Vintage/Wooden Ski Question

[JayB]

So I was riding home tonight, and noticed three pairs of laminated wooden skis sitting outside - awaiting their doom amidst a pile of junk on the curb. I stopped and took a closer look, and quickly decided that I should rescue them from such an ignominious fate.

 

All three pairs are fully wooden - wooden bases, wooden edges, and all have simple cable/spring bindings. My hunch is that they were manufactured sometime between 1940 and 1960, but I haven't been able to find much information on the manufacturers. After snooping around a bit on the internet, I've become quite curious about their history, and if anyone out there knows of a good resource for figuring out when vintage skis were made and by whom, I'd really appreciate the help.

 

I think that I may try to do a bit of restoration on at least one pair so that I can use them myself, and give the others away to friends or family - so at least they die in service, or get preserved on someone's wall instead of rotting away in a landfill.

 

More Info:

 

Pair#1: Splitkine "Super," skis with Tempo "Loipe" cable bindings.

 

Pair #2: Bonna "Model 2000: skis with "GressHoppa" cable bindings.

 

Pair#3: Norge Ski "Tur Model" with "Tempo" cable bindings. Says "Trysil Knut" at the top and "Hickory Sale" at the bottom.

[cj001f]

I'd guess the Bonnas at least are 70's vintage, some of the others may be as well. Downhill oriented skis got metal edges in the 30s/40s, touring oriented skis still haven't. XC skiing had a huge head of steam in the 70's. Thousands of XC skiiers in Yosemite - they banned snowmobiles partly for public safety. It wasn't until late in the decade that fiberglass took over, there are quite a few wooden skis still floating around, including my parents garage. Fun to ski. "Tur Model" is a touring ski, "hickory sal" is a hickory sole. You probably saw this website before:

www.woodenskis.com ; I can try and dig up what I have buried. I might be interested; I also have a pair of Abercrombie & Fitch skis to resuce. How times have changed.

[JayB]

I think that you are probably right about the vintage. I was thinking in terms of downhill ski technology-chronology, and these are clearly XC/Touring skis.

 

I didn't realize that fully-wooden skis were the standard for so long in the XC realm - that's kind of cool. My family picked up XC skiing in the late 70's, and the gear was pretty-much all fiberglass by then, but we did have some bamboo poles.

 

Unfortunately, it looks like the previous owner must have stored these in a shed or something, with the tails in contact with the soil, so there's some damage to the wood there. I think that most of them could be restored well enough to use though - I'll have to look into how to do that properly.

 

I'm probably going to hang onto at least one pair, and check with friends and family to see if they want a pair. If there's still a pair or two left over, I'd be willing to send someone a pair for the price of shipping from the East Coast.

 

Since I'm not looking to turn a profit, the offer is limited to people who are interested in restoring the skis and/or hanging onto them for personal use or enjoyment. If there's more interest than skis, longtime posters get priority.

 

Left to rigth: Bonna, Splitkein, Norge-Ski.

 

 

[Billygoat]

I don't know shit, but they look set u for more than XC. Those bindings on the Splitkein's and Norge's have the same throw as Voiles from late '80s - 90's. If they were from the sixties and seventies and set up for XC I would think that they would have three pin bindings.

 

They may be older. nice find, good save

[snoboy]

I'm guessing 70's, they aren't that far off what I started XC skiing on in the late 70's early 80's. The bindings might date them back a bit earlier though...

[Jim]

Jay-

 

Check out this site for historical ski information. You can email in questions also.

 

http://www.woodenskis.com/index.html

 

I can't believe someone just tossed these! Fine woodworking also had some tips on wooden ski restoration a while back.

 

Two articles about building cross-country skis that were published in Fine Wood Working Magazine are avalible in a book called Fine Wood Working on Bending Wood. This is avalible from Taunton Press. The first article is Cross-Country Skis, the Easy Way by George Mustoe, and, indeed, it is an easy way. The second article is Cross-Country Skis, Norwegian Style by Richard Starr. This article seems slightly more complicated, but still do-able for a woodworker with even moderate skill.

[robert_Nielsen]

Yup, those are keepers, if you like fine pieces of woodwork. the bindings look like ABC's.

I started skiing in '72 on a pair of Asgne Tur skis, and I can almost smell the pine tar. You can still buy pine tar from Jamestown Distributers, where they keep it in stock for wooden boaties.

But I'll tell ya, if you don't want to ski on those things ( and really, getting the pine tar and wax done right is a chore! Not to mention the "wooden" performance) you can always use 'em for great furniture. I've been using wood skis for chair backs for awhile, as a wood worker.

While at Evergreen I used one of the above mentioned articles to build my own skis. Spruce inners with hickory tops and bottoms.

those of yours are classic beauties, to be sure. don't think I'd go out in my backyard ( big backyard ) with them anymore though, andy more than I'd go back to using my Trucker Mountain Lights.

cheers bob