Make Your Own Skis
October 27th, 2005
MAKE: Blog reports on an online guide at Skibuilders.com: a guide to making your own skis. And doing it right! These folks use a pneumatic bladder (apparently a firehose?) to provide around 60 psi evenly across the surface of their skis. They seem to really know what they’re doing – these aren’t just slapped together. Still, fascinating. They use wood cores – which are actually still quite common in mass-produced skis. Also notice – they’re making twin-tips. Hot.
Back in high school, we used to make our own twin-tip skis by heating the tail ends of our skis between a pair of irons, then pressing them in a wooden mold using clamps. Then we’d pour cold water over them to fix them in that position.
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October 27th, 2005 at 12:48 pm
Jeff ~ what’s the advantage of having twin-tipped skis?
October 27th, 2005 at 6:52 pm
That would be being able to ski either way, for tricks and such.
October 29th, 2005 at 7:21 pm
Yea, and landing backwards in 180s, 540s, etc. Also it’s just fun to ski backwards sometimes.
November 8th, 2006 at 8:02 pm
hi, i have a project to do for school and i decided to make skis. I have until april until its due, does anyone know where i could get materials?
January 27th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
this is keen
January 29th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Sorry, Justin, didn’t see your post. You should google around for the right type of wood, maybe ash or beech? I’m not really sure. Laminating is pretty tough, but try Gorilla Glue for something that can dry while wet… you’ll probably have to steam or submerge the wood to get it to bend that much. Home Depot will have most of this stuff but for nice thin beech you’ll probably have to go to a fine lumber dealer. Yellow Pages.
January 29th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
Hmm, scanning the article we linked to, it doesn’t seem quite as hard as I’d thought. They don’t seem to laminate the core, in fact. It seems more like boat construction than laminate furniture, really.
January 31st, 2008 at 5:22 pm
what wood is best for powder skis?
February 2nd, 2008 at 12:17 am
Haha, I like the way you’re thinking, Kevin. I dunno, i bet there’s one wood which is used for most skis, but different ones are probably more flexible or more stiff. I still say ash or beech but I’m not really the one to ask. You might ask a rep at a ski shop, they usually know an alarming amount about ski construction.
July 15th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Hi!
Do you know where to get plain skis(so i can paint and draw on them)??