Enjoy tranquility, crisp air, and beautiful nature, while skiing through fresh snow. How much more rewarding to experience that on a pair of traditional wooden skis that you built yourself. Go for it! I took this photo after a nice snowfall, February 2019, Wisconsin USA.

Skiing on homemade wooden skis after a light fresh snowfall in Wisconsin.

Based on information I could find, this is the traditional wooden ski that I will build.

Again, based on what information I could find, this is how I will size my traditional cross country skis and poles. Poles from ground to the level of your outstretched arm, skis from the ground to your wrist with your arm pointing up.

This is the design I have settled on for the mould that I will set the skis in after I have steamed them.

Raw materials: (2) 1x8x8' pine boards and (2) 2x4x6' pine boards for the form. The other two boards are the 4/4 rough sawn ash which I will use for the skis.

Gluing and screwing together the permanent support cross-braces. The cross braces are 12" long, so the inside width of the box is 12" which will be ample space to fit two skis at once.

Next I hand drew the curve at the front tip of the ski. I drew it a bit steeper than what I want the finished ski to be, as there will likely be some bounce-back after the skis are removed from the mold. In this photo, the cross brace farthest to the right is the key brace to keep the ski tip from popping up out of the mold.

Here the tip curve pieces have been screwed in place. If I want to modify the shape later, I can unscrew and relocate these cross-braces.

Completed form / mold for steam bending traditional wooden skis.

Hand drawn shape at the tip of the ski.

With the widths marked at both ends and in the middle, I clamped a flexible wooden batten in place at the ends and bent it to meet the correct width in the middle, then traced along the edge of the bent wooden batten.

Here I am drawing a straight line along the edge of the plank. You can see the variation in straightness in the rough sawn plank. It is well dried and stable clear Ash lumber.

Finished Ash blanks for making traditional wooden skis.

Then I used the template to trace the shape onto the Ash blanks.

Here is the first ski, cut to shape, but not with the tapers planed down yet.

I cut the shape using a saber saw with sharp new stout blade. Even with that, the blade was not able to hold vertical and it drifted at the bottom of the board vs the top of the board, so I cut a bit outside the line, and then used hand tools to square the edge and bring the shape up to the finished line. It would be best to use a band saw (or even better use a carving axe!)

Here is a ski, bottom up, clamped down, with a straight fence clamped in position so that the router bit cuts right down the middle of the bottom of the ski.

3/8" wide x 1/16" deep grooves cut in the bottom of solid ash back country skis.

I used a 3/8" chisel to carve a tapered end the groove that I had cut with a router into the bottom of the ski.

Taper, sketched onto side of ski.

First, I recommend making sure all your chisels and planes are razor sharp. I use a sharpening stone, and a fine sharpening stone, with oil, to sharpen my cutting blades. I sharpen them frequently and thereby avoid having to completely restore them from a blunt condition.

To plane the taper into the ski, I found it easiest to plane the corners off first, down to the finished thickness at the edge, and then next to plane the peak down to level.

Here is the planing in process. For planing off the peak, I found it useful at times to plan across the wood at 45deg, and at time right perpendicular across. Finish planing done parallel to the grain.

My skis will feature the traditional carved tip, called "the Ocean". This presents a challenge when tapering the front end of the ski, as one cant just plane right through the end of the ski. I reached a point where the tip was getting in the way of further planing, so I saw down just behind the tip and used a chisel to clear that area out.

Here is the area just behind the carved tip, with wood removed with a chisel. Now I will go back at it with the plane.

A nice curl of ash from the plane

Tip shape sketched onto the wood.

Finished carved ski tip.

Mine is a BAHCO scraper from Sweden.

Here is the finish carved ski ready for steam bending. (this photo was from before I carved the ocean narrower)

I nailed the top and bottom on with nails spaced at 6". Here you can see the hole at the end that my steam fitting will fit into. This end is removable with 4 screws. The steam enters the box through this end.

The steam leaves through this end. Three holes are drilled for the stream to exit from. The bottom hole is drilled right at the floor level of the box in order to allow any water that condenses in the box to drain out.

In the steam box, the skis will rest on little blocks as shown here to allow steam to circulate around the skis.

For steaming I use a large aluminum pot over a propane burner. It is about a 7 gallon pot, and I filled it half full with water, which was about half gone after an hour and a half of boiling.

Here are the skis carefully placed on the spacer blocks in the steam box.

Have a fire extinguisher at the ready for safety. Once the boiler reached a boil I added spring clamps on the lid to keep it down tight.

The skis are steaming in the box. The garage door to the left is open for ventilation. The mould is nearby ready to accept the steamed skis.

