Ski Builders Forum

Hello everybody,

a buddy a I started our own projects few months ago. I think the lack of snow in europe did not make us hurry up too much. But now we want to finish beofre it totally disappears

Well, however, here comes my problem. I read some time ago about the problem "powdercow" had with his sidewalls. I seems I had the same !

We made two pair of skis. for the first one, everything went nice. But for the second one, when I started to profile the core, the router took the ABS sidewalls of the core. I am not sure I want to go through a "re-gluing" process and was thinking of a "spot supergluing" reparation.

Do you have any better idea before I start ?

here's a picture to show what happened :

belo is a success, on top is the "damaged" ski

Wow that looks familiar. To be honest I really haven't come up with a better solution than the "spot super glue" method since then. I hated doing it and it still feels wrong but the edges have held up great just FYI.
Just makes sure that when you use the super glue that there are still gaps between the sidewall and core for the epoxy to seep into. Otherwise your sidewall is held on only with superglue.

If you do come up with a better solution please post it up as I am sure everyone could benefit from it.

What about just using some epoxy and hold it in place? Is that not how it was done in the first place?

Cadman wrote:Is that not how it was done in the first place?

Yes it was. And it would probably be the best solution.
But when it happend to me, I immediatly thought about powdercows solution.

On the first pair of ski, everything went nicely, and just because (at least it seems to) the temperature of the room during the curing of epoxy was higher. I guess we will make another try with epoxy next week...and let you know !

Some of the hardware store epoxies (packaged in the double syringe dispensers) that I've used to attach sidewalls, don't seem to cure completely, even after a week or two. They remain sticky and when I profile the cores, the sidewalls easily become detached and get destroyed by the planer or the router. I've also found some hardware store epoxies that cure very well and take a good amount of abuse during the profiling operations. So, if there are both really good epoxies and really bad epoxies, there are probably other epoxies that lie somewhere in between... they may seem that they cure well, but may not really bond very well. If you're having difficulties with your sidewalls not bonding well, you might benefit from trying a different epoxy. After my problems with the poorly curing brand, I bought about a dozen other different brands and tested them all on test pieces. One brand ('Do It Best' 60 minute cure) seemed to have the strongest bond and it's all I use now, and I haven't had any problems with bond separations. 'Ace Hardware' brand was the one that wouldn't cure. I'm in California so I know that these brand names won't help our European friends, but the info may be of use to other western states builders.

G-man

I have never thought to use one of those quick epoxie brands before, but now that it has been discussed I may try some. On my first skis I was so excited I profiled the core before I put the sidewall material on. I used the westsystems epoxie to bond the 1/2" thick sidewall to the 2mm profiled core, then had to profiel the whole thing together again. Had no problems with the bonding coming apart. I guess the benifit to using the syringe type is the cure time being decreased. Good information,
RA

rockaukum wrote:

. I guess the benifit to using the syringe type is the cure time being decreased.

Yes, thats true. Also of note is that, in using the syringe systems for smaller jobs, measuring and cleanup is much simplified, especially if you should find that you didn't initially mix up quite enough. The syringe systems are definitely more expensive to use than a bulk system, but I think they are well worth their increased cost due to their ease of use.

G-man