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Very interesting!

Subscribing.......

OK it's time for some more info! You're here for our entertainment now.

Yeah, I know I'm slacking I should have all of the carbon fibre parts ready next week though..

While beeing sick at home this week, I put some parts on a scale and looked up the weight of other parts available for splits.

I shouldn't have much trouble making it lighter than a standard Voile kit, and I think it should even be possible to make it lighter than anything out there at the moment.

Here's a list with weights in case anybody ever needs such a thing, the parts in blue are the ones Im using for sure.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?hl=en_US&hl=en_US&key=0AsrqtvOhZFQDdGZWRlJldFpSSFpSeWJlaVJnTGpmUHc&single=true&gid=0&output=html



Question for Huck: Is this a picture of your base, with screws filed flush with the base (no inserts right?) What base material is that anyway?

For the clips I saturate the wood with Low viscocity epoxy and thread in the screws. Yup flush filed. The base is epoxy over carbon. I left a little "tooth" in the epoxy by sanding with 120 grit then a quick pass with 240g. Slides just fine. You may want to wax the screws to be sure they come out easily.

Finally the parts are all done, so this thing should be back in one piece pretty soon.

The chinese hooks: 9 grams!


Tipclips: 10 grams


And the disks, 64 grams. That's actually lighter than the ones that came with the Ride bindings.



So hopefully you can see more clearly now what the idea is. The disk has a sort of tongue and groove between the halves, to lock the two halves together more solid.




The middle of the disk will maybe be covered with a lightweight cork laminate to dampen and make it less slippery.

Very nice work!

That is amazing. How did you lay them up? They look perfect. Were they cnc cut?

There's lot of video's on youtube about carbon layup.

I didn't vacuumbag it, but it's a wet layup. I sandwiched between two sheets of glass with wax on it and clamped that in a large woodwork vice. The only tricky part is to figure out how many layers to get the thickness you need. Layup is all unidirectional with weave as the outer layers for looks.

Carbon sheet is very expensive here, but the uni directional fibers are not if you shop around and buy a few meters. I now have enough cloth to make more than 10 of these sets for less than $100.

It's just a lot of work.

Wow, awesome work! What would be the chances of few more sets of those hooks & clips being made for 'testing'?

I understand the carbon layup, I'm more curious about how you got the precision dimensions, the steps, etc. I almost looks as though you did the layup as a block (many layers of fiber) and then milled out the dimensions and 3-dimensional features afterward.

No milling, I don't have the tools for that. I'm not even sure that would work with carbon.

The parts are all made out of sheets, and then epoxied back together. That's why the steps are so smooth, the surface is not machined at all. That was simply the smartest way to do it, and I needed the same thickness everywhere or it won't work. I'm not that worried about the two parts of the 4x4 disk beeing strong enough because it will be bolted to the board anyway.

I used regular woodworking tools and some elbow grease. I have a stationary disksander at work, and also mounted a dremel upside down into a table for the smaller corners and parts.

You can glue two parts together with some superglue in the places that are going to be cut away anyway. That way you can get most of the outline of two part identical, and its faster than making one at a time.

I have some extra parts yes, but I will test everything myself first to figure out what works. At some point I could be making a few sets for friends if everything works, but i'm not trying to make a living out of this.

I made the clips and hooks for fun, they are not going to be a lot better than what's already on the market maybe a bit lighter and stiffer. I'm not that interested in the clips, but they are expensive to buy here in Europe so I made some myself.
My goal is to make a very light binding system that has the simplicity of Voile, is not raised of the board by pucks and rails, and doesn't need expensive bindings to work.
I still think I can make that happen, and it will be cheaper than the Voile kit with Sparks too.

Looks perfect! I still can't figure out how the bindings mount. It'll be obvious as you progress.

Those carbon parts totally blow my mind. I can't believe you cut those out with hand tools and a dremel and not a CNC machine or a mold. Amazing work.