:: View topic - Project Pallet

Last month I purchased a bandsaw and to save on shipping cost I had it delivered to a local freight center. (This is a nice option if it's available from the vendor -- it cost me nothing to have it shipped to the center!) When it arrived I got a phone call from the center telling me I had to go pick it up. When I arrived, the saw was in two pieces: one box and the main piece nicely wrapped on a pallet -- total weight: ~300 lbs. The person working at the center was kind enough to use a forklift to load the pallet into my pickup. "Keep the pallet!" he said.

At home I quickly assembled the saw in the garage, and it works beautifully. I recyled as much of the packaging as possible, but there was the question about what to do with the pallet. I suppose I could have returned it, or broken it up into pieces and added it to my firewood pile. Without much thought I just leaned it up against the fence to be dealt with later. The pallet sat for a few weeks, and finally I needed to dispose/recycle it. Then in my head a few neurons fired, bzzzz, bzzz, and an image materialized:

Why not? No reason not to try. Some of the wood looks okay, maybe with a little tender love and care... With all the discussion about different woods used in skis/snowboards on our very own forum, as well as on TTips.com and others, it seemed like a good idea to experience first hand if it "wood" make much of a difference. G-man is playing with pine, others have tried fir, poplar, and of course, the famous maple. I've recently gravitated toward wood with knots.

Enter the Project Pallet.

Keep in mind that the pallet has an interesting history, for example, read this entry from WikiPedia and also this little note. My favorite lines from WikiPedia are:

"The cheapest pallets are made of softwood and are often considered as expendable, to be discarded as trash, along with other wrapping elements, upon reaching destination. These pallets are of a very simple construction which permits lifting from one of two opposite positions only. Slightly more complex hardwood pallets and most plastic pallets and metal pallets can be lifted from all four sides."

Hey bigKam, what a hoot! I think your latest core will work just fine. If it does, in fact, hold up well, it will sure debunk a lot of prior thoughts and myths about how important the core material is. The little gaps in the wood strips may even act as vibration continuity breaks that will disrupt vibration pathways and improve damping

. Maybe you should patent it

.

I have a pair of K2 She's Piste that I got real cheap from REI a few years ago (180's and they couldn't sell them). There are areas in the top sheet where there are no graphics, and because the top sheet material is truly clear, the core can be readily visualized. The core exhibits many knots and has some fairly large areas of wood filler. They were my favorite ski for a couple of years, so they have a lot of days on them They've held up very well.

Great recycle of a material that has spent much of its days traveling the world.

G-man

i agree -- it should work just fine. what's fun about building skis is there's a story with each design. and with each design, we learn something new.

i have several projects in the works related to skis, and others waiting to materialize. so many ideas and so little time. i need more hands.

haha how sick and wicked is this?!

kam, i admire you for such ideas. this is just so out of line!

well, i think that wood definately has an effect on how a ski rides. at least with a horizontal construction. on my latest pair i even could feel the influence that wood has on a ski: in tip and tail the woodcore is just 3mm thick. which means that there are 3 layers of 1mm veneer. the veneer i used had some bigger grains....or the year rings cut lenghtwise, i hope you know what i want to describe. so in the tip and tail region these stripes of harder parts of the wood made a little turn to an edge. because i used 3 layers i could not fully level things out by just putting the next layer in the opposite direction.

now on the finished ski you can really feel this. if you push down one side of the forward part of the ski it bends/winds the ski torsionally more than on the other side. but it`s the same on both skis, so it`s not a big deal

wow you were right when you said i may drop dead with your wood selection!

haha its amazing how good it looks after cleaning it up and planing it. i think the cleaned up wood from that rusty old pallet can give the best of woods a run for their money!

after i finish the 'Gamma SL', im thinking of using wood from a good old aussie gum tree:D

still buffed on the thought of using a pallet. simply awesom kam

schuss

wow..

with all the old barns around here.. hmmmm

I am really amped on the experimenting that is going on around here lately. Between shuss and his umpteen layers of composite and Kam and his junk wood we stand to learn a lot.

