Ski Builders Forum

What a stand-out pair of skis. It must have really been fun to get all of the crowd reaction to them. I, too, occasionally run into someone who asks, "Are you one of those Skibuilders dudes?".

Question for you when you have time... how do you determine where you chose your binding mount location? I'm still playing around with my general approach. I've finally made a set of riser plates that allow me to adjust fore and aft quite a bit. I'm finding that I like to be back a bit more than I generally would have predicted. I'm also finding that I like to be higher off the deck than I would have thought. I occasionally run with 15mm's under a 7TM Tour (must be a total of 35mm or more) and I find even a wide ski to be much quicker edge to edge, much easier on my legs, with much better edge hold. In all of my messing around with these things, I haven't really been able to get to a point where I experienced a grabby tail. I'm actually a little disappointed because I wanted to see if I could relate the condition to the binding location... too far forward or back. Once in awhile, when skiing on pretty hard ice, I'll get a turn where the tail doesn't release smoothly. But as soon as I get the same ski into a bit softer snow, it performs just fine, which may indicate the edge is just a little too sharp along the tail section... at least on hard ice.

Anyway, it'll be interesting to hear whether or not you get any resolution of your tail grabbiness with a little edge detune. By the way, even G-man really likes the very cool look of the tip and tail shape.

G-man: i usually match the toe-line of the binding template with the mid-point of the ski. Kelvin and i discussed this the other day, and with these new skis, we decided the "mid-point" to be half of the contact length.

Wow that is the mother of all presses! Good work! I was wondering if you have seen the press that PMGear uses and if you've considered building anything like that. From what I understand they purchased it from a place in Quebec that went belly up and did not build it themselves. I'd like to know the details about how that was built as it looks like something that would fit into what little space I have available...maybe Idris has some input on that.

Thanks for the site and I hope to be able to contribute something in the near future!

Smiley wrote:Wow that is the mother of all presses! Good work! I was wondering if you have seen the press that PMGear uses and if you've considered building anything like that. From what I understand they purchased it from a place in Quebec that went belly up and did not build it themselves. I'd like to know the details about how that was built as it looks like something that would fit into what little space I have available

Correct. It fits into a 2ft by 8ft foot floor space + compressor.

There are lots of pics of it on the PMGear website gallery. If you have any specific questions about the beast just ask - can't help with exact dimensions as I'm 6000 miles away

a friend taught me how to weld tonight, and so i welded Kublai. good thing because after pressing the Kaweah, one of the bolts sheared. yikes!



paint will come next, followed by wiring up the heater and presto: done!

Nice looking weld, bigKam. Your friend taught you well.

G-man

i figured that would happen. typically 1 inch of weld is as strong as a 1" grade 8 bolt. there for aslong as you got good penetration then you should be quite ok with very minimal welds! remember Always weld up, not down. a vertical down weld may look peaty but you get no strength out of them. BURN IT HOT and Good luck.

Friday after work i removed the rust from the steel using a grinder with a circular steel brush. Saturday afternoon i visited Harbor Freight and picked up a $15 paint gun to work with my compressor. on my way home i visited the local paint store to find a couple colors for Kublai (oil-based paint). then i decided to paint (outside), applying first the primer; it dried within a few hours in the nice warm weather. a few hours before the sun went down i decided to appy the color coat. working fast i managed to paint all the pieces (4 I-beams, and the two end supports). this moring i woke up to find the paint had dried nicely, but a few spots needed a squirt or two. (i'm currently finishing my garage and painting the walls using leftover (orange) paint from a recent remodel of my house. since i have a lot of orange left, i decided to paint the top mold orange.) when the paint dried, it took about an hour to assemble the pieces (with two people). here are some photos -- the silicon heater (in red) is barely visible below the aluminum over the base mold. the temp controller is ready to go, so maybe this week i'll do a dry run to test everything.

That is awesome Kam!!!

It's funny because we all know the cosmetics are just that, but it is still fun to make the tools look nice. That is a different green than I was picturing but the one you choose with the yellow/orange makes the setup look professional.

Ben: i wanted lime green, but the people at the local paint store couldn't figure out how to use their computer to set up the base colors to mix me any paint -- i gave them about 10 different shades from their list and i got nothing. it was like they didn't want to mix paint for someone who owned a ski press. so instead i settled for the pre-mix "Safety Green". as for the puke (army) green i got that by mixing a few random quarts of oil-based paint. though the color is far from what i intended, in the end i'm glad the rust is gone and the steel is painted. now i can spend time on my "surprise" .

btw, i finished the video of you and Wheezer (Tom) skiing at Snowbird. have a look: click here (8MB, *.wmv)

bigKam wrote:now i can spend time on my "surprise" .

only if your going to share it with us

The press looks awesome though! I just put mine together....need to still add a few pieces, and I think I am going to add two more supports within the press, but it looks pretty good. I still need to put together my PID controller though...

I really like the way the top mold is colored. Give it a really cool look! Cant wait to see more skis from it.

casters arrived today, and just in time. i was surprised by how big they were (and heavy too) -- 6" diameter cast wheels. oh well, not bad for $9/each. and let's not forget, made in you know where.



it took a few minutes to drill some holes to mount the new wheels, then used my big car jack to lift it up, and ta-dah Kublai is pretty much done:


time to build more skis. i'll write up the details for this press and post it under articles soon...

i received a couple PMs about the casters. i bought them from North Tool:

4" diameter cast wheels ($6.99)
http://www.northerntool.com/webapp/wcs/ ... 0250_40250

6" diameter cast wheels ($8.99) -- this is what i got, but the 4" above would have been just fine.
http://www.northerntool.com/webapp/wcs/ ... 0254_40254

considering the weight of most presses, i would stay away from casters with plastic wheels or metal wheels with a rubber or other polymer over the outside diameter, like a tire. over time the weight of your press will deform the rubber and then pushing the press around would be like trying to push a car with square wheels -- that defeats the purpose.

search Northern Tool for "casters" and you should get at least 13 pages of wheels to choose from. some are expensive, like this gem:
http://www.northerntool.com/webapp/wcs/ ... 5629_35629

best of luck.

boy that really looks nice..

i must say that looks really good. congrats on finishing it.

schuss