Ski Builders Forum

So I have some really nice poplar and paulownia. I want to glue a block up and cut some "core blanks" . The block will be 12 inches wide 2.5 thick. I want to also use some of my vertical bamboo somehow?

Should I just flip the boards on edge and add them in, or glue a 2.5 inch stack of bamboo together vertically and cut pieces off that to add?

Or should I forget it all together?

Up to now I've considered that vert lammed bamboo is only usable on its own or mixes with other strips of wood to build a single core.

So, can vertically lammed flooring boards be added to a core block ?

Pretty sure Twizz used/uses vertical bamboo flooring.

If it were me I'd rip it so the grain/laminate stays in the vertical plane and use it as binding mount stringers for skis.

For a board you could just put it where ever it makes sense to add some stiffness.

Be sure to plane off all of the finish so you don't get adhesion issues.

Dtrain wrote: Up to now I've considered that vert lammed bamboo is only usable on its own or mixes with other strips of wood to build a single core.

Maybe I'm mis-reading this comment - are there any other possibilities? You can use it on its own, or you can mix it with other wood.

And yes I use bamboo flooring boards in my skis (usually two boards are needed for each ski core). I've never mixed bamboo with other woods, but I don't see why you couldn't.

Maybe I did not explain it well enough.

To put a Vert flooring board in a "stack" of other wood I would need to put it on edge. This would theoretically make it horizontal.

The other option is to glue a pile of vertical boards together on top of one another and rip pieces of it to add to my "stack".

This would keep the grain vertical but now I would have separate pieces top to bottom in the core.

I am trying to see if there is any insight on if one method may be better than the other

Ok I follow you now.

I think you would still be ok. Technically the "grain" would be horizontal, but with the "vertical grain" bamboo boards the fiber of the material is all going longitudinally. The only difference would be the orientation of the glue faces between sections of bamboo. With "horizontal grain" bamboo boards, at least the ones I have used, there was a middle layer of bamboo that had the bamboo grain going laterally, and that was no good.

This won't set you up for failure, so it may be a good experiment to try.

Thanks twizz.

I'm going to get started rippin and glueing today .