Make your own skis
The most exclusive way to get new skis is to make them yourself: a trend from southern Germany.
The ski run as fashionable catwalk? For a long time now we have been seeing skis and snowboards in the most various shapes and colours on Alpine ski slopes: for ski racers and free riders, for beginners and adepts, with floral ornaments or in neon hues. For some time now individualists have even been making their own personal skis – tailored to size and body weight, skiing style, area of use and of course the right look.
“Surprisingly simple”
Several enthusiastic skiers have opened “Ski Making Schools” in southern Germany, where together with participants they make unique skis in one to three days’ time. You can also buy the individual components in starter kits on online shops and then assemble them at home. “Making your own skis is surprisingly simple – if you have the right know-how and materials”, says, for example, the sport magazine Sportalpen.com. The pros at Build 2 Ride in Garmisch-Partenkirchen offer one-and-a-half day seminars that even beginners without any previous knowledge can leave carrying a pair of perfectly bespoke-tailored skis.
There are only a few steps to the perfect pair of skis, but they take time. First of all, the edges are bent and glued to a surface. The surface is then laminated with an epoxy resin, joined to glass fibre layers and a previously selected wooden core and combined with individual motifs. After a night in the oven set to about 130 degrees, it is again time for some handicraft: the skis are now cut out with a jigsaw, along the edges from the end of the skis to their tip. The workshops cost a few hundred euros, but the result is pure individuality. So just sand and wash and you’re ready to hit the slopes!
