Ski Builders Forum

I build small high tech sail boats, and have done quite a bit with nomex and foam cores. Thinking about making a couple skis and while definitely planning on starting with the basic stuff I was just wondering how experimental people have gotten with cores. Honeycomb presents the obvious construction issues but could be cool.

nope never been done

doughboyshredder wrote:nope never been done

Do you mean nobody on this site has used honeycomb? I have an old pair of Hexcel skis I mounted skateboard trucks to, but they used a honeycomb aluminum core.

But I've thought about making a wood/foam hybrid core, and plan to over the summer. Somewhere on the site a complete foam core ski is layed up and tested. The results were catastrophic though, total delam of the top layer, I guess the epoxy didn't penetrate very deep and tore the epoxy impregnated foam from the rest of the core.

well, i tried some honeycomb inserts in a woodcore once.

it was quite a lot of work to router out some pockets. i initially wanted to lose weight...but in the end i don`t think i did lose some.

i recently pressed a small sample of nomex betwwen some carbon I have.
It was 5mm thick, and I laminated it with 400gm m2 quadaxal carbon, it still had flex and the hex size was the 3mm size, The honeycomb did not fill with resin as some people have speculated being a problem as I pressed the exess epoxy out of the carbon before lamination. Palmer snowboards and Solomon both do full or near full nomex cores.

I've used it a bunch in sail boats and its pretty cool stuff. The hard part is making sure you get a good core bond. We've found it works well if you wet the carbon first then use a roller to put a film of epoxy on the honeycomb. Then laying it up with either perforated plastic or peal ply in a vacuum bag. Are the salomon full carbon or are they a kevlar mix or glass? Our standard has been one or 2 layers of 200 gram carbon on nomex and it is remarkably stiff even when compared to the same lay up with a foam core. Seems to me it could be too stiff.

nd2ski wrote:

doughboyshredder wrote:nope never been done

Do you mean nobody on this site has used honeycomb? .

It's called sarcasm.

See there is this great function on forums called the search button.