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So inspired by Markus at Wildschnee’s 5lb 166 by 25.5 http://www.wildschnee.de/know-how-blog/manufaktur/2270 and Peter’s Milligram, I’m branching out, with a 167 by 26.5 for a 165lb rider sitting in the Preflex shed. I’m trying to hit 5lbs for the board w/o hardware. I was liking this weight till I added 4 ounces of inserts, now I’m just under 3lbs. Hmmm, Honeycomb?, channels? good enough?
Trying tricks like no heavy wood in the middle, just flat grained maple inserts to back up the steel inserts, no inserts for heel lifters, just maple plugs for the screws. Maple under the feet and back on the heel side, more dense variety of poplar on the toeside.
flat grained ipe plugs (from a flooring supply place) for water resistance and hardness for the tip and tail clips, probably shouldn’t even install one in the tail.
[/url](Wasatch winter is going to go big, you heard it here first, well maybe not first but I support the idea 😉 )
Well 5 lbs is not happening, might have been unrealistic with a 26.5 cm wide board. It’s at 5 lbs 1 oz now with the base and edges pressed and excess resin sanded off the rails, without having the epoxy ground off the base.
5.5-5.6 lbs is the new target! Still contemplating recessing in some honeycomb from the deck down. I have been weighing some paulownia scraps, they don’t weigh much and I’m not sure I’d save more than 3-4 ounces. There doesn’t seem to be much room in a split for honeycomb or foam with the hardware for the clips and the touring brackets.
Next time, no inserts, just hard maple plugs for ski screws. I’ll probably seal the core with a thin epoxy coat before lamination next time also. I like the way the epoxy flows into and sometimes through the Paulownia wood core for shear strenght, but it no doubt contributes to more weight too.
Re: Honeycomb – Trimming fat out of tips and tails is all the rage to reduce weight in the ski world this season. Especially if there is considerable rocker. Check out Rossi’s Freeride lineup, all of Kästle’s lineups and Blizzard’s Carbon Flipcore tech.
If you were OK with never adjusting stance, you’d know exactly where you could honeycomb and nowhere else. I.e. everywhere you see board.
Here’s what Rossi did. . .
Perhaps you could create an arc, from edge to edge, right where the hooks and pucks go.I see what you mean. It’s hard to save weight by trimming out an already light weight material.
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http://splitboard.com/activity-2/Bases are on, inside edges are the thinner racing edges and cover about 50% of the board length, been doing that forever. Never as short as the Chimera’s boards though I probably should. Instead of thinning the core in the center or shaping the deck like a BD ski, I am going to make it rounder like the Fischer bc skis. I think they shed snow better and are easier to scrape.
The signature of my boards is that they are nearly as thick (and stiff) from the nose through to the back foot. Overall they are waaay stiffer than any mfg board. They start off with a ton of rocker and then flex a limited amount to make fast round turns… It keeps them from overbending into really tight turn radii which makes a board have to drift more through turns and forces riders to keep the nose out of the snow further reducing surface area and speed out of turns.
If I made them thin there’d be no point, I could just buy a board with a floppy nose that chattered all over the place. 😉 Also thin core boards need tons of fiberglass to handle the deep bends they make at the ends. Or in the future a combo of low modulus (stiffness) carbon coupled with innegra should completely replace the heavy plain e-fiberglass used today because it is really inexpensive.
(oh the channels I was talking about would have been channels in the underside before laminating the base. I ‘ve taken most of my inspiration from the Fischer ski and XC ski websites. I was originally inspired by XC skis how they are an inch thick, crazy stiff and light in the center. Fischer had great pictures of how they cut vertical channels into their wood cores on their XC skis a long time ago.)
Edit: I’m not really sure how the lack of weight will feel, I’ve been riding a 9.5 lb boards much like taylor’s since the 97/98 winter. I suspect they are better at destroying breakable crust, but a large part of that is a nose that doesn’t deflect–for anything. This year my board has similar flex but is down to just under 8 lbs much like the BD Carbon Megawatts but wider. We’ll see. But they don’t bend and flap at all like skis, especially at the tip. Also, I rarely encounter much crap snow as I have to cherry pick the best days to drop responsibilities and get out in the Wasatch, so snow’s pretty good when I get out.
Update, aspens are turning in the high country, one half of board has been profiled to have a curved deck and vacuum bagged with red gum veneer, spread tow carbon and a bit of innegra fabric between the feet, and through the tail for durability. Unsanded weight is 2 pounds 12 ounces. Looking good for a 5 1/2 pound board once sanded, spray finished and base ground! Makes me think 5lbs to 5 1/4 was doable but without veneer top. I do think they look better and protect the composite layer from UV and abuse.
Got the finish coat put on this 167 by 26.5 ripper, still need the base ground, so no more weight should go on from here, except all the hardware of course.
I sanded pretty aggressively into the veneer to try and reduce its weight. The black areas or shady areas are where the carbon starts to show through.
And the verdict is:
5lbs, 13 oz. Not 5lbs flat by a pretty long shot. I’m real happy with it though after looking at the surface area/weight comparisions done with the math from Wildsnow-especially considering how stiff it is and that it has a top sheet and gloss coat. (It does bend though-made for 165lbs. and a light pack- not like the Chewbacca board I made for Taylor). By my math these boards, the Amplid Mg, Wildschnee’s 166, this board, are right on par with the top AT skis for surface area to weight ratio. Except we run with more surface area (and weight), have happier feet and have more fun in the best snow.
I think I could drop 4-6 ounces by dropping the topsheet and gloss coat. I could drop 3 ounces by using ski screw into maple inserts for the bindings. I also have an extra ounce or two of excess resin in the deck because my vacuum line had melted partially shut and I lost a degree of vacuum pressure while laminating and my resin was too thick also for the type of fabric. (I press the base, shape the deck round, then vacuum the deck) So I think I could hit 5lbs 2-5oz-ish without the veneer and still have a thick stiffer board. I reckon that is as far as I could go without channelling the base or adding honeycomb, foam or balsa inserts.
Taylor, same constant curve as all of my boards so far. Same nose profile also so the rider doesn’t have to pay attention to it and keep adjusting their fore aft balance. This one has a much more sloping deck. Outside of the binding area and the nose, the deck is curved all the way across a la Fisher skis for weight reduction.
Two tracks from the 167 by 26.4.
From all observations, I think I got the flex just right for a 160lb rider, Wahoo!!Warning: shaper’s pride moment
Photo from today made by this 167 which shows it doing it’s job real well. Even in the lower angle part of these turns that the board was ridden fast, angulated a lot and was throwing the rider back and forth out of fast round turns without disturbing a lot of snow. All dense snow will do this to a degree, but this snow is pretty light and a board that doesn’t overflex spreads the rider’s weight out better and projects them into the next turn with more kick and more speed while disturbing less snow and wasting energy.
I’m psyched that this board has had no base denting despite its light carbon layup and paulownia core and being subjected to plenty of logs and ice balls, wahoo! It’s seen a lot of miles and has had some epoxy repainted onto the rails from skinning scratches but that’s it. I’m already making two of these this summer for average weight riders 160-165 and will probably make a handful more if time allows so keep that in mind if you dig it. I’m going to use an inch of nylon topsheet on the rails to prevent having to repaint the gel coat scratches out on the rails..
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