Symmetrical all mountain twin tips with Trap-Lam construction, Kevlar reinforced edges and carbon stringers
Symmetrical all mountain twin tips with Trap-Lam construction, Kevlar reinforced edges and carbon stringers
A pair of XC skis built for my mom
An improved build of the straight ski shape finished with custom painted glow-in-the-dark graphics
A new shape for freestyle and street skiing. A modern take on the straight ski
The second pair of Vishnu skis and the first pair to come out of the production press.
The last pair of vacuum bag built skis and one of the first pairs of Vishnu skis
An experimental build incorporating Carbon Jacket and Trap-Lam techniques
I became interested in ski construction after seeing freestyle skis breaking repeatedly in similar ways. After learning about different ski construction techniques, I began thinking of ways to improve on how they are built.
I identified three characteristics I wanted to address. Durability, swing weight, and flex. Improving on these three characteristics could greatly improve the performance of the ski.
What I came up with was a twofold approach to improving the construction.
The first aspect of these improvements was a new method of laminating the wooden core of the ski. In this design, alternating trapezoidal wooden profiles are laminated together to make the ski core. When a hardwood is paired with a lighter softwood in this configuration, and the ski core is profiled down thinner in the tip and tail, the result is a variable distribution of the wood species along the length of the ski.
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Underfoot, an approximately 50/50 distribution of hard and soft wood is present. However, the thinner tip and tails are almost exclusively composed of the lighter, softer wood. This dramatically lowers the mass present in the tip and tail and creates a noticeably lighter ski with an very low swing weight. The heavier, stiffer wood at the center of the ski provides stability and strong screw retention for the bindings. Whats more, by modifying the angle of the laminates, it is possible to further tune the ski's characteristics.
The second aspect I set out to improve was the resistance to delamination. I came up with an idea for using carbon fiber tow as a reinforcement that would actually be stitched through the ski's sidewalls and edges to add additional physical retention and further prevent delamination. In addition to providing additional strength, replacing the full fiberglass construction with highly selective carbon reinforcement provides the possibility to further reduce weight.
When I moved to Park City Utah in 2010 I decided to actually build my own skis and try out some of my ideas. I already had a basic vacuum pump system I had assembled to press longboards. I decided adapt that system to build skis. I started by constructing some additional tooling. This consisted of a single ski width mold, a template, and a core profiler.
With the tooling created, I built my first pair of skis, building each ski one at a time on the single ski mold. These first skis were built using traditional vertical laminate core techniques as found on www.skibuilders.com, which is a great resource for anyone looking to learn more about ski construction. The first pair came out pretty good but they had some obvious flaws. The topsheets were pretty wavy and the tip spacers on one ski were misaligned. The flex profile of the skis were not correct; they were very stiff in the tips and very soft underfoot which is undesirable. They were almost unskiable as they would not initiate a turn until you cranked into them, at which point they would fold out underfoot. It was very weird and interesting to ski a ski with improper geometry, as every ski I had ever ridden was production and hence more correct.
In addition to the wonky flex pattern, the first pair of skis had some unevenness in the topsheet laminate that resulted from some misalignment of the layers. Additionally, due to the vacuum bag pulling down, pressure was being unevenly distributed on the sides of the ski over the edges and the topsheet was not laying totally flat.
To improve the quality of the laminate on the second pair, I built this simple but effective cat track. The links in the middle have a rectangular profile. the links in the tip and tail have a beveled edge that allows it to curve and fit the radius of the ski tip. The links were shaped to prevent tearing of the vacuum bag. The links were strung together and bonded to an aluminum sheet, and the entire cat track was placed over the ski in the mold prior to vacuum bagging. It was very effective and worked as intended to create a smooth flat topsheet and evenly distribute pressure. The entire bagged assembly was then carefully positioned in a simple hotbox oven to cure at 175 degrees. The heating element was a silicone heat blanket hung from the top of the box.
The second pair of skis was not only better than the first, but was honestly one of the best pairs of skis I've ever skied. They had 4000 grade graphite race bases that were race tuned at Rennstall in Park City (where I was working at the time), the flex was perfect and they were very light and poppy. The construction was a traditional vertical laminate maple and aspen core with triaxle fiberglass and carbon stringers. The sidewalls on all of my skis are IPX UHMW.
