Ski Builders Forum

the two suggested methods of bending edges given on the tutorial in this site include: bending edges by hand or using and "edge bender." well, to me, an "edge bender" is still bending by hand. obviously, big ski companies do not bend edges by this method. too much labor, just not worth it.
has anybody come up with a method that can deal with higher volume output? we need to produce skis with much less time involved. edge bending takes much of that time.

any suggestions are helpful, please don't hold back!

With a three rolls edge bender you can bent the edges for one ski in few seconds.

It seems that now the edges manufacturer are selling also pre-bent edges.

I watched the Karhu/Line factory video and some snowboard factory one, expecting to see how they did it. But neither showed how they bend the edges.

that doesn't surprise me that they wouldn't show that. edge bending is labor intensive, and they wouldnt' want to give their company secrets away.

davide wrote: It seems that now the edges manufacturer are selling also pre-bent edges.

I have also heard this from someone in the industry.

Here's one company that offers a pre-bent edge:

www.metalldeutsch.com/english/start.html

CDW in Ohio also informed me that they can provide this service.

G-man

I know it has been a long time since the las reply on this thread, but I sent an email to this company a while ago. The answer i got was that their minimum order was about 65 kilometers or something... waaaay beyond our needs. So my experience was that you woud have to be a huge ski producer to be of interest for the company.

I just modified a cheap harbor freight ring roller to bend edges. It works great, and was pretty easy to do. I will post pictures soon.

-kelvin

I would definitely be interested in seeing pics of the modified ring roller. Press frame was just finished, so just need to get the molds done and I can move on to actual skis!

This thing?

Yup, that's the ring bender. Sorry, I've been meaning to take pictures, but haven't gotten around to it. If you have the ring bender, it is pretty easy to figure out what needs to be modified to make it work with edges. About 20-30 minutes on a lathe is all it takes.

-kelvin

Please, Please do show the finished product!
rockaukum

Here are the pics as promised. It works pretty well as is, but I might modify it a bit more since the edges slip off the bottom rollers. I would shorten the bottom rollers and add washers like on the top roller. I attached it to a couple blocks of wood that I can clamp in a vise on the end of the workbench. It works much better than our original edge bender, in that it makes the bends very smooth and also doesn't twist the edges. The radius is easily adjusted by moving the right-most roller.




-kelvin

looks good. need to find someone with a metal lathe.....

Thats what I was thinking... I turned a toolholder from 4140 prehardened material and it turned out nice but kinda slow machining. I only have a 7x14.
I'm going to pick one up this weekend to get dimensions and see if I can make the rollers. Thanks for the leg work on this one Kelvin!

Carvejunky