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Figured I would post this in thread as well as on the website so people can go back and look at the ski press manufacturing if they are looking to build their own.
Anyway, if you are in PH or the ON3P cult, you might have seen that we all suffered a really big loss when a good friend, Wil Vicik, died on the 10th of this month. Wil was an amazing person whose death has definitely been a punch to the gut. He left behind a fiancé and an awesome family and has definitely left a big hole in our lives these past few weeks.
Many of you may know will as "V..." on NS. Recently he changes his name to "coolhandluke".
If I have been poor at replying to emails or PMs in the past few weeks, I apologize. I basically just needed sometime to focus on dealing with what we have been going through and easiest was to just sort of dive into shop construction and material prep.
I will always picture him with his huge smile, and I am sad that I won’t get to get to enjoy that for the years to come. I know that he was SUPER stoked to have a shot of himself in freeskier, even if it was something we paid for ;)! There really isn’t anyone I would have been more happy to have in there…
Pretty much my favorite tail gunning photo ever
Kick!
Definitely gonna miss more videos/stories from mission this year too.
Wil – we love and miss you a lot. This year is definitely going to be for you.
Anyway, on to more of a ON3P update. We have been tweaking our production line, picking and constructing new equipment, receiving lots of material, and are now trying to finish cores and get going on pressing. I wanted to post this thread because we made two brand new, super sick yet fairly simple ski press frames that people might be interested in looking back upon later if they wanted to build some new presses. I will go over all that once we get there.
I know there is a lot of questions about when skis will ship and so on. We are working hard everyday and I hope to have skis rolling out of the press very soon here. Once we are fully set and ready to go, I will let everyone know what order we are going in and when I think your skis should be coming out of the press and out the door.
I haven’t been all that good on taking photos this month, basically only doing so when we were actually building the presses.
Cores following shaping
More Cores
New air filtration system. Our shop really needs one more. And this was very difficult and sketchy to put up.
Some of the steel that arrived.
We were making two rolling racks, a cloth rack, and two ski presses. The racks were going to be drilled. But wow. Drilling sucks. A few hours in to it and all the memories of building the ski press came back. Our buddy Jason, who was welding our ski presses (and did an amazing job!! Thanks Jason), told us he could do what we were doing in a few hours drilling with a welder in maybe 10 minutes.
Drilling sucks.
So after a whole night drilling, I said screw it, went to Home Depot, picked up a welder, and decided to see if I could get better results at welding (at least give it a shot). Nothing fancy, but for what we were going to use it for, should be fine. Considering it was my first time doing it, I was fairly happy with the results. I am obviously completely new to it, though, so what do I know...
Simple rack frame
Cloth rack frame
Rolling ski rack
Rolling Rack number 1
Jason welding some casters to rolling rack number 2
Rowen cutting some pieces for our cloth rack
We then had to take apart the ski press we already had in there. I already snapped one photo of it, but renting a material lift for the whole thing made is infinitely easier.
Before we get onto the press….sam drilling one of two new 110+ piece cat tracks.
New shark guard for the table saw. And it apparently speaks…
Rolling racks with cores waiting to be profiled.
Alright…the big part. Ski presses. As anyone who deals with steel knows, most of what you buy has lots of imperfections in it. This means leg support pieces that were not all the exact same length or totally square, or the top of the I-beam flange with was far from flat.
To combat this as much as possible, and create as square/flat of a ski press as possible, the two base I-beams for both presses went to a metal working shop to be planned completely flat along the entire top surface of the press, and along the bottom surface where they meet the supports. Not cheap, but it created a totally flat surface and meet between the two beams.
Top surface has flat and clean.
We also had all the 6x6 square tubing milled so the sides were completely square and they were exactly the same length.
Steel ready to go
Beveled edge to provide better penetration for the welds
From here, the credit really needs to go to our welder, who just took the time to make some jigs that basically made it easier to set up each set of legs the same. Once it was square it was easier to finish each of them fairly quickly.
Squaring legs and creating jig to be used for each time we make the legs.
Tacked together
Bottom jig
Top jig
Stands at least! :D
Later legs were faster
Just tacked together for now
Four sets of legs ready to go
To support the 6x6 tubing, we added some 6” rolled flat bar and 6” u-channel which were welded on either side of the tubing.
Not filled in
And filled
Once the legs were done, it was just a matter of getting them in the leg frames and getting everything square and flat.
Had to be a bit creative two get two beams in there at once and support them each.
Then some more welding...
Some proto Caylor molds were already in there with some crazy rocker tip and tail.
Press number 2
Primer
While the primer was drying, we received and were trained up on our new Riechmann belt/stone in-line combo. It is basically my new favorite toy.
Had to get a bit creative to fill the container. Apparently metal ducting works great
Then back to painting. Definitely excited. Still need another coat of paint, too.
Not even sure what to say here....some sort of horrible 80's movie dance or something that could only happen at 2AM with hardly any sleep the night before....
We still need to get our molds in there and actually hand the cat track and heat blankets.
Some bases and topsheets
More materials
New edge sander
New compressor
Sticker packets should be available soon.
I know people who ordered skis also seem to want some stickers. I will just have to see where we sit volume wise in the coming weeks.
Few more photos of my new best friend....
Already messing around with structures on a few of last years prototypes
So that is it for now. We have a few more things to get done around the shop, and we need to finish cores and then it is on to actually pressing. We basically prep composites and such as we go. Once we clean up that back room from all the grinding and welding that went on back there, it will make more sense.
Tonight/this morning is the first time I have been back to my apartment since I left for Wil’s service Friday morning, so I am going to crash and likely add this stuff to the website soon, but figured you guys would appreciate seeing it first. In the mean time, let me know if you have any questions. Thanks!