After completing the second pair of skis using traditional construction techniques, I set out on a more ambitious task. I wanted to build the Carbon Jacket, Trap-Lam skis I designed earlier. This turned out to be a tedious undertaking that while promising, ended with questionable results and a snapped ski.
All of the process pictures from the build are on a corupted HDD that I will eventually recover and post. The build took essentially an entire summer. The process was notably different from traditional sandwich construction. The sidewalls were pre- laminated to the edges using G-Flex epoxy and two layers of kevlar tape. holes were then drilled between each edge tab, and the sidewalls were bonded to the wood Trap-Lam core, again with G-Flex. At this point the core/sidewalls were profiled down, and the tip spacers were attached. Then the real fun began.
My idea to use carbon tow to stich through the sidewalls quickly encountered a major setback. It turned out the the carbon tow alone was unable to be worked like a thread without fraying apart. While there are certainly better materials than carbon for the task of holding the laminate together, a big part of the design was to use the holes through the edges to run and tension the carbon laminates (similar to a tennis racket).
My solution was to braid a very light, non structural jacket around the carbon tow that would keep the fibers bundled together. This solution required figuring out how braiding machines worked, and to obtain one.
I ended up turning to the trusty old bins of Legos that I have had since a child. After alot of time expierimenting, i had a surprisingly functional machine that I was able to produce over 1500 ft of braided carbon tow with.
Once the tow was produced, I used a crochet hook and kevlar thread to stitch the carbon to the core and sidewalls. Once everything was strung together, the whole thing was wet out and the base and top sheet were positioned. It was at this point that problems occurred. Due to the loose placement of the reinforcements, it was difficult to wet out everything completely with epoxy without dragging things out of position. The cured skis had many visible air bubbles in them between the core and top sheet / base. I finished the build anyway, tuned them and was able to ski them for six days before one of them snapped due to a delamination. They were very light, poppy and fun to ski while they lasted.
While the Carbon Jacket idea proved to be too much trouble to produce at the time, the Trap-Lam core was a winner. The flex pattern uniquely and noticebly transitions from stiff underfoot to soft in the tip and tail. It is also very lightweight.
Around this time,two things happened. First, I got a call from JJ Slack at Performance Longboarding (I was purchasing trucks and wheels for my longboard builds at his shop) asking me to help build a ski / snowboard press. In exchange, I would be able to get to use it. This project can be seen in more detail here.
The second was my friends Emmett Davis and Kale Cipperman approaching me with the idea to start a ski company called Vishnu. The three of us built a two ski width mold and pressed the first few pairs of Vishnu skis together. This is another story in it's own right, but eventually we went in different directions, with them going on to continue Vishnu. I kept the production materials and continued building skis on my own.
An idea I developed during the Vishnu phase was a modern straight freestyle ski. Since urban skiing rarely utilizes carve turns, sidecut is not only not needed but is a hindrence. A ski with minimal sidecut is noticably faster, which is important when skiing on minimal amounts of dirty snow. It also won't hook up unexpectedly and it tracks through tight transitions better.
The first pair of straight skis were built quickly, but came out well and they skied well.
there was a minimal amount of sidecut underfoot and they quickly became straight through the tip and tail. I laid some chains down on them along with a CTD decal and hit them with the rattle can.
The next pair of straight skis are the best pair of skis I have built to date. The construction was visibly flawless, the hand cut base graphics came out tight, and I did a sweet paint job on the top sheets that glowed in the dark. They were really fun to ski on in the evenings, as they looked absolutely radioactive as the sun went down.
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After building my 7th pair of skis, I decided to build my mother a pair of cross country skis as a Christmas present so she could ski while walking the dogs. They were built with minimal tooling and were simple lightweight construction. They were an interesting break from freestyle skis. obtaining the correct amount of "double camber" and cutting the fish scaled base were both unique challenges that turned out nicely.
The two most recent skis I built were intended to be put up for sale, but due to some cosmetic misalignment, they were never sold or fully finished. They were the most recent skis I built before putting my ski building on hold to start Daymaker Touring. The following time lapse is of building these skis.