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Ski Press: One at a Time or Two?
Posted: Mon May 12, 2008 8:40 am
by brianmwaters
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
Posted: Mon May 12, 2008 9:09 am
by Idris
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..
Posted: Mon May 12, 2008 9:51 am
by brianmwaters
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.
Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 9:32 am
by criticul
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.
Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 10:23 am
by jono
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.