What happened to the "SnowSurf" Thread?

[SkateBananas]

After a high avy danger weekend with low stoke, looking into building one. There was a thread, but it looks to be deleted? Wondering where it went.

Looking for info on wood used for press, glue for press, and finish used. Anyone have some thoughts. I know chiller was pretty into it. Now that I wanted to make my own, no luck on the thread.

Maybe I’ll just wing it… But some thoughts on it would be helpful.

[chiller]

yea, crazy, it is gone. gotta be a mistake, don’t want to jump to any conspiracies just yet.

as for building, in a weird way anything will work but some shapes and lengths do perform better. I recently got out on jeremy’s grassroots powder surf which is pretty small but handles well. I’ve also riden circuits larger powdersurf which is a 145 and about 13 inches wide with a mellow side cut and a little bit of taper. I think taper in the design is key, it keeps the nose up and allows the tail to drop, also gives you a bit more leverage for the back foot. Using door skins is probably the cheapest way or those underlayment birch plywood, about 3/16 in thickness, from home depot. Put in a layer of tri axle 20 oz glass from fiberglass supply and you can make it way lighter but you do need some heat to get that epoxy to go off and the stuff is messy!! If you go to ski builder.com you can get some good form advice. You’ll need a router and a bandsaw or jig saw and a drill press would be nice to for the form. I build a template out of 1/4 mdf then trace it onto strips of 3/4 particle board, cut it out on the bandsaw/jigsaw then template route it to make each one exactly the same. A rockered camber is the best IMO.

for pressing a vacuum bag is the simplest but hard for the diy’er to get a hold of. You could make a two part mold(top and bottom) and then use some jacks on top.

here’s a shot of my deck press that is concrete and uses jacks. feed the plys in from one end. that’s a boat wench on top that raises and lowers the top form.

[chiller]

titebond 3 is an adhesive that is waterproof and easy to use. for finish buy a couple of rattle cans of spar varnish, takes about 3 coats. would be way faster with a ptex base but you could use formica. just a couple of ideas

[summersgone]

So we just wung the first one, and it may work? We laid it up super simple, because weren’t sure if it was going to work and wanted to keep costs low. Used 2 1/4 pieces of plywood (like a cheap door) and one 11/32 thick plywood board (nonparticle). Made a huge rocker on it, something silly like 50cm of rocker and about 15cm high in the press 😆 . Its dimensions are around 140cm long, 35cm wide at the nose, 25cm wide at the tail with some swallow. Taking it out of the press today, and hopefully the way we pressed it works. Its was ghetto compared to how you showed it. Basically a 2×4 blocks clamped down in multiple places across it.

Our base will be wood, so we are not sure what we should stain the bottom with for speed. Supposedly there is some kind of taboggon wax, we may try and get ahold of, or butchers wax or something. Going to use some g-flex on the sidewalls and stain the top. Use a computer chair mat for the stomp pad and hopefully it will go.

Appreciate the info chiller and hope this thing works. We were sick of meadow skipping on high avy days and looking for another cheap solution. I am not expecting it to last years, just a few days of riding in pow on those days.

We’ll see, I’ll update later one.

[summersgone]

From searching too, looks like sb.com had some issues recently and deleted some threads. No conspiracy theory from me either.

[summersgone]

Just took the first one out the press. Kept shape and looks good, I’m pumped. We are staining them with spar urethane right now, putting some g-flex on the sidewalls, using some beeswax for the base after, and hoping for the best! Hopefully we’ll have 3 by thursday test session, and its dumping out. :bananas:

[chiller]

right on!!! can’t wait to hear the ride report!

[summersgone]

Build report. 1 Down, 2 to go.

Our press was a little less sophisticated.

But still came out well.

Rocker profile.

Finished product. Ready to ride!

[sluffer]

a long way from azure vista…steve lis inspired fish deep in the monashees.

[chiller]

those boards look great but it would be fun to see them in action!

A buddy and I got an invite to the smith optics private backcountry zone. It was windy with grey skies so the pros and filmers were staying in the cabin so we ended up with two ski doo sleds for the day. here’s a little vid from the trip
[youtube:2ekj0y8u]k5Byx3LJx0E[/youtube:2ekj0y8u]

more pics and full trip report here
http://chillerdecks.com/

[summersgone]

Soon we should have something for action. Went out and tried them Sunday, snow was super warm, and tough to really get them to turn. We basically just flailed all day, but laughed our assess off. When the pow comes, don’t you worry, we’ll be getting out on them.

[sluffer]

[chiller]

oh yea!! that looks sick!!