Skientology: My Weird Projects

I build skis too, so, mad respect dude. This is dope. You do much, much better at building skis than I often see at the shop I work at (people bring us skis to finish and often times they're total pieces of shit and no matter how much advice we give them they don't take it and continue to pump out some of the worst quality skis you've ever seen.)

Haha I love the alignment pins too, I do that too and it seems like nobody knows about that shit.

Your sidewalls are dope too, I like thick sidewalls but there's complications when you use an edge. 13mm thick is definitely new, as (at least for me) pre-cut sidewalls ship 12mm wide; do you cut your own sidewalls out of sheets of uhmw or do you just have a different hook? I also really like your sidewall inserts or t-bolts or whatever they are, an elegant way to add some security to those fins.

Mad dope shit though, I'd love to talk to you about building skis as it's hard to find people that do it, and are good at it, and it's nice to hear new ideas and perspectives. Good to see innovation though. Dope.

You can actually do mild concave and convex with the right press heat direction and placement btw, I could tell you about it a little in a DM if you want.
 
13663682:Poikenz said:
Why not make the base convex? I guess it doesn't matter too much since there isn't a metal edge to catch on, just a ptex one.

On that topic, why not do a convex base? Seems to solve the lack of edge problem as well although I imagine for it to be effective you would need a rather thick ski, plus it would be less surfy in feel, so I might have already answered that one.

Have you thought about messing with the sidewall angle? I guess it makes it a little harder to set inserts and you might have to bend the fins to match but you would shave off a bit of weight.

Really I am only bringing this up because I would love to hear how setting your fins at different angles change the feel of your ski. I imagine it to be no different than setting traditional edge angles to some extent but you can get way more extreme with it. A simple test would be to make up some sets of spacers that will set the fin to a certain degree, obviously it won't be snug with the side of the ski but rough tests can be helpful.
Click to expand...

I was thinking you could do convex to the point of them serving the purpose of the fins while still having a steel edge that could be used as such; none the less I'm confident OP will find something even doper haha
 
13663725:NinetyFour said:
I guess if HRZN holds up well long term then these should to. NordMan can maybe school us to, what's the durability of edgless XC skis like?
Click to expand...

The most durable ski I've used has been the Rossignol Evo Trail. Ultra light weight, wonderful camber for both climbing and ripping down steeps (telemark and parallel turn). We ski in West Virginia over sticks and stumps and rocks and frozen mud, and the sidewall's tough it out. The bases are all plastic, so the beating they take is easier fixed and less felt than would be with a wooden base.. However, I'm thinking of my dream ski only for pow and phat spring conditions. What I've been dreaming about is that whole format + an extra 10mm under foot and a wider shovel with some rocker. Ultimately creating the most kick ass nordic backcountry touring ski ever. All wood, no metal edge, waxeless climbing.
 
topic:NinetyFour said:
If you do like this though I've definitely got some more stuff up the sleeves for a later date. I don't know when, probably whenever I damn feel like it though.
Click to expand...

Well damn guys, I may have taken this statement to a bit of an extreme. Being honest though I've had a pretty big lack of motivation for a variety of reasons. Looking forward that will be the trend for a while as one of them is my herniated groin. Doctor told me to take it chill or I'll run the risk of making it worse; and honestly I want to minimize the knife work the surgeon has to do around my balls, that shit is precious yo.

Despite all of that I still have something that is a spillover from last season that I'm excited to share. It's pretty out there but hopefully you can guys can make some sense of it, then sit back and say to yourselves, "oh ya that's neat".

In short I wanted to build some skis that had bases that came out of the press and never had to touch a stone or belt grinder. Weird, I know, but it's largely inspired by this thread and the article within:
https://www.newschoolers.com/forum/thread/700870/Sintered-Ski-Base-Density
http://epubl.ltu.se/1402-1757/2006/03/LTU-LIC-0603-SE.pdf

If you give it a little glance you'll see that they sort of came out with unground ski base being a better performer than ground and waxed ski base. I like the idea a lot however an unground base would have absolutely no structure so it would be more likely to trap water and create a slowing suction. The solution to create structure in an unground ski base came to me by observation of my other skis:

IMG_0654.jpg


The lines running across the ski are indentations in the base caused by the tape I use to stop the base from sliding around while pressing. It's actually a bitch to grind that surface out and flat, but I thought I could use that indentation to my advantage to create some structure in my unground bases. So I messed around with some tape in a pretty hood fashion:

IMG_7422.jpg


The result:

IMG_0655.jpg


I'm definitely no structure expert but I was looking to create a pressure ridge in the center of the ski, and then have some additional channels travelling rearward to clear the water. These indentations are actually pretty shallow, under 0.1MM, but in my opinion enough to control the water created when a ski slides on snow.

Here's the skis in normal light for reference; the indentations are hardly if at all noticeable:

IMG_0657.jpg


Like last time all I have for a performance gauge is my own biased opinion, weak, but it's something. My buddy rides an identical pair of skis except his run a stone grind with wax suited to conditions. Trading skis with him, the unground concept skis always felt quicker in comparison. I had them out every day I rode last year which ended up covering a variety of snow conditions from frozen as fuck man-made corduroy to really warm natural snow. Never once did I feel like I was riding something that was slow to accelerate for jibs or features.

Admittedly that's all incredibly unscientific. I don't think I'll ever reach out to study these in the capacity of the article that inspired me did; but I could at least bomb some runs that have consistent conditions and time them compared to a normal set of ground skis as a baseline. I do need to do something as I think they have their own potential for my own personal quiver.

Outside of what I do I don't think these would ever be super accepted. The industry is already in a well established norm of grinding and waxing. On the manufacturing side of things to, a lot of bases don't come out incredibly flat or smooth (they definitely don't come out with a fancy pattern) so they need to be ground to make them nice and flat so they ski true.

For my own stuff I'll continue to keep using this set up for a few reasons beyond learning about how well it actually works. While I sort of enjoy the activity of waxing, it is kind of nice to just forget about it all together. As well with my own building process it's nice not having to worry about grinding anything to perfection either. Not grinding also allows me to have the thickest bases available as well so I can bash the shit out of my park skis on rails, and not worry as much about getting sharked with my other pairs.

Thanks for the support and feedback as usual there NS family. Hopefully this will give you something neat to read with your eggs and toast at breakfast, maybe a laugh, or a little piece of inspiration for your own weird-assed stuff.
 
I'm not sure if it would be accepted as I feel it was debunked at some point in the past. Please correct me on this, but "speed channels" where a pretty big thing with older skis and I just assumed they stopped doing them because they didn't produce enough or any sort of speed gain. Plus trying to scrape and brush out those channels is a huge pain in the ass.

I'll agree with you on grinding, once relatively flat (aka from the factory) I don't really see a point in grinding bases unless you care about potential minimal gains in speed.
 
13769903:Poikenz said:
I'm not sure if it would be accepted as I feel it was debunked at some point in the past. Please correct me on this, but "speed channels" where a pretty big thing with older skis and I just assumed they stopped doing them because they didn't produce enough or any sort of speed gain. Plus trying to scrape and brush out those channels is a huge pain in the ass.

I'll agree with you on grinding, once relatively flat (aka from the factory) I don't really see a point in grinding bases unless you care about potential minimal gains in speed.
Click to expand...

I know Nordic skis still have them but I couldn't say why.
 
Really neat idea and nice looking skis! Maybe you should look into a go find me campaign or something to help you out with development. Good luck looks like a lot of hardwork.
 
i think you ought to try doing it with one fin in the tail or just under the heal binding like a surfboard fin
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top