Benny Westcott
Fifteen Sweet Home High School juniors and seniors in Lindsey Haggas’ outdoor PE class went to the Santiam SnoLab at Hoodoo Ski Area over the last few weeks to design and build their own skis and snowboards.
The 15 students went in groups of five on three different school days.
Open since November of last year, the Santiam SnoLab allows skiers and riders to design and build their own skis or snowboards from scratch.
The project was funded through grants from the Linn-Benton Community College STEM CTE Hub and Sweet Home Community Foundation, as well as Measure 98 funds.
Students get to keep the equipment they design and build.
Participants, who are juniors and seniors, create their own graphic designs on a computer that they want transposed on their snowboard or skis, and then send it to Hank Gulledge, department manager for the Santiam SnoLab, who converts the graphic into a bigger physical form.
“They (the students and Gulledge) communicate back and forth to design it just how they want it to look,” said Haggas.
But the students don’t just hand off the responsibility of making their board or skis.
“They do it themselves,” Haggas said. “It’s more of an education workshop than it is ‘Here’s my money, build me a board.'”
“You have to do it yourself,” she said. “The students have done almost all of the work themselves. We did a little upfront work just to save some time, but if there’s an error on the board, it’s because they did something wrong.”
Haggas said she believes Sweet Home is the first school “that’s actually got to be up here and do this.”
Students begin by making the core of their boards. They pick out their performance specs.
“They decide how long they want it, how wide they want it, how they want it shaped,” Haggas said.
The high-schoolers learn about the performance of different types of snowboards.
They select their preferred camber and rocker, terms that describe the curve of a ski or snowboard when viewed from the side.
Haggas said those particular specs indicate “how much it’s going to bend underfoot. You want a stiffer board if you’ll be going really fast, and a softer board if you’re going to go in the park and stuff.”
Having decided specs, students created their core from an original piece of plywood using machinery at the SnoLab. They cut out their core from the plywood, laid down fiberglass and then rubbed their ski-sandwich with epoxy.
After a lunch break, the students mounted their skis on a metal shaping rack. They then vacuum sealed the materials and baked their concoction in a ski oven for an hour.
“This group of kids from Sweet Home have been highly engaged,” said Gulledge. “I’ve had all kinds of kids in here, and every single student that Mrs. Haggas has brought to me have been absolutely perfect workshop participants.”
Junior Alex Miller created skis with a retro ’80s wave design. He hasn’t skied in a few years, he said, so he’s looking forward to breaking out his new handcrafted equipment next season in outings with Sweet Home High School’s Ski Club.
He said he took the class because “I thought it was a good opportunity to make skis, and a new learning experience, to get custom-made handcrafted skis, and learn from the team here to get a design started.”
“I think it’s a really awesome opportunity and it’s really cool that we’re able to do this,” he said.
Miller said the process wasn’t too overwhelming.
“It’s been a pretty easygoing process. They guided us through a lot.”