i have an old pair of skis that i no longer used, and i was wondering if you can turn them into twintips, just for mucking around in the park? i thought maybe you could heat them up and bend the tails or something... anybody know if this would work?
Chris: welcome!
not sure how easy it would be to heat up the ski and bend it. the expoxy is pretty much set, but it might work. but here's an idea (credit Little Kam for this): bolt-on twip tips
Hi Chris,
This is something I've done a few times with varing degress of sucsess.
I't depends a lot on how your ski are constructed how well it will work and how much effort is required.
First you need a heat gun and a secure way to clamp the ski.
Heat the tail of the ski as hot as you dare - just not hot enough to set fire to it!
Bend the ski - you have to bend twice as much as you want the eventual bend to be.
Clamp and allow to cool.
When you remove it from the clamps it may delaminate, spring back to it's origional shape or a variation of both.
If it is still bent drill hole in it, especially where the bend is.
To stop it straightening put rivets through these hole, epoxy them in place.
Also epoxy and rivet any delminations.
When I did this to salamon xscream series they would slowly revrt to being flat until I riveted the bend. A pair of Rossigniol Power Ti's that had the same treatment delaminated badly but didn't straighten out.
best of luck
you can actually buy super cheap twins from the not-so-great sports stores like Big 5, Garts, etc. REI even will have old twins that are hugely marked down. Your best chance is ebay though.
This guy has made twin tips on a pair of Bandit XX: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/thermik/bricolage%20ski.htm
It is in French, but the pictures are clear enough.
Good luck.
Thanks alot guys, they were great tips. I'm going to start trying to do it tomorrow.
well, i tried doing it. i did it the same way which the above guy did his bandit's. on the first ski it worked well, although i didn't quite get as much bend in it as i would have wanted. however, on the second ski the topsheed ended up delaminating. is it possible for me to take it off and redo it with fiberglass?
Hey Chris, your idea gave me a lot of enthusiasm to make twins out of my old rossis. My purpose was to make rail specific skis pretty much for a joke, but it turned out to be a quite involved project.
What i did was sand down the topsheet a little and make the horizontal cuts.
I puts little resin-soaked strips in the cuts and put a small piece of resin soaked glass on the tail portion. I clamped the tail down and let dry for about a day. They both turned out really well.
In addition to bending the tails, I also painted the topsheet, center-mounted my bindings and rounded the edges under-foot for rails.
In my late teens, back when twin-tips were brand new I made a pair, out of some RD Coyotes. They are a foam cored ski. I cut the tip 16" off of a really old pair of skis from up in the attic to use as clamp molds. I set the tail of the RD ski in a toaster oven. When the topsheet began to bubble I pulled the ski out & quickly clamped the tip sections of the old ski on top & bottom of the tail of the RD. Repeated for the second ski. Presto! Crappy twin tip skis. I hated the skis to begin with so I really didn't enjoy them with the twin tip. Just used them a few times to try rails for the first time. About the only thing I'd ever use them for would be some urban exploring.
i managed to fix the delaminate, hopefully it will stay fixed. i also sanded down the topsheet and painted the skis. i'm basically just planning on using them as rail skis and for mucking around, when i don't want to screw up my good skis. when i see how these ones hold up, i might try doing it again.
I have gone over the site a few times and understand the ski building process. But how would I go about building a pair of alpine skis and not tele skis. What is the difference and does anyone know of any good links for it.
Construction techniques are exactly the same. You probably won't encorporate any inserts into your skis since downhill binding hole patterns are in no way standardized. Conventional thinking used to hold that tele skis were built softer that their downhill counterparts. I don't think that such an assumption can any longer be made. I think that flex is far more a issue of intended use, rather than turning style. Powder skis would be built soft, while an onpiste ski would be built somewhat stiffer.
I would follow all the steps listed here. I would build the core like the White's in the ski gallery. Those would probably be a pretty bomber alpine ski.
