And the ski press — either pneumatic or vacuum — compresses and heats the skis into their finished form. (Plans for all of the above, and links for part suppliers, are available at skibuilders.com.)

First, you use your profiler and a router as a guide to shape your wooden core. Poplar, maple, and birch are all popular woods to make skis from, but you can be creative in the wood selection and in how you layer each type — the finished laminate looks like a thin kitchen cutting board in the shape of a flattened ski.

Basically, you make a snow-ski lasagna, with fiberglass layers acting as your noodles.

Next, you cut your ski base material to the desired ^A ski shape, and bend edge material around the contours of the ski; at this point, a thin strip of rubber is often added to the top of the edges for vibration dampening. Now we get to the fun, and messy, part: epoxying layers of fiberglass sheets to the wood core, base, and edges. Basically, you make a snow-ski lasagna, with fiberglass layers acting as your noodles. You can also go wild with your graphics (the sample pair shown on the next page features a cut sheet of fabric and some printed paper logos) and place them under a clear topsheet (often made of clear P-Tex, the same plastic used for the bases). The ski press that Wu built for his garage is pneu- ^B matic: two ski-length sections of 5-inch fire hose are clamped off and filled with compressed air to force pressure onto the skis (a method taken from skateboard deck manufacturing). Here, pushed against a heated ski mold for an hour or two, the pair will cure into their desired shape and camber. Some garage builders have simpler setups: single ski presses made out of wood and car bottle jacks. Basically, you just want to safely get the skis to stick together long enough for the epoxy and fiberglass to become solid. When the skis come out of the press, they are often attached to each other by the now-dried fiber- glass and epoxy hanging off the edges. Using the skis’ edges as a guide, you use a jigsaw to cut off the excess material, and then use a router to shape

C

Fig. A: A router shapes the wooden core.
Fig. B: A thin strip of rubber on top dampens vibration.
Fig. C: Wu’s pneumatic ski press.

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