Ski Builders Forum

Okay, bigKam as recently given us a few solid hints that we are all going to be quite surprised by what he has used (or is currently using) in his latest creation. So, what do you all think it's going to be? He has recently stated:

if you think pine is way below your standards, wait until you see what i'm currently cooking up....

and:

when you see the species i'm using for my latest pair you might fall 'dead'....

Note that the word 'dead' is emphasized. In the first quote he also said "cooking up"... maybe another hint? So far, I'm thinking maybe cork (he did say it was a 'species'), but I'm not very confident that I nailed it. Anybody else have a guess?

G-man

Dang... never mind... I just saw his pallet post. Now I have to go back and read it.

G-man

all those corks from the wine bottles..

I almost started the exact same thread g-man until someone mentioned in their journal about Kam's pallet skis, I started laughing in the meeting I was in, so much for pretending to pay attention.

The old joke used to be that The SKI (early 70's) had a sage brush core. It actually was foam and alot of pairs got broken but you could really ski bumps with them. I had serial number #000208
Recently I saw a new pair made in Sun Valley that had a clear base with
a piece of sage brush pressed into the ski so you could see it through the base. Bobbie Burns is still at it. http://www.theski.us/

balsa wood impregnated with epoxy - it's the new foam/carbon

alright, let's think out of the box in terms of core materials.

i like the balsa idea. powercow's cardboard sounds cool. plywood's plywood. Kelvin has tinkered with foam. G-man likes pine and he got me thinking about cork. knotted wood seems to work. now we have pallets -- oh so nice. anything else? come on, hit me with your best!

My friend is intrigued with the whole ski building process and he would like to try to use trex, the decking material. I think it would be very heavy although very soft.
rockaukum

Davide tried the balsa and had some troubles with the homogenity.

Kelvin showed us the foam but had some troubles with the bindings which were ripped out. Buuk posted a thread about a really nice and certainly usable solution for this problem. See: http://www.skibuilders.com/phpBB2/viewt ... highlight=

On the other hand a very light wood which is a little bit softer could be used with basalt: http://www.skibuilders.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=144 or carbon fibers.

Are there other ideas?

Geoff

How about recycled newspaper. Do it the same way you would do it if you was creating your own paper. You could shape the pulp to the form of your ski, which would work well with vacuum bag presses.
You could use different additives to change the properties.. sawdust, woodglue, cloth - you name it

bigKam wrote:alright, let's think out of the box in terms of core materials.

i like the balsa idea. powercow's cardboard sounds cool. plywood's plywood. Kelvin has tinkered with foam. G-man likes pine and he got me thinking about cork. knotted wood seems to work. now we have pallets -- oh so nice. anything else? come on, hit me with your best!

I threw this out awhile ago at the bottom of this thread. Not recycled material but another foam core idea. The foam is from home depot. The tech comes from the surf industry. Lots of reading if your up for it.

http://www.skibuilders.com/phpBB2/viewt ... highlight=

Hafte

Hafte: that's great info. will have to consider it.

to everyone else: thanks for the other ideas!

this week has been busy at my day job, so i haven't thought much about core materials. though a few interests that i have include low-cost materials, and also materials that can be recycled into ski cores.

i plan to make more progress on the Pallet Project, as well as another surprise.... oh, wait, there's one other ski-related project too, and another one... boy, so many fun things cooking on the stove.... need more hands...

Similar to the sagebrush, I wonder if you could use wheat? or better yet corn stalks!

Ideas like sawdust and other very dusty products which can be pressed with glue or epoxy could be checked with MDF.

MDF is something like glued, compressed wooddust or something like that.

Why don't we try to build an MDF ski

Regards,

Geoff

Greg: corn stalks! now that's brilliant.