DIY Ski Vise

Over the Christmas break the wife and I went up to Mammoth Lakes Ski resort for some local skiing. For the last several years I have been, on and off, performing ski tune-ups, waxing and cleaning up the ski edges.  I had purchased some basic equipment, files, wax, hone stones, wax scraper etc.  But the ski vices are outrageously expensive, and I always attempted to perform the tune up without a vice.

This year one of the local ski shops put on a ski tune-up seminar and I attended.  I  learned so much about the proper technique that I got really jazzed about doing tune-ups again.  

I just could not force my self to pay anywhere from $100.00 to $250.00 for a set of ski vises.  I did some searching on the web and found some folks who made their own ski vises.  Most of the DIY still required a lot of work or required the purchase of several adjustable wood working vices.  

I wanted a somewhat quick solution that I did not have to do a lot of work on,  or spend a lot of money.  I have too many electronics projects that I would rather spend my time on. ;-)

So after looking at several designs I took a bit of everything I saw out on the web and decided to combine these techniques in a way that would be cheap and easy to complete.

I put together a set of ski vises for around $20.00 and assembled the vice in one evening.

Are you ready to create some saw dust?

Here we go.
 

Step 1 Pick up Your Parts

I went to the local home improvement store and picked up the following items:

Head over to the location where the friendly employees cut wood for customers and look in the scrap bin.  I was able to locate
a 4' length of 2" x 8" pine.

I had the nice man cut the 2 x 8 into 6" pieces.   This way you will have some spares in case you split the wood when performing the cutting or drilling.

I picked up the following hardware items"

4 3" wood screws,  
2 5/16 eye bolts with 4" shank
2 large 5/16" washers
2 1/4" spring links, looks like small carabiners
2 3" deep throat c clamps
Small section of gray carpet. 

I have  a hot glue gun and hot glue sticks
I had a pre-made bungie cord with two hooks.

Time to get to work.


 

Comments

[sticksandstones]

Cool instructable.
You probably want to spell it "vise," not "vice," though.

[jpitz31]

Thanks for the proof read.

Joe

[trf]

If I could suggest...
I would go to your local bike repair shop and ask for a used bicycle inner tube that is going to be thrown away (Why not recycle? =) Right?). Take said bicycle inner tube, and slice it down the middle making a wide flat band of rubber. Cut this new rubber strip at 8 inches long, and glue it down to the top of the vice instead of carpeting. May have a better grip at holding the ski steady without marring the surface of your precious skis! Then to add to that, Use 2 smaller and tougher bungees with a cord loop (1 to the toe binding and 1 to the heel such as in this image http://ecom1.sno-ski.com/product1009.html). And last but not least, maybe some of that rubber underneath the wood so it grips the surface much better when clamped down! Just food for thought! Great job on this instructable!

[jpitz31]

Thanks tfr for the feedback

Joe

[Toxictom]

Excellent solution. Those vices are expensive. I will have to make a set for myself.

[jpitz31]

Thanks Toxictom for the feedback

Joe