Ski Builders Forum

2. Why are the tips and tails of most skis so thick?
Durability, stiffness and vibration damping. If you have a very thin tip/tail it won't be stiff. Flexural stiffness in a sandwich composite comes from separation of the top and bottom fibers. Flexural stiffness is important at the tip when plowing through powder and variable snow.

We found that using full length wood cores was difficult to produce and real thin tips were pretty floppy unless you had metal on top and bottom. I personally like a damp tip so I will live with the thickness.

All of mine have full length wood cores. I agree they can be a bit tricky in the layup phase as they tend to make a bridge, but I am pretty happy with them.

I think having wood extend into the tipbwith an interlock style shape on the tip assists in making the ski more stiff in the tip vs. having only tip spacer. The wood in the tip is better able to transfer force into the rest of the core instead of having a tip made of only spacer and FG.

Saying this, I've never built skis any other way but this works for me.

It's very important to make sure your core material and your tip spacer are the same thickness. To make sure you get a flat base.

I have never used tip spacer material.
My core is cut to be 2 - 3 mm smaller than the ski, and the veneer and fiberglass layers go over the core, and become thinner and seal the ski closed. You can see it clearly on this snowboard .

That's a good looking ski!

The disadvantage to that is if you are a skier with a very narrow stance or build skis for people that tend to ski with a narrow stance, you'll begin to wear thru your veneer and fiberglass and end up with exposed core wood. Having tip spacer there adds a bit more protection to the core in this way.

I have friend that skis with a very narrow stance and eventually wears thru metal topsheet skis and skis with metal in the tip spacers.


I agree though, very nice looking ski.

That is a good point.. My allmountain skis from last year are looking a bit worse for wear on the veneer. But mainly behind the bindings.

Let me guess: You lift the new inner ski a bit when entering a new turn - e.g. when starting a left turn you lift the left ski just a bit :)

Lifting the inside ski...
Just looked at some videos of me from about a week ago..
In normal turns no, but at low speed maybe. But I don't think so.

You can analyse my style here:
on hard and soft snow.
These are all on the last ski I built.
https://youtu.be/5Bn3rw8pTik
I know my arms are a little wide open.

It was just a guess, we had a customer in our ski service a year ago who destroyed the whole heel of his binding by lifting his inside ski for turn iniciation :)