So if the "pallets" ski well do we take it as proof that core material doesn't matter, or just there there are source of good wood that we might have never thought of? I think to truely prove the core theory I need to build some skis from the cardboard I have laying around

.

It is also fun to see how others set deadlines for their skis. I have promised myself that my next pair will be out before snowbird closes at the end of the month.

Excited to see how these turn out.

more photos of nice wood (forgot to post these earlier):

That is great to see! I remember seeing a pair of K2's (I think it was K2) that had finger jointed strips of wood, so this method should be just fine.

As for pallets, from my experience working in a lumber yard and warehouse for a while, the hardwood pallets usually have pretty good quality wood. In fact, in the industry, they are treated as a valuable commodity. For example, when a warehouse receives a shipment of 40 pallets of food, the truck driver won't leave until he has 40 decent condition empty pallets on his truck and pretty much every warehouse has a large number of pallets specifically for this purpose. Where I worked, we had a pile for good pallets and one for bad pallets, and there was a guy who would come around every month or so and pick up the broken pallets, then sell back an equal number for a discounted price.

As for your pallet, it is a pretty typical of one that has seen a few repairs, and that is probably why they weren't too worried about letting you keep it. As to the type of wood you got in that pallet. It looks like there is some oak mixed into the lot as well which is pretty expensive and nice strong wood (a bit heavy though).

Kam you were talking about my Tasmanian maple/oak before. Here are some pics of the tasi wood with red ptex sidewalls attached. Flex pattern is great

Cost is about $50 Australian dollars for 3.6m worth in 19mmx19mm strips. (thats for 7strips)

So thats about $41USD for a pair of skis

schuss

Oh and for any one that is wondering whats so special about tasmania or where it is?, here is your answers!

Although im sure this wood comes from a pantation now, i think in the olden days the eucalyptus trees this wood is from, ( i cant remember the exact name for it) but the species grew up to like 200feet high or something. second highest in the world any way. so it was pretty special getting something from a huge ass tree. nowadays its "conserve the rainforrests" so we have plantations, which also make this wood widely available throughout aus and used for many many things. Its def not the cheapest but not that exspensive either.

schuss

and the cool thing is you get to name them the Tasmanian devils..

SCHUSS:

your home mountain looks impressive. how much vertical?

any skiable mtns. on Tas?

i have a few colleagues in Aus. maybe i'll come visit them and visit your home mountain, then take some Tas. wood home...

Thredbo has about 700m vertical, longest run is 5.9km.

Average snowfall is about 6m but we only get a base average of around 2m. Although in the last 5years we have only got around 1.7m depth on average. Oh and last year was the worst season on record with 89cm depth.. lol usually that would be very bad but thanks to the largest snowmaking system in the southerm hemi thredders can push 350,000 cubic meters of snow a season makin it actually pretty damn decent.

Haha enough of braggin and advertising thredbo (i just love the place).

If your actually keen to see some more ill send you a vid or something?

In tasi there are ski resorts, Ben lomond for eg. But think very small vertical, small lifts (they may even only have t-bars) and small snowdepth but very prettyfull.

Perisher blue is our biggest ski resort just 30km away from thredders with 57lifts including a 8seater and an underground train to get you there but it only has 400m vert so its very spread out and short. i much rather thredbo as it has an austrian style village and is actually a mountain.

here are some random pics for you:

thredbo

more update -- pallet-core skis are done, pressed using Kublai with heat:

same shape as the Kaweah, but core is 11mm thick, therefore stiffer. used full-length .016" thick sheet of aluminum underneath graphic layer. i enjoy rubber in my skis because it makes them damp. this time, 85% of the tips have rubber, and i also strategically placed thin strips and 2mm thick rubber to damp out the 1st and 2nd mode of vibration. i estimated the location based on geometry. used white p-tex sidewalls -- flame treated them for bonding. oh yeah, base is green, so they should ski nicely

.

How high and how long tip and tails are best for powder?

17cm long and 60mm high?

these dimensions should work pretty well. on mine i have 15cm of lenght and 55mm hight. at a waist of 145 on my first pair and i never ever had some problems with it, diving tips - nearly impossible.

