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Hello everyone, I recently got interested in building my own skis, and when planning to do so, I got a couple of questions, and problems. I was hoping some of you could help me? My first question/problem is that I don't have any CAD software to design the skis on. I downloaded SnoCad, but whenever I go to start it, it won't open. It stays in the loading page, and I eventually just have to close it. Do any of you have any suggestions of software that you would use to design a ski? Free software is more preferable, but I am open to anything! My second question is about the Camber. I want to do a camber with a tip and tail rocker. but I have no clue how far the distance is from the ground to the skis. I went to Atomic's website, and their Bent Chetler's have a diagram of the camber, but it says things like 30/40/30. What would that be in correlation to the distance and the curves that you would put into the ski? Is there a standard distance for all cambers on skis? Another question I had was how to prevent bubbles in the finished product. Is that why people use a vacuum bag to seal their skis in? Lastly, in the wet layup, how do you prevent the epoxy and other residue form sticking to the bottom of the skis? I watched someone build a snowboard, and after they took it out of the mold, it had epoxy stuck to the base of the board. He sanded it off, but that was the first time I have seen someone have that problem, and sanding it also seems risky in terms of damaging the base layer. Thank you so much!
Skibuilders forums. Don't ask, just read as much as you can and absorb it all as no one will care to answer your questions. You might get free cad software from your school, so look into that. I use snocad for ease of use personally, but it is a little bit limiting. If you understand curves you can just draw something up in a vector program, no need for 3d. Camber distance varies typically from 0-10mm, you can do more, but I wouldn't go over 25mm personally. Zero camber is the easiest to start with for obvious reasons. Rocker profiles can also be whatever you want really, there is no standard. The Bentchetler example that you posted would be (assuming the ski is 100 cm for ease of math) 30 cm of rocker in both the tip and tail and 40 cm of camber. To not have bubbles, you need to properly wet shit out, and possibly look into degassing (waste of time as you don't know anything to begin with). People use vacuum bags because you need to apply some sort of pressure to your skis if you want them to be worth anything. Flash tape is what I use to keep epoxy off the base. Sanding the base is fine and extremely common to the point that they do it on your skis at your local shop.
The best advice I can give you is that you will probably fuck up your first pair if not more, welcome to the money pit.