Freeride Wooden Ski, Free Heel Edition

Making your own skis out of wood, lets you shape and tweak the properties of your ski to your own preference.

A wooden ski can be used in a variety of conditions, letting you do quite steep climbs without the hassle of skins or ski wax.

They will not give you optimum glide, but I find that can be compensated for by choosing a steeper route downhill.

They will not enjoy the icy slopes, I never found them that enjoyable anyway.

They will enjoy the fresh snow, the off-piste, forests and mountains.

The ones I have made in this instructable, combines light weight, big load carrying surface with a small radius curve for easy handling.

It is a good idea to make two pairs, so you do not need to worry if a ski breaks. Then you will have some kindling and a spare ski. It took me 4 trips to appreciate that decision.

You need two wood planks for the skis and miscellaneous bits to make a bending jig.

Different wood sorts have different properties, I chose pine, because it is easy to work with and makes a light ski.

I got hold of some quite straight 21mm x 145mm (3/4" x 6") planks with few knots in.

Bindings of choice, I chose my used free heel bindings.

Good tools to use are axe, planer, spoke shave and a steel scraper.

To make the bend in the tips of the ski, you need a jig to hold the skis steady during the bending process.

The bending creates quite some force that needs to be controlled, which is why my first attempt (shown in the first picture) failed. The jig needs to be quite long to be able to force the ski into shape without breaking the crossmembers or the screws that connects them to the side flanges.

Use big solid wood screws, one in each end of the crossmembers, so they can rotate to where they can lie flat against the ski.

The cross members should be slightly rounded against the ski, to avoid having their edges make marks in the skis (like I did).

There is a counter-hold in the end of the jig, I had to add spacers to mine, since the bending radius became too tight for my wide hard-to-bend skis.

A stick with a slightly curved surface is used to lock the ski in the jig during the bending process.

The scary looking rising of the wood grain in the second picture, is do to there being an unnoticed knot in the wood right where I bent it. It did not break, so I glued it together again and the tip ended up fine.

To make twin-tip skis, you might want a smaller tip in one end. For this purpose, I made a removable counter-hold, as shown in the third picture.

Standing wood grain makes the best skis, but is hard to come by. You normally get wood from the outer part of a tree, with grain more like the drawing.

If the wood bends over time, it will up on the middle and down on the edges, if you make sure the direction of up is as in the drawing.

The image shows the result you can get, if the front of the plank is selected opposite of the drawing.

The lighter parts of the wood is softer than the darker parts, and is worn faster. Where the grain ends, you can get small rising "hooks". You want them to hook when you go uphill and not breaking for you in the downhill.

I have one ski left of my all time favorite skis, that is not broken, so I used that to mark the curve for the ski width. Since I got hold of 145mm wide planks, and my template ski was a bit narrower, I used a small item to guide my pencil mark on one side of the ski.

This gave me a ski that is 42mm narrower on the middle than in the front, promising a playful ski that is easy to turn.

The fastest and scariest way to get the first rough shape is to use an axe, but confidence grows fast when you dare to try, carefully avoiding chopping across the line you have made. Leave enough distance to the line as your nerves allow you.

The first small chops are made not too far from each other, not to remove material, but to provide a spot where your later chops will stop the wood splitting. This way you will avoid splitting the whole length of the ski, possibly across your line, leaving you to have to make another line for a narrower ski.

Time to sharpen your planer and spoke shave, freshly sharpened tools are pleasantly much easier to work with. These tools makes it easier to get the width to where your pencil mark is, and created a smooth curve along the length of the ski.

Leave a good thickness from a bit in front of where the binding is mounted, to a bit behind the heel of the shoe. I had a mark for the mid of the boot on my template ski, giving an approximate position of the binding. I used all the 21 mm that my blanks came with.

The width should taper to about 8mm thickness and then widen a bit again the last bit of the tips of the ski (to make the tips stronger, that is where they need strength). For my length of skis, 190cm, I made 40cm even 8mm thickness in front of the tapered part to the start of the tip, 25 cm in the back. See the second picture.

