Ski Builders Forum

Hey friendly helpful folks,

My friends and I are attempting to build skis using only:

recycled
recyclable
or
renewable

RESOURCES!
Great idea, right?
We are making some progress, but do any of you have suggestions for:

Bases?
Resins?
Edges?!? (Steel is recyclable I guess...)

Bases are the biggest concern I guess, but we are stoked to start working in January.

Oh, nice!!! I have this in mind since a long time.
Firts of all, full wood skis could be as nice as ones made with wood and glass.
Anyway it would be possible to replace glass fiber with any natural fiber, the one with the highest Young modulus is juta, but also hemp is good enough, if you managed to find UD tissues.
I bought also some bone glue (for wood) nut I have not yet tried it; maybe it works also with the fibers.
In the forum you can find some info about soy oil epoxy. I have to do some searching as well.
It would be possible to use an hard-wood base, but maybe some plastic made from mais could work as well.

nelsonelson,

Every time that I trim the 'flash' off a freshly pressed ski, I feel a little bad about tossing it in a trash can instead of somehow recycling it. Yes, UHMW is a recyclable material, but it's really difficult to separate it out of the flash when it's sandwiched with fiberglass and epoxy. Also, when a ski's useful life is over, it is likewise quite difficult to disassemble a ski in order to recycle it's component parts. I'm not saying that it can't be done. I'm hopeful that, through this forum, maybe we can somehow design a more recyclable ski.

Regarding 'recycled' building materials, UHMW is available as a recycled material from many plastic suppliers. Here's one that I've used:
www.interstateplastics.com
Most plastics marketers will say that the quality of the recycled UHMW is not nearly as good as virgin material. I'm sure this is true, but how good does it really have to be when used as a side wall or tip spacer?.. it's really just filler in these areas. Recycled UHMW might even work as a base material or top sheet... you'd need to have the 'wide web' flame treating thing down pretty good though, because you'd have to surface treat your own material. Yes, I know that the recycled material would not be 'sintered' for use as a base material, but, I'm not totally sold on the 'sintered base/pores that hold wax' thing anyway... but, that's another thread.

As davide has pointed out, composites that are made from renewable natural fibers are available. It is possible that a polyester fiber based composite that is derived from soy polymers is out there somewhere. There is a concurrent thread that is discussing soy based resin.

So, really, we may not be that far off from being able to build a more environmentally friendly ski. Let's keep working on it.

G-man

an idea for reinforcements..silk cloth is the strongest natural fiber along with hemp but as silk is extremely light weight to high strength than layered up could be a good option...i know that the silk moth is killed in the process but silk moths are renewable!.expensive perhaps but for hundresds of years the archery bows of asia were backed with silk for reinforcement and snappy power.

Here's my $0.02....
Soy based resin. Supposed to stronger than regular resin from what little i've read on the internet.
Using recycled rubber (from tires) for side walls. Might be heavy but it's recycled.
Using bamboo for the core. Grows very quickly and its light and strong
Bamboo can also be used for the sidewall. It's supposed to resist rot and can take a beating.

NEngineer,

I like your ideas. Have you identified any sources for a soy based resin during your internet searches? The recycled tire idea sounds really good. I think it should bond pretty well. I buy drip line garden hose that is supposedly made from recycled tires. It has a great texture for bonding... now if I could just find it in strips or sheets, I'd give it a try. I don't care if it's a bit heavier. Come to think of it, I was at a farm store recently and they had rubber horse stall mats that I believe were made from recycled tire rubber.

Thanks to pentagram for the silk idea. I'll be checking that out on my next trip to a city.

I'm wondering if you couldn't heat up 2 liter coke bottles enough to extrude them into sidewall material. A heat gun will pretty much melt them. Maybe even make a thin sheet for base material...

Ok.. now I just have to cut up a bottle to try stuff...

G-man wrote:NEngineer,

I like your ideas. Have you identified any sources for a soy based resin during your internet searches? The recycled tire idea sounds really good. I think it should bond pretty well. I buy drip line garden hose that is supposedly made from recycled tires. It has a great texture for bonding... now if I could just find it in strips or sheets, I'd give it a try. I don't care if it's a bit heavier. Come to think of it, I was at a farm store recently and they had rubber horse stall mats that I believe were made from recycled tire rubber.

Thanks to pentagram for the silk idea. I'll be checking that out on my next trip to a city.

Thanks G-Man. Just ideas that I've collected from various sources and people.
I haven't found any retail (or otherwise) sources for soy based resin. Just read a bunch of university papers, etc on the internet. I'm still looking, so once I find something, I'll post it here.
One of my friends' father owns a tire remolding business (greendiamondtire dot com/). I'm going to aks them about strips of tire material to use for the side wall. Haven't done it yet. Will keep you posted on this as well.
And like you were saying, if they make pipes and matts with recycled stuff, there's got to sheets of it available somewhere.

later....

A natural bamboo laminating fabric. Looks a bit light for skis. Not much on the spec side of things on this site. They don't mention a type of resin to use or seem to sell one.

http://stores.greenlightsurfsupply.com/Detail.bok?no=6

Here is some info from folks using the product.

http://www.swaylocks.com/forum/gforum.c ... t=12236162

Hafte

Hi,
I saw on the swisscomposite online catalog some basalt fabric. Basalt is a natural volcanic rock, and these sheets of basalt have better tensile and compressive strengths and higher modulus of elasticity, when compared to E-glass.

Maybe this could be used instead of triax fiberglass or carbon fiber?


Soy based resin is also interesting, let us know when you find something!


edit : here is the catalog
http://www.swiss-composite.ch/scs4/html ... ml?lang=fr

Is glass not "eco-friendly"?

seb wrote:Hi,
I saw on the swisscomposite online catalog some basalt fabric. Basalt is a natural volcanic rock, and these sheets of basalt have better tensile and compressive strengths and higher modulus of elasticity, when compared to E-glass.

Maybe this could be used instead of triax fiberglass or carbon fiber?


Soy based resin is also interesting, let us know when you find something!


edit : here is the catalog
http://www.swiss-composite.ch/scs4/html ... ml?lang=fr

Lib is using basalt fiber in some of their boards. There is a guy on e-bay selling it for a reasonable price. Cheaper than fiberglass if bought in the right quantities.

mark wrote:Is glass not "eco-friendly"?

Well, making glass fiber (and balsat fibers as well) requires a lot of energy (high temperature processing), and thus a lot of CO2 emissions.
Vegetale fibers have a negative CO2 balance and much less energy is required in the processing.

doughboyshredder wrote: Lib is using basalt fiber in some of their boards. There is a guy on e-bay selling it for a reasonable price. Cheaper than fiberglass if bought in the right quantities.

Thanks a lot! I found this guy: http://www.basaltreinforcements.com/default.htm.

davide wrote: Well, making glass fiber (and balsat fibers as well) requires a lot of energy (high temperature processing), and thus a lot of CO2 emissions.
Vegetale fibers have a negative CO2 balance and much less energy is required in the processing.

Makes sense,
Thanks.