Ski Builders Forum

Gozaimass, It's all done with a cnc drag knife, no die. The tool is from Donek, it's great.

Vin - carbon down the centre. base alignment pins are binding inserts. Yup, base material tip spacers. The X at the tip is carbon.

Dtrain, I got the D2. Well, work bought the D2. We sell CNCs so it might be a nice little addon to offer. This was all, uh, product testing.

Thanks Jekul! It's nice to have but we have a lot of set yup and take down every time we do something. Can't exactly leave the press blocking the loading bay at work. For a layup table we grab the side of a packing crate and clamp it to a desk or something It all probably adds about an hours work every time we do something.

I improvised a spray booth by hanging a plastic packing wrap from a machine skid and hoisting it up with the gantry crane. Nice to have this stuff lying around.







I noticed that I can see some of the carbon faintly through the veneer. weird. too much sanding I'd guess. I had to do loads because I used the wrong baking paper on the top cassette in a moment of epic fail.

You can also see in one of those photos where there is a little divet out of the edge of the topsheet that's been filled with epoxy and sawdust. Doing the bevel on these was the first time I've ever used a hand router

Divot aside, those look great!

Primo indeed, kudos. You should be psyched, it's always tempting to dwell on the imperfections, but that's what motivates you for the next build.

Cheers Fellas, it's been a rushed build. On a plane pretty shortly to Europe to test them. Well, and for work, but ski testing is up there too

Back to work now to spray the final coat, then drop off for grinding. Can't wait to see the bases all tidied up

the only folks that notice such imperfections are us, the builders!!
sweet sticks.


PS a hand sanding block can get that divot out in a few seconds! just blend it into the tips

Unfortunately the screwup is both over and down to the edge ( I do full wraps).

A dinge to the edge ... its just your tools getting a bit jealous of what you have made!!

You might want to try the Dr Dlam method when using a hand router - a mini bobbin sander.

Alt, belt sander on its side with a modified belt (cut in two, with two straight edges). Using two pieces of wood to create a wedge will allow you to create any angle you want. The belt can be progressively lowered towards the edge set, using the left/right toggle on the sander. At the end of the season the angle can be increased to tidy up any light edge strikes.

The process of using a sander is sped up by cutting the sidewall angle into the core before it goes to press. You can use a hand router or table router for this, just increase the height of the cutter.

Cheers Rich.

We've been using a belt sander with a tilting belt and a level plattern til now. It's been ok but you can't get that really even bevel that I want. I'll have a look into the bobbin sander etc.

I like the idea of a pre layup bevel. We CNC the core so it shouldn't be too much of a mission either - just slap on a 20° vcutter or something.

Just dropped my babies off to be ground hopefully all goes well!

Yeah the side wall chamfer has yet to be perfected. When I did the red bird pair I did it on a mill, running it past a guide with the head rocked over. What was good is you could take small passes at a time but the process was frightening as you have to hand feed a mill while trying to keep the ski flat on the machine bed. Not really good practice.

I think sanding might be worth another try. The previous times we have done it we were using an obtuse angle on the belt sander so we had to run the base side up. It works through the centre but gets super awkward as you get to the tip and tail. Might be worth making a wedge so we can support it base down.

Oh yes, base side down. Use a fingered sized piece of wood to off-set any camber/rocker. Set the wedge up so that the focus of the cutting action is the front wheel of the belt sander. If the sidewall has been pre-cut, then just push the ski forward, very little pressure.

Start with low grit and focus on the body of the ski - depending on the height of the belt. Once you get up to 100 or so, then include the tips. Watch the height of the belt v thickness of the tips at this point.

Stress levels remain low throughout!

I know you guy will already have this thought through, but it might help others, hence the detail!