Ski Press: One at a Time or Two?

brianmwaters · Post by **brianmwaters** » Mon May 12, 2008 8:40 am

I'm planning on building a ski press, and I have discovered that I can save a significant amount of money by making it half the normal width, so that I can only press one ski at a time. (The heating blanket for this setup is way cheaper!)

What I want to know is, how much of a pain will this be? Will I have to take any special precautions to ensure consistency between skis?

- BW

Idris · Post by **Idris** » Mon May 12, 2008 9:09 am

Is this you first venture into skibuilding? or wanting to upgrade.....If you are starting out I recomend vacuume bag and room temp pressing...Much cheaper and very versatile....

If you are trading up from vacuum to pneumatic there have a good look around the fourm. There are some ingenous ideas on how to build a press.....and some great examples of pure brute force!

Most comercial presses are one ski at a time...the trick to consisency in the ski is consisency in pressing time and temp..

brianmwaters · Post by **brianmwaters** » Mon May 12, 2008 9:51 am

yeah, this is my first time building skis. i'm skipping the whole vacuum bagging thing and going straight to pressing. i'll probably go cold at first, and then maybe get a heat blanket.

i have my design mostly laid out, and i talked about one aspect of it in the thread "climbing webbing in a press frame"

what i'm trying to do now is figure out how to make it expandable - so that i can upgrade to a double-wide sometime in the future. i'm about to go to home depot and get this thing rolling... i'll report back and let you guys know how its going.

criticul · Post by **criticul** » Tue May 13, 2008 9:32 am

i am a new ski builder myselfe (just pressed my first pair 2 weeks ago) and i had no trouble pressing one ski at a time. As long as your press puts out equal pressure each time and your ski is placed correctly on the mold you should have no trouble.

jono · Post by **jono** » Thu May 15, 2008 10:23 am

I have a single wide press and I currently do not use a heat blanket. I try to press the two skis as close together in time as I can. I may be superstitious but temperature, humidity and other unforeseen factors can make one ski come out differently from the other. I think a heat blanket will help with these issues.
As for getting the two skis to be the same a single ski press might work better than using a wider mold that could have subtle differences across it.

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Ski Press: One at a Time or Two?

Ski Press: One at a Time or Two?