Ski Builders Forum

Hello everyone, this is my first post after finding this forum about a week ago. I have learned so much and can't wait to start on a custom snowboard. First off let me say I went skiing once when I was 5 years old in WI on a little bunny hill, that is my total experience with snowboarding and skiing. I'm now 25 and figure snowboarding looks like fun and want to get into it without spending a fortune on a board and also I'm a huge fan of custom homemade or diy projects. Any advice you guys have would be much appreaciated because I am a noob in the biggest way. However I am an aircraft mechanic so the construction side of things is not new to me at all and shouldn't pose a big problem. So, here's the deal. I'm working on a bamboo core snowboard and modeling it after a burton custom wide board. The bamboo looks really cool in my opinion and it needs to show through the base and top as much as possible, but the metal edge tabs I don't want to see when its all layed up. Here is my 60,000 question, I want to take 2 sheets of base material (from snowboardmaterials website, black and clear 2000 grade sintered material) put a 1 or 2 inch edge around the board in black then cut out and inlay a piece of clear base and heat or chemical weld the 2 pieces together so it essetially covers up the edge tabs but still shows the bamboo core. Is this even doable and if so what reccomendations do you guys have? Right now heat welding (with a plastic welder) seems to be the best option but I've read in some others posts that the base material is HIGHLY sensetive to heat and would probably warp all crazy. Anyways, thanks in advance for your input and I'll make sure to post some pics of the process and finished board.

1. you want to build a board because you don't want to spend a fortune..hmm

2. what you describe is pretty simple, it's called diecutting. What you plan is a big diecut all around the base, and is easy to do, no boning needed between base pieces

3. There will be some durability issues, check out this thread in TGR:
http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/show ... base+crack

as far as that crack along the diecuts goes, was that directly under the sidewall/core seam? Is that a sidewall ski? I'd imagine having two seams like that directly over/under each other would compound any weaknesses.

That's good info to know. Your base IS a structural member of the whole sandwich. Though I have many diecut bases that I'm surprised have never blown out.

I have seen skis with diecut bases break right off in a diecut. Amplid and Armada are bad this way, lots of straight lines in the logo. diagonal lines are best.