Ski Builders Forum

The last pair of skis I made I used release wax on the base of the skis (paste wax w/ carnauba). The epoxy peels/flakes off, virtually no scraping required. I don't use heat. You certainly don't want release wax getting into the layup.

Contact paper seems like a good route to go for now, I probably won't have heat blankets for awhile. Carnauba wax is interesting though... I'll have to research more into mold release gels. Seems like that could be messy?

Do all you guys have your own grinders? I've been looking around... seems like if you find one around $1000-1500 you're lucky.

frare bear wrote:Do all you guys have your own grinders? I've been looking around... seems like if you find one around $1000-1500 you're lucky.

The pros on here do. Very few of us hobbyists do, but some of us have been lucky. I got my grinder for $100 but it was in VERY poor shape and took a complete tear-down and re-build, but it's good as new now.

A few people have made their own grinders, and claim success... but I'm skeptical Needs to be a wet grinder.

basically you get what you pay for:

I got a grinder for free... but it's 20 yrs old, and will require lots of TLC. I'm in it for about $1500 in maintenance/repair so far. But it's like an old classic car, and it does a real good grind finish with autofeed and side edger. Wintersteiger tech visits, if ever required, are about $450 just to have them show up, not including extra labor and parts. So far we've been able to repair/replace things on our own and modify with a phase converter and affordable water pumps.

Our ST-600 shop grinder, and ST-XXXX "what up dog!" waxer were $500 together from a local shop. Dont pray that your local shops go under, but if they do, hit them up. They might be dying to make a buck, or they might just want their stuff gone.

Sounds like a shop going under would be the way to get one, I'll keep an eye out.

I have a question regarding nazdar epoxy inks... I have 4m of natural base on the way and I want to get some nazdar to paint over vinyl stencils. I can't really find an online supplier to buy them from; there's a shop not too far away so I'll call them up soon.

On to the Q: after I get the base all painted up and cured, do I need to treat (sand) the epoxy ink or anything before the layup? How thick does the ink need to go on? How much ink to cover a whole base? Would a fill coat of white overtop help the bright colors to 'pop'?

Sorry lots of Q's. I know people around here use them, I can't remember who or else I would try PM'ing them.

Acquiring CNC software and materials, we should be back building before long!

Here's a quick idea of what I might do for the base

we stencil and use nazdar. looking at your base graphic, its easy for me to say slow down. You are planning a very hard graphic. you dont even have a solid build down yet! dont go spend a bunch of time and money on graphics until you can build a board. Learn from everybody eleses mistakes on this site.

i will tell you this; you will need about 30grams of mixed nazdar to do that graphic. dont flood coat, you will just add weight to a already full graphic. use a quality rollers. unless you are doing multiple bases you will be better off going to Snowboardmaterials or Coda to get a subbed base. Getting those vinyl stickers cut will cost that much alone.

Thanks for the heads up, Dtrain! I'll definitely start with something a lot simpler. I'm also looking to buy a cnc vinyl cutter, to be used for stencils and graphics on snowboards as well as longboards (built 50 or 60 of those guys, way easy haha) so that should keep costs down... kind of.

I got enough Poplar and Maple to hopefully make 6 or so cores, I'll start ripping and gluing this week sometime.



I think were getting everything together well enough that the next builds should turn out very nicely, only time will tell though!