Steam exiting the far end of the box. The box is at a very slight angle, with the exit end slightly lower than the steam entry end, which allows condensed water to run down and drain our the lower hole in the exit end of the box.

After an hour and a half I put on thick leather gloves (the skis are way to hot to touch), and removed the skis from the box. I quickly set them in the mould as shown, and everything went well. I will leave them in the mould for a couple days.

Here are the skis after being removed from the mould.

Pine tar from local farm store. Pine tar is used on horse hooves for something, I think, not sure, but I do know that this is 100% pine tar.

100% pine tar; I used this to treat my wooden skis.

I have a small non-stick pan for workshop purposes, and I used it to liquify the pine tar. The pine tar is a thick, sticky, paste, which must be heated in order to make it liquid enough to brush onto the wood. Heat it just enough to melt it, then brush it on the ski.

Tools for applying pine tar to skis. brush, gloves, heat-gun (or propane torch), pot to heat the pine tar in, and a bunch of clean cotton rags.

The ski on the left has had the pine tar applied and rubbed off, the ski on the right has had the pine tar applied but not heated and rubbed off.

Here are the skis, flipped over, ready to tar the bottoms.

I hand drew the tool shape, cut them out, and sanded all the edges round so that they will not scrape or ding the ski surface.

Here you can see that each will make a scribe line at a different distance from the edge of the ski. The steel nail point made too narrow a line, so I filed the points to get a wider scribe line.

I marked them 1, 2, 3 (outside line, middle line, inside line) and drilled holes in the handles so that I can tie them all together with a twine lanyard when I'm done (so that they don't go missing).

Scribing the middle line into the ski top. The tool must be held firmly to keep the point from drifting with the grain. Hold the tool fence-edge firming against the edge of the ski. Don't push too hard down and over gouge the ski.

All three lines carved into the ski top.

I wanted the letters to be at the tip of the ski, so to ensure that there was a solid surface to pound the stamps on, I tilted the ski up so that the tip was parallel with the table.

That is a small hardened steel letter stamp, which can be pounded into wood or metal.

My lettering finished. I pounded the "A" and the "L" too hard and the entire circular face of the die made an imprint on the wood. All told, I am still happy with the outcome.

I liked the stamped letter, but I wanted more contrast so I used a very fine paint brush to apply black enamel to the letters.

In this photo you can see the ski is balanced and horizontal. I am lifting it from the center-of-gravity.

The long line to the left in the photo is the center of gravity of the ski. Here I am marking the location where the 3-pins will be located = 3/4" (19mm) forward of the center of gravity.

This is the Voile template. I have cut out the diamond shaped opening in the template with a razor blade. I measured and centered the template and then taped it in place. Then I used a sharp punch to mark the binding hole locations on the ski.

9/64" drill bit. You will want to be very careful not to drill the hole too deep. It would be especially unfortunate to drill the hole all the way through the bottom of your ski. I used a piece of tape on the drill bit to mark the exact depth needed for the screw that was provided by Voile.

Then drill the mounting holes carefully.

There is a different LEFT FOOT and RIGHT FOOT Voile HD Mountaineer 3 Pin Binding. The shape of the binding can be seen when you look at it from above, and it is clear which is right and left based on foot shape. The binding here is the left foot binding.

After filling the holes with epoxy I secured the bindings with the Posi Drive screws from Voile. I used a #3 Philips screwdriver which bit the screw very well. I was not going to go buy a posi drive screw driver, and turned out I did not need one. I tightened the screws very tight, but did not strip them.

Here are the Voile HD Mountaineer toe bindings mounted on solid wood skis.

With the toe binding mounted, clip your boot into it so that you can locate the proper position of the heel plate for your particular binding and boot. Here you can see the template for the toe plate under my boot.

As with the toe-piece, tape the template in place and mark the hole locations with a punch.

Here are the components of the heel plate of the binding. In the middle is the heel plate, to the right is the climbing bar and to the left is a plastic shim which is mounted on the ski-top to protect the ski-top from the abrasive rotation of the climbing bar.

Here is the climbing bar clipped into the heel plate.

Here is the heel-plate assembly with the base plate shown under the heel plate and the climbing bar.

The bindings from Voile come with these plugs to fill the countersink holes in the heel plate. After the screws are tight in the heel plate, press these plugs into the holes over the screw-heads.

I also opted to apply the anti-ice tape from Voile to the toe pieces of the bindings.

Completed Voile HD Mountaineer 3 Pin Binding installed on solid wood skis.

Bamboo poles, well aged, made by Nordic, bought on Ebay…$15.

Handmade Traditional Wooden Skis

Hand carved tips of traditional Norwegian style wood skis

Wooden Nordic Skis with Voile HD Mountaineer Bindings

Skiing on my homemade traditional wooden skis; Wisconsin, USA.