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i profiled the core as a few more skis in the gallery - the flat section in the middle of the ski is 10mm and goes from 12cm in front of the middle of the lenght of the effective edge to 20cm in the back of it. so all in all you have 32cm of flat core. i mounted the bindings on the different skis with a setback of 5cm to 7,5cm.

so you basically profile the core to get a nice flex arc. no matter what profile you could mount the bindings anywhere you`d like to. the "edge" created by the transition of flat center to the profiled sections is not that big, so as my mate (worker in a ski shop) told me it would be no problem to mount the binding just on top of it. so if this is your main concern....i`d say this is no big deal. just sand the edge a bit and you`ll get a smoother transition.

but you definately have to pay attention where to mount the bindings: be sure that the area where you want to mount it is thick enough so that the screws won`t go through the whole ski.

hope i got your question right....

yes you did answer the question but we are wondering if that would work for freestyle skies. soo for freestyle skies should they be centered or not?

The main benefit of center mounting bindings is that you have near equal swing weight for spinning. However, if you ride switch frequently it is actually better to mount your bindings 1.5cm-2.5cm behind true center (by true center I mean the center of the effective edge of the ski). This will center your weight better over the ski while switch and be more stable. Tanner ,TJ, and many others ride 2cm behind true center for this reason.

B Kam,

How are you laminating the Aluminum? Are you pre-etching or abrading the material right before laminating. Or maybe something else? How much glass and what weight did you use. On some of the Snowboards they use a light weight carbon uni and just the Titanal, essentially replacing the glass with the metal.

Carvejunky

Carvejunky: i abraded the surfaces using low-grit sandpaper, then cleaned with a solvent and immediately laid-up (note: AL oxidizes rather quickly.). in general it's tricky to get a good bond -- it still eludes me, but i'm getting better at it...

I did many practice runs of Al gluing. Steel wool does not properly abraid if you want to have good sticsion. I tested with a 180 grit sand paper that with light abrasion and got great adhesion. I'm going to use more elbow grease next time.

Aluminum Bonding can be greatly enhanced by Phosphoric Acid Anodizing. Thats what Boeing uses to glue together planes.

" PAA, phosphoric acid anodize is also Boeing's BAC5555 process. It is used for structural adhesive bonding, per ASTM-D3933, and substantially improves performance in high-humidity environments "

You could look around for someone who does Aircraft anodizing and see if they do PAA. I found a place close to me that does it but I don't have pricing yet. I am going to try it this summer on a couple of boards I am going to do.

B Kam: What Fabric weight did you use in your pallet ski's?

Carvejunky

big kam,

really sweet looking skis as usual. cool to see that you are pushing the

the standards of homebuilts with alum. and dampening layers to improve

performance and edge hold, chatter, etc... can't wait for the full story and test of these planks. did you notice camber changes with your mold with heat verses no heat???? very interested in your observations.

jason

Carvejunky: i don't know the weight, but it's rather thin. it's nothing fancy though -- bought it at Walmart for $1.99/yard.

Jason: i'm using a zero camber mold, and i get about 5-8mm of camber because of the heat -- has to do with difference in thermal expansion of the materials when heat is applied. Kelvin and i have experienced this from the beginning, so we compensate by using a zero-camber mold. one thing i should try is may wait until the skis completely cool under pressure before removing them -- but i'm impatient...

i'm laying up another pair this Friday, and three more cores are waiting their turn. i'm using left-over wood found in the rafters of my garage. it must be 10-years old, and was left here by the previous owners of my house. i'm putting it to good use.

It kinda makes sense using old wood that has been lying around for ages. It is completely dried out and stable.

Thinking that I will try to find some left over or old wood when its time to build my first pair of skis. Extending the length of the pieces should be no biggie. Either do like you did, or join the individual pieces. (Sawtooth pattern on the endgrain, dont know what its called in english though) This is common practice in the wood industry, especially when making glulam beams or solid wood elements. Low quality wood is frequently used in these processes, but this is no problem as variations in quality are evened out by having many stringers.