An improvement I made on my second pair, was to add extra length to the tips, a kind of second tip which is thicker. This is sometimes called a sugar cube. It makes the tip bending easier, with skis as wide as I chose to make them.

Having a steady hand, you can try to use the axe to get good chunks of material removed from the thickness as well. I find it even more scary than on the sides, but slow and careful axe work, saves a lot of work with the planer and the spoke shave later.

The finishing touch is done with a steel scraper, it can remove quite a bit of material and is easier to control than a planer, especially if you want to make curved surfaces.

If you get hold of wood with more knots or curvy grain, it might not be as easy to work with and if you might find it hard to get the smooth finish you want with the above tools, you can use a sander. I was lucky with my pine items, so I did not have to.

The parts of the ski you want to keep as stiff as possible, maybe the parts close to the boot, you can leave a ridge on the middle of the ski to make it harder to bend.

Do not worry if you find the two skis are not exactly alike, rest a assured that you will not be able to notice the difference when using them.

Find a big towel and your biggest kettle and fill it with 3l of water. The water will turn into steam, so have a peek every now and then, to make sure you don't boil it dry.

Place the part of the skis you want to bend, on the kettle of boiling water and place the towel so you cover the whole kettle, and then some. Depending on the thickness of the part to bend, you will need to steam the ski from 30 minutes to more than an hour. These skis needed about an hour.

Taking the skis from the kettle and placing them in the jig, needs to be done quite quickly, since the steamed wood will stiffen again quite fast. But you also need to be gentle and careful when bending the skis. If you bend them too fast, they will break.

I chose to make quite wide skis, they need quite some force to be bent, so I carefully added some extra force to it by clamping a piece of wood across the skis.

This step is a bit hectic, so good planning pays off, but if you don't succeed right away, just put the skis back on the kettle for a while, that make them easier to work with again.

I could warn you about the hot steam burning your fingers, but this warning did not really help me much. Steam is hot!

I left the skis in the jig over night, which is more than enough.

The bends will pop back only about 10%, when you take the skis out of the jig.

For me, this step started with gathered knowledge and confidence and ended up using gut feeling in stead.

I believe that a good rule of thumb is to position the binding in relation to where your ski is in balance. This point I found by clamping a round rod in a vice.

For us of the free heeling persuasion, I had the belief that the balance point should be right behind the toes. A twin tip or park ski with alpine bindings might want to move the binding slightly forward.

When looking at the binding position of my well tested, favorite ski, the balance point is right at the toes. That is where I mounted them. It later turned out to be a perfect position.

The good thing if you mount them wrong, is that it is easy to reposition them on a wooden ski, after you test them in the snow.

To protect the wood from the moisture it will be exposed to I coated the top and sides with linseed oil.

The sole is given a coat of a mixture of equal amounts of wood tar, turpentine and linseed oil.

After a few times use, the sole will wear down and lighten.

Apply some more wood tar with a little turpentine to make it easier to apply, every now and then, when the sole becomes light and dry.

You might find that the skis behave different than you expected, so you might want to bring your planer and spoke shave with you on your first test rides.

You can change the behavior of the skis by slimming the parts you feel are too stiff.

If you feel the skis are a bit hard to turn, but you don't want to loose the load bearing capability, you could use the bending technique to make a slight bend, creating rockers in front and back.

The test rides uncovered impressive grip in loose snow below freezing temperatures, easy recovery when the grip slips due to the light weight, and easy turning due to the large width difference and long tips in both ends.

I added a pair of ski mounted crampons to reduce the slipping even more, for the longer uphill parts.

The fourth test ride was in the steepest slope, a little too early in the winter, catching quite a few hidden sharp rock tearing out a significant amount of one ski. Moved the bindings over to the next pair, a big snow fall later, and we were good to go again.