Welcome to the Ski Builders Forum, a home for people who build their own skis and snowboards. It’s run by Black Chapel Studios (https://blackchapelstudios.com).
This forum is the companion to the Ski Builders Knowledge Base at https://buildskis.com, which holds 25 how-to guides and more than 1,200 threads saved from the original skibuilders.com. If you need a reference on presses, cores, layup, or tuning, start there. If you want to ask a question, share a build, or just talk shop, start a topic here.
Here’s how the categories break down:
- Getting Started: introduce yourself and ask your first questions.
- Presses and Equipment: presses, moulds, heat, vacuum, CNC, and shop tools.
- Cores and Profiling: core design, wood and bamboo, and profiling.
- Materials and Layup: bases, edges, glass, epoxy, sidewalls, topsheets, and the press itself.
- Design and Tuning: sidecut, camber, flex, finishing, and tuning.
- Build Journals: log a build from start to finish and show off the finished skis.
- For Sale: A place to list extra materials, a press you are selling, anything not explicitly commercial like your branded skis for instance.
A few things that keep this place worth coming back to: share what you’ve figured out, give credit when someone helps you, and post plenty of pictures. That’s how everybody gets better.
If you need a custom tool for building your skis, Black Chapel Studios has you covered on that as well (https://designer.blackchapelstudios.com). Otherwise, grab some wood, fire up the press, and worship the work.