Franklin Tasmania man Ian Haley started making handmade alpine skis four years ago after realising there was an untapped niche market. Source: ABC News
A keen skier himself, Mr Haley one day found himself with extra time on his hands to devote to the research and the feasibility of putting together a ski made out of Tasmanian hardwoods.
Mr Haley started out with the ambitious plan to create something different to generically manufactured skis with the appeal being they could be customised for each person.
“Robotically made skis can produce robotic skiers,” Mr Haley said. “It’s a very niche market and even awareness that such things as handcrafted skis exist is low.
“You can probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of people that have done this seriously in the country.”
What started as a hobby soon turned serious when Mr Haley worked out that if he could make enough skis to sell to his family and a few close friends, he would break even financially.
“Handcrafting them is a little different to doing them with a robot but still it’s the same process [as a manufacturer],” he said.
Mr Haley felt that it was important to use Tasmanian wood for his skis because of the durability of the timber.
“You usually select a piece of wood to put in the middle of them and then you wrap them up with some sort of relatively high-tech composite material to make them stay in one piece and hope that some of the nice organic qualities of the wood that you put inside still shine through with the ride of the finished product,” he said.
Mr Haley mixes his skills in boatbuilding with skiing to understand how to use the best local resources available.
He said he ensured each piece of timber matched the rider. He also likes them to look attractive.
“We put timber veneers that you would normally expect to find in bits of fine furniture on top to make them look pretty,” he said.
The materials that Mr Haley uses to combine with Tasmanian hardwoods vary from fibreglass to carbon fibre, and he has been developing newer skis made from basalt as well.
“It’s a glass that is massively stronger than conventional glass and is black in colour so people confuse it with carbon fibre,” he said. “It has some unique qualities that are quite marvellous and very compatible with, particularly, the eucalypt hardwood timbers that we use in the middle.”
Mr Haley said there were all sorts of possibilities when creating wooden skis — you can combine factors of where the person skis, how they ski, and how their aspirations may differ to the way they currently ski.
“Somebody might be riding a ski that they quite like but then it won’t do something. They’re headed in a new direction of what they’d like to do and their equipment might be limiting their ability to do that,” he explained, and that’s when a handmade customised pair might be better.
