Costs?

Depending on what tools/materials/skills you have it is important to decide if you want to build a pneumatic or vacuum press.  You can also heat your press if you want.  With that aside your biggest expense will be your time.  Sorry for the brief response, I am at school working on an assignment thats due tonight at midnight.  If no one else gives you a better response I will try to next week.

ok thank you.  im just thinking about it right now so ill look into it a little more.

I spent about $300 for enough edges, fiberglass, base, topsheet, vds rubber, and tip spacers for 3 pairs of skis.

About another $150 for epoxy.

and all the wood i had already. (buuuut.... my dad said that we used about $300 worth of wood)

all the tools (including vacuum press) i had already.

some other random expenses under $100.

I'm at about $550...

About how much did the Vacuum and pneumatic press run each? I'm guessing the steel tubing for it isnt cheap.

Pneumatic presses can cost quite a lot. They go down if you can get scrap i-beams, have access to a welder, have a compressor. I dont know much about them, but maybe as much as $500-$2000 (depending on how much steel you have to buy).

And my vacuum press... Is borrowed.

I'm not much help. Sorry.

Although, I would suggest going with a vacuum press to start off with. You can build one easily with a refrigerator pump, some hose, duct tape, and some vinyl. Much less commitment, they take up less space, and you dont have a pressure-bomb in your garage.

Ya, steel is hella expensive. I could could have got all of my metal at the price that dealers pay, and an I-beam frame with W6x15 beams (which I have since found out are still not big enough!) would have been upwards of $700. That's not including any labour, though I am able to have that for free. Im not sure what pricing is like in the US, but steel's really expensive right now. I ended up with a different design which isn't quite as nice as a side-loading I-beam, but still isn't an end loading one... It's very similar to the Kingswood press. Took a bit of time to do up the design and figure it all out, but I think I'm going to be happy with it. It just arrived at my house a couple of days ago, so I'll hopefully put some picks somewhere soonish. Still don't have my molds finished, or the heat system wired, so I may wait til that's all done, then do a big post, we'll see. anyways, this one, which uses box tube and flat bar still cost about $300 for just the metal (I was stoked to find the metal that cheap too, I found a place that must have purchased their last shipment just before one of the big price jumps; they sold to the public, and it was actually cheaper than the other source that sells to huge companies in the building and trades industries). I would budget at least $1200 for a pneumatic with a nice heating system. I did a lot of sourcing and think I got some pretty good prices, but when considering all the metal for the frame and cat-track, the PID, heat blanket, etc. it adds up. It could be done for less, I got pretty high-end stuff for all of it. I already have a compressor too. That's been my experience with it. You can really reduce your metal cost by doing an end-loader though, because you have supports all the way along the frame, you can use waaaayyy lighter metal... this actually makes so much difference to the required strength.

A vacuum press will suit any one with basic wiring skills. Basically all you have to do is take the compressor out, take the capacitor out, wire it together and put in a switch if you want. my vacuum press pulls from the bottom. I just got all my copper soldered up going into my epoxy trap. Once I get some epoxy I will press another ski.

here is my setup minus the copper lines and epoxy trap

First (and so far only) ski we have pressed with our first vacuum pump:
so ugly
this angle makes it look a little better... notice the oak sidewall:

How exactly does a vaccuum press work/ go together?  I've never seen one and i'm not very familiar with them.  The only kind I've seen is the pneumatic press.

like this http://myweb.cableone.net/bcanderson/Boatz/Vacuum/Vacuum.html except rather than putting a paddle inside of a bag you put your skis inside of a bag taped to your mold