Ski Builders Forum

This was emailed to us and I thought I would put it up here to get more opinions from the community.

hi,
my name is Diego, and i'm from Argentina. My
friends and I are beggining to build our own
snowboards, but we're a little lost on some issues. As
we found your page very helpful, we wanted to ask you
on some matters.

We made our first cores this week, using a
horizontally laminating method. However, we found this
very inefective. Though results weren't bad, the
amounts of time and adhesive we had to use were a lot
more than we expected. On your page you mention that
"Although not as common in ski construction,
horizontally laminated cores can be found in some
snowboards and is very popular in skateboard
construction". How common?

We were wondering if you guys ever tried simmetrically
laminated cores on snowboards, and given it provided a
good core, did you made the core lenght equal to the
board whole lenght, or just to the running lentgh?

An yet another thing. How do you make topsheets...? If
it were, let's say, glass fibre and resin, wouldn't it
make a thiner cover on the tips as the pneummatic
press worked?

we would really appreciate your help,
thank you very much,

Diego

All the skateboards I have seen are horizontal laminate and the only snowboard I know are hammer snowboards (http://www.hammersnowboards.com/technical/index.php).The flex requirements and also size of a skateboard are much different from a ski/snowboard and that is probably why there are so few horizontal laminates in skis. I think you found out the main reason that it is not used much; the amount of adhesive required to make the core makes it heavy.

We use full length wood cores, but making it only the running length and using plastic for the rest is also done. Some people say they ride a little differently, but i haven't tried it out myself.

The topsheet is usually a layer of plastic and should be the same thickness throughout.

-Kelvin