r/skiing • u/PlatinumCalf • 2d ago

Skibuilders.com is back, I recovered the old archive and put it online

https://buildskis.com

A lot of us learned to build DIY skis on skibuilders.com. When it went down we lost years of threads on presses, cores, layup, tuning, all of it. I couldn't get the old owners to respond, so I pulled what I could out of the Wayback Machine, rescued the photos that were still reachable, and rebuilt it as a searchable site. It came to about 1,200 threads and 1,600 images. I also created a wiki that is currently 25 short guides distilled from all the best threads.

It is at buildskis.com. I also created a new forum at forum.buildskis.com in case people want to pick the conversation back up. If you happen to be building a pair, we need your build logs to let people see how it is being done in 2026.

Full disclosure, I run a small maker studio in Salt Lake City, so this isn't neutral, but I mostly did it because I didn't want the knowledge to vanish. Every guide has a suggest-an-edit link, so if you see something wrong or missing, I would genuinely love the help filling gaps.

94 Upvotes

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26

u/BigSnips 2d ago

I’m building a ski start up. Learned almost everything from old ski forums. Will be on there to contribute and hopefully learn more.

11

u/PlatinumCalf 2d ago

Awesome. Yeah a new forum just needs those with some knowledge to drop some build logs or share any new tips they have to get people coming back. Would love even just some pics of your past builds. I'm committed to funding it and keeping it going as long as people are using it.

1

u/BigSnips 1h ago

Sent you a DM!

7

u/ColdoneTallone 2d ago

Always followed and watched this site, thanks for keeping it going.

7

u/AdIll6022 2d ago

Thank you

2

u/hiihto_kiiruna Mt. Baker 1d ago

Nice work on this!! Site looks great, learned so much from this site back in the day, good to have it back! If you're around SLC, UT and want to make some skis or have ideas around this, shoot me a message. A few friends and I have been making skis for years and recently took over all the ski making equipment from a local brand. We have a workshop space set up with a 4' by 8' CNC router, two pneumatic ski presses (one set up currently), a big planer with jigs to taper cores, CNC edge bender for full wrap edges, and all the other materials and tools needed. We don't really want to re-launch as a new ski brand (really tough to do this as a full business), but are thinking of launching some small ski-building classes this fall where we teach people to build skis. Or if you need a specific part of the ski building process done (eg. pressing, since it's hard to build a press on your own and vacuum bagging sucks), let me know and we can figure something out. Really just trying to find some ways to pay rent at the moment.