Sunday, March 15, 2009

Day 1 of Ski Building



6 students began building skis tonight at 5 p.m. at the North House Folk School in Grand Marais, Minnesota. My husband Ron Thorley and I are building Sami ski shoes. Our instructor, Mark Hansen guesstimates the design is 6,000 years old and used by the Laplanders in Northern Scandinavia. Alice Williamson and Carol DeVore are building traditional cross-country skis suitable for track skiing. Peter and Solveig are making tele-style back country skis.

We are using North Shore white birch Mark harvested from Cook County. The wood has been drying for two years. Mark selected our blanks based on our height, weight and style of skis. He also showed us how to figure the length of curve in the tips, tail and where to locate the ski's centerpoint for determining binding placement later.

Ron and I have the shortest but widest blanks. Carol and Alice also have short skis, but they are narrower than the tele-types that Peter and Solveig are shaping.

Mark says white birch is ideal for ski building because of its long grain cellulose. He admits the fastest skis are ash, but he doesn't know why. He did share that a particular cemetery in Norway won't allow you to be buried there if you used ash skis. "They would consider your death a suicide if you had ash skis," says Mark with his characteristic storytelling smile. I think he's going to be the real story in this experience.

First on the agenda was to take the blanks from the stainless steel tub where they had been soaking for days in 120-130 degree water--Lake Superior water, by the way. If you want Superior skis, you need Superior Wood and Water. The North House Folk School compound is right on the Superior shoreline.

It's no easy task to get the wood to bend over the tip form and it took many hands to align the tips and then press the wood strips down in the mold so that we could screw wood block clamps on the waists and tips. We're working to have a slight curve on the tails too.

Without a doubt, building skis is truly a "hands on" job. I was first to put my skis in the mold and pressing down I said, "This must be what they mean by transferring energy in skiing."

The process took over an hour for 6 pairs of skis.

Now in the forms, the blanks will dry for 18 hours in Mark's basement. He has a special set up where he blows warm air over the skis to force the bends to stay. We'll meet at 9 tomorrow morning to learn more about ski design and then after lunch the blanks should be ready to begin sculpting into shape.

I'm thrilled to be in this amazing school, working with Ron, and most of all to be making skis--my absolute favorite snow toy.

By phone we told our son Ian we were building twin-tips, but I don't think he imagined them to be out of wood and from a design older than modern civilization.My aim is to have a pair of skis my great grandchildren will use. It must be in my blood. Before my father, Fred Waara, died in 1994 he built over 70 bamboo flyrods for trout fishing. To my knowledge he never built a pair of skis, but I know he's watching me with pride.

Stay tuned.

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