[homemade] ski vises.

So I knew our skis needed a fresh waxing when J and I went skiing on Rainier this past weekend. Trouble is ... I didn't want to plunk down eighty bucks or whatever for a pair of ski vises. And I had a couple of scraps of 4x4 from the porch balusters I built a few years ago.

I figured they'd make a fine pair of ski vises ... so off to crafting I went.

The 4x4 scraps were already a good height (about a foot) but they needed to be able to be secured to the bench top so I whacked off a 1x4 about a foot long and screwed the 4x4s to the end of them (so I could clamp down the 1x4s and secure the 'vises' to the edge of the bench). That was the easy part.

But I needed to have them also hold a pair of skis vertically in order to be able to file the edges. No worries. I figured a 15º angle offset would be perfect - so I dialed the table saw to 75º and went to notching the posts for a 3/4" gap (I made the notches parallel to the sides of the post because the camber of the skis would bend them slightly into the notches and hold them tight - or so was my thinking) -

Once they were notched on the table saw I just had to take a chisel to the slices -

And ... done -

I happened to have some cabinet shelf liner stuff leftover that was pretty tacky that I thought would hold the skis when flipped upside down while waxing (or right side up while adjusting the bindings etc.) -

And ... boom!

But the real beauty were the vertical notches for edging. I cut a few extra scraps of the shelf liner to wedge into them and then tested -

It worked! And wallah - ski vises from scrap 4x4s ha!

Now ... if only it were November and the powder was on its way ... but our skis are freshly waxed (thanks to a $3 yard sale iron - definitely no need for a fancy ski iron either) for - uhh - summer skiing (no no I'm serious - I'm skiing every month this year - and next year ... and next etc. - apparently there are people who can count over a hundred months straight of skiing - now that's legit!).

(one of the ugly cabinets that was hanging up in the garage that we cleaned up and spray painted - then stickered away with the ski theme cos it's now our über-cool ski cabinet).