Telemark Talk / Telemark Tips Forum

I'm looking for the best way to repair a dent that bent the edge, de-laminated a bit, and deformed the base (see pic). These are my rock skis so it does not have to be pretty, just want to get a couple more seasons out of them. I'm thinking of heating with a heat gun and pounding it as flat as possible, epoxying, then grinding out any remaining bulge.

Any advice on better methods?
TY in advance.

That seems like a decent plan. At least if it doesn't work, you're no worse off. Getting the ski flat should be pretty easy, but I don't think you'll get rid of that lateral indentation. As you point out, it'll probably be good enough for rock skis.

It's a little hard to get the full view from the photo angle, but I agree you're on the right track. Clean up the exposed core stuff, get the edge back as best you can; then some good slow set epoxy, and clamp in place. Maybe something rigged to compress from top to bottom and from the side.

The problem with a bend like that is that the metal stretched so it is longer than it was. It can't be hammered flat without somehow pushing the metal back into itself. That's basically what forging does. I have to think that any pounding will damage the other ski materials without significantly flattening that hump. But I wouldn't heat it. I see no point in doing that. Raising the temperature of the steel enough to make a difference in ductility will have the wood and plastic parts of the ski on fire.

This is what I'd do.

Clamp the ski firmly to some rigid structure. Try to remove all the camber so that the ski is lying flat. I'm not sure if it would be better for the surface to be hard or maybe, with a slight give. Like a rubber sheet or some soft wood like pine.

Get a chisel with maybe a 1/2" wide tip. Not a sharp wood chisel but a blunt chisel, like you might use on rocks. Start at the edge of the bend, with say, 2/3 of the chisel not on the bend and 1/3 of the chisel on the bend. I have one of these and this is what I though of immediately: https://www.acehardware.com/departments ... lsrc=aw.ds. Any hardware store will have something similar to this.

Tap the chisel end with a hammer, starting lightly and getting harder until it seems to be doing something. You're not only trying to straighten it, you're experimenting with how hard you have to hit it. I think if the chisel impulse pushes the steel just past flat (the reason for a rubber or wood top) it might spring back to flat.

Move along the bend a little at a time, slowly removing the curve. Don't try to take it all out at once. You should be able to figure out how hard you have to hit it to take out a little bend at a time.

It might be possible to get it perfectly flat by pushing the bend past flat, since flat may be impossible. But it might push just past flat. Then, you can probably file it flush. The edge would be thinner at that point but it probably wouldn't affect the way the ski handles.

You can then fill any gaps on top with an epoxy. Clamp it together then remove the excess when it cures.

I would imagine you could scrape of cut out the delaminated parts of the PTEX base and then drip a repair stick into that void. Sand/scrape flat, wax it, take it out to hit more rocks!

Experimenting and adjusting along the way, I think some version of this will work.

Thx for the tips JohnSKepler. Tapping from the inside with a chisel (or closest thing I could find) got the kink out of the edge, or close enough. I'm not going to bother p-texing the dents, they're rock skis.

I'm wondering if JB Weld is good enough or I should get some marine epoxy?