Would a plain hickory core be a good idea for powder skis? I feel like if I don't laminate other types of wood together , like maple or birch, it will not have the flex of a laminated core. But also wouldnt one piece of wood have more strength than a laminated core? Help me out.
Read more. the material is reoriented into a vertical laminate with the grain going vertically.
Hickory is super hard, super stiff in my experience. The make lacrosse shafts from it.
so I kept reading and it makes sense to laminate but is hickory even a good wood to use? It is very light and quite flexible too. i have a friend who built his skis with a plane hickory board in it is working, he likes it, He weighs like 50 pounds more than I do though so I think it would be too stiff for me. another thing though, hickory is pretty cheap compared to maple. I guess baltic Birch is too though.
Hickory.. That would be like skiing on old golf clubs
Just kidding. Build and see hiw it turns out!
Hickory is really hard. Check out the numbers compared to other hard woods. Definitely make for a durable sidewall. There are also various types of hickory, but according to the chart they are all very hard:
http://www.woodworkweb.com/woodwork-topics/wood/146-wood-strengths.html
What if I were to use it as a layer in a laminated core for its strength, like for attaching my bindings with the metal inserts or should I just use maple and birch?
IMO try the hickory. There's all sorts of way to make the core, from a solid piece of wood to laminating strips of various woods together or laminating a single species of wood. Whether you have wood sidewalls or plastic can effect how you design/build the core too. You have another 100 decisions to make after you choose what type of wood to use. Just go for it.
for my first coupla pairs of skis, i didnt bother with the lamination of the cores. i was interested in the entire process and anywhere i could cut corners, i was cutting. first pair takes a long time to crank out, any way you slice it.
(though some areas are worth not cutting corners, like i spent the time to make a nice cnc mold that i am still using (with some modifications) 3 years later)
laminated wood cores are sick! but my first pair was such crap that a laminated wood core would have been total waste of time, cuz they are now just wall decoration. i skied them a hand full of times and then back to the shop to make a better pair.
how nice your first pair turns out is all a matter of perspective. at the time, i thought my 1st was amazing. but looking back on it, i musta been pretty foggy eyed. probably from tears of happiness
My first pair is basically garbage compared to my 10th pair, they ski ok but they have issues to say the least. The important part is to learn from the mistakes made on every pair then fix those things so you can improve and read about the mistakes others have made and try to learn from those things as well.
Hickory will likely work just fine, go build it and tell us how you like it. The most important thing about wood selection is finding wood that is reasonably priced and locally available. Learn about how grain orientation effects the properties of the wood.
Learn how to accurately rip your hardwoods and laminate them so you have the correct size core block both in width and thickness.
Read and research a ton.
Good luck.
