“But .. What do you mean, Elena, building your own ski?!” I must admit I’ve caused a bit of a stir here, telling everyone around me that I was soon going to build my own ski in Tirol, Austria. “Is that even possible?” Well yes, it is. In less than 48 hours, actually. Design, cut, layer, glue, saw and sand your own ski or snowboard! This truly outstanding effort is down to the passion of a talented few ski testers and builders, whose Innsbruck-based workshop “SpurART” makes building your own ski even accessible to the likes of me and you. Meaning, it doesn’t really matter if, like me, you’ve never even heard of, let alone touched, a powerful, electronic pad saw before. “Epoxy”? It might sound exotic, but turns out to be a very efficient, industrial glue. Glas fibre? Only knew about this material as being used for ultra-fast data transmission. To see those delicate fibres being layered up in my own skis, giving their wooden core some extra flexibility, came to me as a miracle, almost. Yet, to quote a phrase I’ve particularly liked to use over the years, I just had to stop and ask myself:
” … When was the last time you did something for the first time … ?”
And off I went. Meeting Gerhard, Chris & Simon. Cool guys, like, no big deal about using all the fancy boys’ tools in the super duper workshop. And me next to them. Grinning broadly, asking questions, filming and taking pictures. Hardly any manual experience whatsoever, let alone in building ski. But it didn’t matter one bit! Because my boys have honestly and truly taken great patience in teaching me all I needed to know to do things for myself; I’d say Gerhard’s compliment after cutting out my own ski with the industrial pad saw was a truly honest one. Oooh, the life …!
Highly focused: Cutting out your own ski with a pad saw requires a bit of an effort, but can really be done by just about anyone.
I do recommend you to do something really crazy, outstanding and truly special for you, every once in a while.
It’s been 30 years since I first learned how to ski. After walking, skiing. As a two-and-a-half-year-old, like my parents, both of them passionate skiers themselves, like to emphasise. At fifteen, I took a liking to snowboarding, and only recently reacquainted myself with my “old flame”, skiing. Well, you know what they say. Old love never dies, as my ski report from Kitzsteinhorn / Zell am See in Salzburg will tell you.
Besides, I have really become known as “the creative traveller” since, always on the lookout for truly exceptional, interactive cultural experiences while travelling. It was about time to marry those two passions, right?
Talking about creative travel in all its facets: Did you know that building your own ski starts with glueing all kinds of material ..?
Over night, the caked ski are being put in the oven (no kidding .. an industrial oven though for sure!) to have them out freshly baked the next morning …
… and after cutting, sanding’s the thing for your ski to become really soft and shiny!
To better illustrate the happy adventures we’ve been through during this weekend of a kind, I’ve made the following ski building video for you:
[su_youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIIp1fST0tI” width=”800″]
Do check out the SpurART website, too: http://spurart.at. What a unique experience it has been!
Now waiting to have my ski back with a final, laser-cut logo edged on them, the bindings, of course, and then off showing you a few turns on the powder slopes ..!
And you: Would you go about building your own ski one day?