Skis: Build #002 – Ben’s Skis

So the next pair of skis ended up coming first after all! my friend decided to go with a cherry veneer, red base, and full tip wrapped edges! The skis are all mountain style 160 cm with a rocker camber rocker profile. the edges were a huge pain in the butt! after doing these with a pair of pliers, lots of hours later, they were formed, and I was motivated to finally figure out an edge bender, because, lets face it, tip wrapped edges are pretty badass lol. anyway, here’s some build pics, starring my friend who was over to help build them:

edges and bases on the cassette. since we did a full edge wrap, we used the offcut base material to align the cores and bases during layup with some pencil lines outside the range of the fiberglass:

carbon stringers between the edges with veil underneath. please excuse the mess in the background. will clean that up. one day…:

fiberglass and cores going on:

he wanted to do these x shapes above the core with the carbon. I don’t know if they’re going to do anything, but I guess its cool, I didn’t protest lol:

Ready for the oven!

cooking…

here’s where we’re at. he insisted I wait for him to come visit again to cut out and finish the skis, so they’ll be on pause for now:

afterwards we made an ugly, but functional edge bender. fair warning, neither of us are accomplished metalworkers:

similar design to others that made vise benders on here. some rollers with bearings would be a nice addition, but it still bends straight enough. my solution to the play/wiggle in the harbor freight vise’s jaw was to have the moving roller on the side, so when you get an edge in there, it cocks to one side and stays predictable.

..and a couple bonus pics, snowboard core’s sidewall trenches are hot off the CNC. was experimenting with some polyurethane dye, but the colors came out too bright. the red looks pink and the green looks more like a seafoam to me. maybe because the plastic cures white? going to need to get that sorted before I proceed:

That’s the update for tonight! Unfortunately, my green and gray pair of skis are still at the shop getting bindings mounted and bases ground flat so I cant show them off yet. will share when they’re ready!