HOLY SHIT!
Over the past few weeks, I have been flying under the radar, fighting off every urge to update this thread as I worked on and moved forward at a good pace. Within the last week I started to assemble the monster, piece by piece. It was the final push to get this thing to testing and after all the horror stories about presses shearing bolts and blowing welds over at the www.skibuilders.com forum, I was nervous. This weekend, I spent most of my time at the shop finishing this thing up so I could pressure up the hose and I'm glad to say, after pressurizing it, it passed testing successfully. It withheld 60 psi, or just over 50 tonnes of force (I think my math is right....) for over an hour today! It also looks way better in the flesh than I had ever anticipated. Seriously such a gnarly feeling having something you drew up and designed go from your head, to paper, to the shop floor.
Here is some pictures of it!
Welded the beams onto the endframes, upside-down was easiest.
Flipped over with the wheels on. Looks empty compared to now.
Bottom jaw.
Bottom jaw in the press. Took some fancy work with many jacks to do this....
After more jacking, buying some jacks, exchanging those jacks for taller jacks, lots of drilling for 5/8" grade 8 hardware to bolt my lower jaw locks in place, playing some jenga to fill the press cavity with wood for testing, and running a bunch of airline to the front of the shop, it was ready to test! The heavy blankets are on the endframes just in case anything happened to get lose....
Dat Bulge.
^^^ Seriously erect....
UNDER PRESSAH, PUSHING DOWN ON MEEE!
Front.
Rear.
Overall view.
60 Psi
Pressure off, locks removed, and the bottom jaw dropped. This will make unloading and loading the press SOOOO much easier as I think the jaw drops 5 or so inches.
Molds in the press, still missing the aluminium cassete, bottom camber sheet, upper mold spacers, profile shims, and the cattrack. The bottom jaw is fully dropped here.
Super stoked on things right now! Glad to have pursued this hard enough to make it here.
Big thanks goes to:
www.skibuilders.com and its memebers for all of its awesome resources and knowledge.
www.NewSchoolers.com members hot.pocket, KyleA, and Ginko for putting up with a retarded amount of PM's loaded with questions.
My buddy Malcolm, Uncle Pete, Dad, and the guys at the shop for their help and services.
Glen for the free C-Channel!
Thanks everyone! Now I just have to build a few more pieces, and think about sandblasting and paint, make it look good; then it will be open season for ski building!