Ski Builders Forum

March 28, 2008 Alpental, WA

With about 16” of post Easter new snow any ski would have felt great.

The Sun Dogs performed well. The width of the ski (137-100-120) really helped plow through the crud. I think the length (184) and light swing weight made them feel a lot livelier than I had expected. The core of the ski is pine and poplar. The tip had a nice even flex but the tails seemed a little soft. I think I will try reinforcing them with metal and thickening the tail to 3mm next time. The core tail on these was 2.5mm.

When I took them out of the press I notice that the bases had warped. They had sat near a heater before I had a chance to lay them up and probably picked up a bend from thermal expansion. I was a little skeptical that they would ski ok since the side cut on the left side of both skis was larger than the other. When I held them up next to a straight edge it was obvious that the left edge on both skis had a tighter radius but on the slope they felt pretty balanced. If it turns out they only go one way on the groomers I can always rename them the Lefties.

I haven’t been able to ski them on hardpack yet. That will be their real test.

All in all I am happy; I am defiantly going to make a second pair with approximately the same dimensions but without any weird warping and with some vds dampening.

This is the link to my build thread viewtopic.php?t=1290

I too the sun dogs out for some spring conditions this past week. They skied well on the corduroy after it warmed up a bit. While it was still icy in the morning they vibrated quite a bit but still held an edge. The aggressive side cut really let me lay down arcs. I think some VDS rubber is going to be necessary for the next pair.

I had used some 5 min epoxy to fix a delam in the tail. It didn't work at all. The fix cracked after a few runs but the skis still worked fine.