Vacuum Pressed Skis, made in USA

Thought this article was interesting:

http://www.skinet.com/skiing/articles/delivering-us-dark-ages?

Ramp must be doing a full court press on the PR side.  I got a letter from them today.   I blasted off a note to ml (who knows way more about ski contruction that I do) and asked him about this method. He seemed to think that the vacuum process has been tried before with limited success.

RAMP Sports wrote

Harvey,

Wanted to reach out to you to introduce you to and tell you a little bit about RAMP Sports (www.Rampsports.com) They are a boutique ski manufacturer based in Park City that has set out to change the way skis are made. NO, really.

With their recently opened 10,000sq/ft Park City based facility they are bringing all their ski production back to the US from Taiwan.  To do so, they needed to utilize new technology and found the perfect match in a new vacuum form molding process from the aeronautics industry, currently being used to develop composite helicopter rotor blades.  
 
This will replace the need for expensive traditional presses which currently are the industry standard, who's technology has progressed little if at all in the past 4 decades. It will also allow for rapid prototyping, allowing for the design and testing of new ski shapes and materials at a rate once thought impossible in the industry.

"Vacuum bagging" has been standard procedure n the composites industry for many years, it is kind of surprising that ski builders have only just figured it out. Canoes have been built this way for a long time. The latest version of this technique is known as resin infusion, which allows the builder to lay out all the fibre before the resin is added, eliminating waste and allowing greater control over the process. Less fumes for the workers too.

Harvey -

Just to clarify, I didn't mean for my comment to come off so cynically. My understanding of the vacuum bag process has been through observation of sites like Skibuilders.com and 333 skis. Because the process is inherently a "limited" and small run compared to the  sample size compared to the volume of large scale ski manufacturers, I don't have a great deal of personal experience with it. If they have ironed out the process to be truly vertically integrated with a one day turn around, it could be a real revolution in the industry. I look forward to one day testing a ski made in this process to see how it holds up over time, and hopefully skiing on a few of the same model to see how consistent they are to each other vs. the traditional process.

I am 100 percent in favor of any system that allows me to recreate and utilize American made products, this is basically a key selling point to me as no "gear" is truly a necessity and I would prefer to keep my money on these shores unless I HAVE to own a product made somewhere else. (AWD 4 door cars for example)

Eh. Probably just a gimic. The process may make skis quicker and easier and make production in USA more viable and with less waste (cool) but is it really going to make the ski perform or last longer? "Dark Ages" is quite a statement that sounds more like hyperbole than reality. We'll see what these guys do. I don't mind innovation but they've set themselves up for failure already by over promising on the quality of their product by suggestions every other ski out there not using their process is in the "Dark Ages".

NSBSers will remember the cheerful video guy at Wildcat. He had Ramp Groundhogs, with the very cool woodpile graphics. I chatted with him about the skis and he seemed very happy with them as an all-round EC ski, FWIW.

Anybody who heats with wood will covet this ski, I know I do: