree skiing in 1-2 feet of new snow. They skied great; way better than I was hoping for. I do have some gopro segments, I'll try to get that loaded.

Pretty basic write-up; I left out a lot of detail, but just wanted to get this on here for what it's worth.

Two more pairs in the works, including one that's very similar to these. I'll get more details on that process and more photos.

[bishop119]

Those are looking pretty good! I do a similar method with the aluminum cassette and was wondering how your rocker camber profile turned out. On mine im still not getting as much camber as i would like so im working on that in my process.

[mammuth]

Vacuum should be strong enough, its 10 Tons of pressure / m2....

Either rabbet as you say or the resin did start to harden too early, then the vacuum cannot squeeze it out enough

[Pheeps]

Right on mammuth, that's actually what I'm hoping for. I don't really have time to do testing, so I'll do what I can to avoid this issue on the next pair. I'm moving to entropy supersap, which will give me more time to work. Plus, now I know a bit more about mixing too much at one time. I bought a couple silicone heat mats and am assembling a controller, so assuming I can get those working heat shouldn't be an issue for curing.

I'm also planning on allowing an extra mm or so to the size of the rabbet. Any thoughts on how much extra is too much? Originally I was thinking having it exactly the size of the edge tang would help lock the core in place, but don't think I'll worry about that next time.

Bishop - possibly this pair looks better from afar...they're pretty rough, but I'm happy with them considering the time I had. I was a bit surprised they actually held their profile pretty close. What sort of shimming / clamping system you using? I remember having a 3mm shim under ski center; camber came out pretty close to that. believe I had 9mm under the tip and tail for rocker, which also held pretty true. I'm probably going to use this set up again this year for a few pair, except I now have the heat mats; I'll have top and bottom heat, so in theory it should not change the camber too much. That said, I'm open to the fact of unknown or unforeseen issues popping up.

[Pheeps]

Was wondering about the camber / rocker today, so took a couple new photos. Brakes are pulling the skis together a bit, but otherwise OK.

The close up of the tip, you can see what happens when you use small sections of 22oz fiberglass to connect the core and tip fill material. It worked, but looks like crap, plus it more than likely affects the tip flex pattern. Got some thin micro pore surgical tape to use next time (think I pulled that from and old post from Falls?).

The close up of the camber, you can see some inconsistencies of the layering between core and edges. There were gaps post-cure, which due to time I filled with super glue (gasp). But it help up fine. Don't think I'll ever ski these again, so whatever.

rocker 3.jpg (939.03 KiB) Viewed 14410 times

rocker 3.jpg (939.03 KiB) Viewed 14410 times

[Pheeps]

Some pics of my planer jig. It's basic, intended to be adjustable. Bottom is 12" wide coated particle board, for a shelf. Top is 12" MDF, for whatever you would use that for. I have them screwed together to create a 30cm flat area (under foot on finished ski) then have shims spaced through the distance toward the tip and tail sections. Nothing too fancy. I made the shims using my planer, getting them close to 1.5mm, 3mm, 5mm, 7mm and larger one at the end 9.8mm. The 9.8mm, in theory will give me a 2.2mm tip and tail, but I found that space need to be positioned further toward the middle in order to get the intended thickness at the intended area. I can move these depending on the intended length of the core / ski. The end spacers just get screwed into place, paying attention to make them straight. I just push the thinner spacers toward the binding area to get a little pressure, measure to make sure both sides are same distance from center, then hot glue into place. These thinner spacers are really just to reduce the deflection on the MDF as the planer's rollers push down.

IMG-3451.jpg (971.91 KiB) Viewed 14408 times

IMG-3456.jpg (387.71 KiB) Viewed 14408 times

I have a somewhat cheap digital caliper which was giving me a consistently reading of about about .5mm difference between left and right, with left side being consistently higher/taller on the core. I figure this is due to my well used and cheap Porter Cable planer; probably the rollers wearing out? So I pulled the spacers and put the jig through the planer to try and get a surface flat to the inconsistencies of the planer... if that makes any sense. I got the spacers back in and did end up getting closer readings from right to left. At least it's acceptable for now.

IMG-3455.jpg (710.62 KiB) Viewed 14408 times

You can see the little dowel piece. I have been using the dowel pin throughout the process to keep the core centered on the side cut jig (nothing new here) so figured the dowel would help keep the core in place while running through the planer. I also used a liberal, like Seattle liberal, amount of hot glue on the excess portions of the core to help keep it in place. I've had snipe / chipping issues in the past, and only used little dots of hot glue which would eventually release on the last couple passes. Lots of glue prevented any snipe related issues.

Buuuut... the cores ended up about a half mm too thin. So, I found a stupid and annoyingly lengthy solution which I'll post soon.

[Pheeps]

So I decided to basically make mini cores that would cover the area of the tapered core that is too thin. I had some "scrap" oak and pine, so made some roughly 5mm thick min-cores.

IMG-3374.jpg (679.01 KiB) Viewed 14261 times

IMG-3370.jpg (656.73 KiB) Viewed 14261 times

Idea was I'd glue these to the top of the too-thin cores and re-taper so try and create a core with the wanted thickness.

[Pheeps]

xtra core unnamed.jpg (561.46 KiB) Viewed 14261 times

It's not too pretty. I haven't decided whether or not to trim the extra off the top layer, or possibly leave it to use as core alignment during pressing. Added bonus is I got some strips of oak under the binding mounting area which, at least in theory, will help hold the screws (though I've never had issues before). These cores have oak sidewalls, mostly because I had some to use.

On a side note, we finished our renovation and are pending a move to a new house. Shop/garage is super-messy. But new house has a nice shop area.

[Pheeps]

Bonus. My firefighter brother dropped this off one morning on his way to golfing:

IMG-3335.jpg (890.79 KiB) Viewed 14259 times

Now I have to design a press.