I’m using a plank from pine tree of dimensions 15 cm x 1.5 inch x 4 meters. Other wood types for making skies:

Pine Tree (swe: fura)

Light and easy to work with. Low density makes it good for longer skies. Works well on powder snow, but might get worn by frozen snow (swe: skare), edges might get worn down and rounded by such conditions.

Birch (swe: björk)

Stronger and denser. Note: Birch has more ligin (glue substance) closer to the root, thus use this part as the front part of the ski, as the ligin will help preserve the up-bend of the front.

Aspen (swe: asp)

Similar to birch.

I’m selecting a plank free of knots (swe: kvistar) or resin (swe: kåda), as the former will especially be troublesome in the front where we bend the wood up, and the latter is unnecessarily difficult when we plan (swe: hyvlar) the plank.

I select one which doesn’t twist too much, and that has an arch that I designate as the down side.

Length of the ski is approximate, if you’re heavy, carrying heavy backpack or plan to go on lofty snow, you can add length, and vice versa if light.

• For an old Scandinavian “fornnordisk” ski, the length should your length (feet to top of head). Width can be about the full 15 cm width of the plank.
• For the thin skies, the length should be that which you can hold up with one arm stretched high. I’m opting for this, thus my \(L=2.35\) meters.

First step is to make it level and straight, i.e. remove any “propeller” tendency. Use two sticks to “guide the eye” to better see the twisting.

I use chalk line(?) (swe: kritsnöre or snörslå) get the center line. From this I draw the edges such that the top is 9.5 cm and the bottom is 8 cm, numbers I took from measuring another finished demonstrator ski.

(Confession: I had intended the bottom to be 8.5 cm, but the saw was hungrily gobbling up a bit too much on the other ski, thus for symmetry’s sake both became 8 cm).

While I have the ruler out, I measure up the position of the center line of the foot’s position. It should be at the center of mass of the ski, or slightly in front, such that the ski tip tips up, and the back tips down. Caveat: I do not yet know the exact position, but a good rule of thumb is \(L/2.3\) measured from the back, i.e. in my case 235 cm / 2.3 = 102 cm.

I saw into the wood to be axed, and stop about 2 mm from the edge line of the ski to be. I note the saw was very hungry indeed.

Use the ax, followed by band knife, to remove all “not-ski” wood. Remember to sharpen to ax and band knife. Before I start removing that which is not ski, sharpen the tools.

Next I need only make straight edge, using band knife (peels of chunks of fiber at a dangerously greedy rate).

I started selecting my plank at a quarter to one (12:45), now it’s 16:00, time to go home.

Tomorrow I’ll plane the other side, and do the top.

With the sides done, we now draw the profile as seen from the side:

• Thickness (red): Draw a 1 cm long line along the ski, as measured from the underside. This will indicate the thickness of the ski.
• Slope forward (orange): from the top of the footplate (green) to 35 cm - 40 cm from the tip, draw a diagonal line to the “thickness line”
• Slope backwards (orange): As previous step, but terminate 10 cm from the end tip.

I’ve neglected talking about the measurements of the foot plate. I’ve measured my boots to be 34 cm of length (EU size 48). To this I’ve added 5 cm on each side, thus the full footplate is 22 cm on either side of the guessed center of mass line I made before (102 cm from back).

Again we saw & axe the “not-ski” part, but we now want to preserve the center part as the spine of the ski.

At this point I’ve spent another 3-4 hours, on one ski.

Made two lines, 1.5 cm and 6.5 cm from the end, from which lines at two different angles finish off the skies end section.

For bending the tip we heat the wood for the glue (lignin) to soften up the wood. Usually 1 hour in a steam box will suffice, however our steam box is missing a lid, and has been warped some:

Therefore, the leather tanning shop let me graciously borrow their giant kettle (originally an Electrolux machine repurposed from the kitchen). Since boiling water isn’t as hot as steam, I left them in for 2 hours.

(When bending, place the hand on the stress point of the ski, to feel if it starts to make sounds it should not make)

24 hours later, the skies retain the new bent shape. However, there are now marks on the top from the rungs of the “ladder” and cracks underneath one of the ski pairs. The cracks are in the direction of the fibers, so it should be fine to use these, and the tar will fill them in.

Why cracks? Some explanations might be:

• Pine dries too fast, and unevenly, and
• radial cut planks would have alleviated this effect - i.e. fibers 90 degrees rotated in the plank, which you get if slicing the log like a pie, rather than a cheese.

To avoid the “Bambi on ice” effect, I make a steering track. I used a chisel, but (swe) skölpkniv might work just as well.

I make this after the bending, since now I know how far out the steering track should go, as only the flat part that makes contact with the ground need have it.

In order to store it properly, I drill a hope in the tip (roughly 3-4 cm from the tip), and make a stick that fits between the holes of the ski pair.

Now that the tip is bent, I find the center of mass (c.o.m.), through my own little contraption consisting of a steel ruler. I want the toe to be the pivot point, and the skies to be slightly back heavy, such that the tip goes up in each stride.

Ideally, the c.o.m should be the same on both skies. I spent some time removing some more wood at well chosen places to this effect.

When I make the hole, I place the hole just in front of the center of mass (which in my case was 11 cm in front of the guesstimated “L/2.3 = 102 cm line”), and just above the “1 cm bottom”.

Binding on different skies that I can choose from depicted below. Using birch wick(?) (swe: vidja) is a traditional binding that is easy to find material for, and very strong - if done right. I tried my hand at making this, but I feel I need more “practice to make perfect”.

I could have used a modern classic like “cable binding”, however, there’s no room in front of the foot plate to attach it, as I had my eye to using even more traditional binding using leather.

Since leather stretches when wet, we use half-tanned (swe: “rårand”, or “halvbarkat”), which is leather that is treated in a tanning bath that has already been used once, thus the tanning substances have been used up, and the center of leather is untanned, and becomes very hard, and unresponsive to stretching.

For heel binding I could use a leather string that is wrapped around the heel and tied in front. At the moment of writing I’ve cut two strings from reindeer hide that I’m twisting together, but that’s not quite finished yet. Below I use an ordinary string to measure how long the leather sting I’m making needs to be.

Caveat: I started out making my skies in parallel, however, one of them turned out to have a crack (see image below). Since I was ahead of schedule (humble brag) enough to have time to make a third one, I leaped to the task, and this time I documented the process which is the result you’ve just read.

Thus the first two skies I made took significantly longer to make.