Ski Builders Forum

Hi,

I just wanted to introduce myself and share a little about what a friend and I have started with ski building and hopefully pick some brains about a ski design.

My name is Kris, I live in Maine and I teach special education for a living. I been skiing for a long time now but just recently became interested in building some skis with a good friend. It all started over a few beers and talk about fly rod building which I have some experience with. We basically thought it would a great project to try and since then we have been building our press and ordering fire hose, cutting MDF for a mold and profiler and finally placed an order for enough material to make our first set of boards. We have a substantial amount left to do before we even think about laying up a set but we hope that in 2-3 weeks we will be ready to roll.

My friend is a graphic artist and has done a great job creating plans for our first set of skis. The ski plan calls for a full rocker with dimensions of 177cm length and 143-112-123. We haven't yet finished the bottom mold to determine the amount of rocker. There will be zero camber on these skis. Will we have to take into account that after being pressed the camber will change- say we aim for 9mm of rocker should we make the mold at 12mm or larger? I am asking this because I have read in a few posts that when pressing a camber ski you often have to increase the amount of camber to account for loss of camber. Not sure if it works this way for rockered skis or not and was hoping someone would be willing to point us in the right direction.

I hope that makes sense and I thank anyone in advance that has the time to give me their 2cents. Also wanted to thank the folks that created this site, it's an awesome resource and very informative!! Well done.

Take care,
Kris

Welcome to the forum! My wife teaches preschool special ed, she has her masters in early childhood special education. Good for you!

Camber change depends on a lot of things. Are you guys planning on using heat to cure your skis? If you are - where you heat from (top vs bottom) can have a big effect on your camber. Very generally speaking, if you heat from the bottom, you will increase the camber, if you heat from the top you will reduce the camber. Reverse camber or early rise make no difference, the effect is the same.

If you are not heating, I think it's fair to assume you may lose a tiny amount just from the core trying to relax to flat, but the difference should be minimal, it should match the mold pretty close.

Why no camber for Maine Ice? I've found with snowboards a rocker camber design works great.

How many started thinking about ski building over a couple of beers?? That's how it starts I'm currently pressing w/o heat and I do lose some camber, maybe 10-15%? If pressing at room temp, press for a good 10-12hr or so. Then let the skis sit for 5 days or so to fully cure, then start cutting the flashing. The waiting is the toughest part of ski building.

Good luck!

Huck Pitueee wrote:Why no camber for Maine Ice? I've found with snowboards a rocker camber design works great.

Huck Pituee- Ice in Maine... thats only myth. Good question though and I think we are planning on trying to turn out two types of ski for this winter to test out, one of which will have camber maybe something similar to the Kendo.

skidesmond wrote:How many started thinking about ski building over a couple of beers?? That's how it starts I'm currently pressing w/o heat and I do lose some camber, maybe 10-15%? If pressing at room temp, press for a good 10-12hr or so. Then let the skis sit for 5 days or so to fully cure, then start cutting the flashing. The waiting is the toughest part of ski building.

Good luck!

Thanks for the reply!! Who woulda though that a couple beers could lead to two guys building skis.... Funny thing is that most people we have mentioned it to don't actually believe that you can build your own skis! Wives included, right now I have a feeling my better half thinks its an excuse to hang out in a barn a couple hours a week :DD

We won't have heat to start but have been toying with the idea of rigging some sort of a light box to at least keep the temp. consistent. I think at some point we will look into the silicone heat blankets but that might be a ways off.

twizzstyle wrote:Welcome to the forum! My wife teaches preschool special ed, she has her masters in early childhood special education. Good for you!

Camber change depends on a lot of things. Are you guys planning on using heat to cure your skis? If you are - where you heat from (top vs bottom) can have a big effect on your camber. Very generally speaking, if you heat from the bottom, you will increase the camber, if you heat from the top you will reduce the camber. Reverse camber or early rise make no difference, the effect is the same.

If you are not heating, I think it's fair to assume you may lose a tiny amount just from the core trying to relax to flat, but the difference should be minimal, it should match the mold pretty close.

Thanks for the reply Twizzstyle- I'm hoping for a handful more snow days (not ice days) than last year!!

To start, we are not going to heat the ski's in the press. We may try to build some sort of a light box to keep temps around the press consistent. I dont want to make assumptions but is it accurate to think that without heat the loss of our determined reverse camber will be less without a heat source? In the end we may add somewhere between 10-15% to the desired rocker and see what we end up with after some testing and then hit the drawing board again. I've seen some pretty cool Adirondack chairs made from skis so if they dont ski well they will spruce up the fire pit.

Thanks again,

Kris

Bridger7 - I still get that look when I mention I build skis.. "you can't do that!" But you can. If you're building in an unheated barn, you'll want to use some type of portable heaters to keep a decent room temp, or cover the press w/ a tarp/blankets w/ heaters, being careful not to start a fire. I build in my basement where it still gets cool but when I build I turn the heaters on in the room a good 8hrs before I build.

a couple hours a week!
You really are new at this!
Welcome

falls wrote:a couple hours a week!
You really are new at this!
Welcome

Thanks!

Surely he means a couple of hours a day, Falls

And that doesn't include all the stress and anxiety and excitement and new ideas and the constant flood of ski-building-thoughts you'll have when you aren't actively building!

I think you nailed it on the head - the best way to really know what you're going to get, is to test, and test again. There are so many variables, it's hard to theoretically anticipate your exact results, it really needs to be based on empirical data - which in this case, is just your own test pieces and results!

But I do think you're thinking about it right. Leaving heat out of the equation, things will tend to relax back to their original shape (=flat). If you give it lots of camber, you will lose some camber. If you give it lots of reverse camber, you will lose some of the reverse camber.

Where as with heat - if you have reverse camber, and you heat from the top, you get MORE reverse camber

twizzstyle wrote:And that doesn't include all the stress and anxiety and excitement and new ideas and the constant flood of ski-building-thoughts you'll have when you aren't actively building!

That sums it up Twizz! Completely consuming, but all good.
Welcome to the madness Bridger.

twizzstyle wrote:And that doesn't include all the stress and anxiety and excitement and new ideas and the constant flood of ski-building-thoughts you'll have when you aren't actively building!

I think you nailed it on the head - the best way to really know what you're going to get, is to test, and test again. There are so many variables, it's hard to theoretically anticipate your exact results, it really needs to be based on empirical data - which in this case, is just your own test pieces and results!

But I do think you're thinking about it right. Leaving heat out of the equation, things will tend to relax back to their original shape (=flat). If you give it lots of camber, you will lose some camber. If you give it lots of reverse camber, you will lose some of the reverse camber.

Where as with heat - if you have reverse camber, and you heat from the top, you get MORE reverse camber

Thanks again Twizzstyle- I'm picking up hose (4" diameter) for the bladder today and sunday we are routing out the molds and core template. I feel like I am a kid waiting for Christmas Eve and time is standing still!!

We will take your advice into consideration when we build out molds this weekend. We've been taking lots of photos of the process and once the first set is through we will post our process and results.

Bridger7

threeninethree wrote:

twizzstyle wrote:And that doesn't include all the stress and anxiety and excitement and new ideas and the constant flood of ski-building-thoughts you'll have when you aren't actively building!

That sums it up Twizz! Completely consuming, but all good.
Welcome to the madness Bridger.

Thanks!