Ski Builders Forum

I'm starting my journey in to ski building. I made my first pair and now I'm trying to setup the process with what I learn from this forum and with the first pair experience. (Really thanks everyone for sharing!)

I used a thickness planer with a sled for my first pair, but the sidewalls on the last passes got kinda of destroyed and I had to chase the cracks to make them usable.

Now I was thinking to use the planer to reduce the profile around 5mm and then use the a drum sander (I have a Jet 16/32).
Here the question...
I thought to use the same sled on the drum sander but it doesn't seems to work. It looks like the rollers are not pushing the profile down like on the planer, so the drum is actually sanding the whole piece flat or taking a lot material and jam.
Any suggestion how to set up the drum sander to follow the sled profile?

It looks like your core is just too stiff for the feed rollers to push it down into the rather tight looking core profile you are trying to achieve (how long is this core and what are the thicknesses you're aiming for?).

You can adjust the tension of the feed rollers on this sander - check the manual on how to do that. It might help with pushing down the core into your sled profile.

The infeed/outfeed rollers were to soft and not pushing down, plus the tables were to short and the sled too heavy. I adjusted the rolls springs and add longer tables.
I just finished one core and I'm super pleased

For sure the snowblades core was to stiff and short. But it's ruined so I will try again in the future.

Wondering if anyone is doing both cores at the same time?

I guess another way to use the the drum sander would be to do the profile on a planer then turn it upside-down and just sand the bottom to thickness. You have to do the rabbet after though, and start with a thicker core.

Nice one, glad you could work it out!