skis without base and edges
Posted: Mon Mar 15, 2010 1:11 am
Recently I had the occasion to join a telemark festival here in Japan: http://www.telemakuri.com/
Pictures can be found here: http://www.skiforum.it/forum/showthread.php?t=40623
It was great fun even if the snow was wet (raining the first day, 15 cm of powder on the second day). During the festival I met a guy who was using a pair of skis made by a friend of him.
As you can see, there are no base and no edges. The skis are just made with shaped planks wrapped with glass fiber. I think he did not even applied pressure because the surfaces were not very flat. The skis were rather slow, because he did not stone grinded the base and did not wax it, I guess. When he offered me to try them I accepted immediately: I was waiting since a long time to try edgeless skis. They were nice to ski on soft snow but of course when I got over hard snow patches, the skis were just sliding away.
Three years ago I could see a pair of skis with edges but no base (it was replaced by glass and epoxy, then stone grinded and waxed), and they were fast.
In conclusion, I may say that for soft snow (powder or spring snow) edges are useless and base may be replaced by glass and epoxy.
I encourage builders of traditional wood skis to try modern shapes (reverse camber, reverse sidecut, rocker, …); they will rip in soft snow.
Actually I am considering get back into ski-building and make few pairs of wood skis now…
Pictures can be found here: http://www.skiforum.it/forum/showthread.php?t=40623
It was great fun even if the snow was wet (raining the first day, 15 cm of powder on the second day). During the festival I met a guy who was using a pair of skis made by a friend of him.
As you can see, there are no base and no edges. The skis are just made with shaped planks wrapped with glass fiber. I think he did not even applied pressure because the surfaces were not very flat. The skis were rather slow, because he did not stone grinded the base and did not wax it, I guess. When he offered me to try them I accepted immediately: I was waiting since a long time to try edgeless skis. They were nice to ski on soft snow but of course when I got over hard snow patches, the skis were just sliding away.
Three years ago I could see a pair of skis with edges but no base (it was replaced by glass and epoxy, then stone grinded and waxed), and they were fast.
In conclusion, I may say that for soft snow (powder or spring snow) edges are useless and base may be replaced by glass and epoxy.
I encourage builders of traditional wood skis to try modern shapes (reverse camber, reverse sidecut, rocker, …); they will rip in soft snow.
Actually I am considering get back into ski-building and make few pairs of wood skis now…
