Best of British

Custom skis, made in Islington

IF JAMES MECHIE had to describe his workshop in one word, he’d go for ‘quirky’. Located on a busy high street in Islington, in the basement of an old London bus factory, the only entrance is via a ladder from street level. With no windows and patchy phone signal, Mechie often finds himself lost in his work: handcrafting skis. ‘It’s easy to not realise it’s gone dark,’ he says.

Raised in a family of medics, Mechie, now 28, had planned to study medicine at university but changed his mind after a stint working in Les Deux Alpes, France, in 2008. ‘There was a snowboard called the Skate Banana that lots of people had: some people loved it and some didn’t like it at all. I started thinking about how I’d adjust it for each person – which led to me deciding to study industrial design and engineering.’

In 2013 he founded Nix Snow Co, selling his first pairs of customdesigned skis to friends and family, and he has since branched out to snowboards. Each set of skis, which cost from £795, takes roughly three weeks to make. His most popular model is the Sentinel 105, an all-mountain ski with a curved shape that makes it easier to change direction at speed. ‘It’s nimble enough to ski in-between trees,’ he says.

To make a ski, Mechie creates a computer-generated model, tailored to the customer, and inputs it into a machine that cuts the materials. The core of the ski is made of bamboo (‘with a very straight grain, which means you get a uniform flex’), the edges are steel, and other materials include carbon fibre and fibreglass. These are layered up, then the graphics, which are designed by Mechie and printed on to a nylon sheet, are put on top. The ski is bonded together using a special type of press, which ‘cures’ it for 90 minutes at a high temperature. ‘It’s called a sandwich construction because you start with the base and then layer it up with different fibres,’ explains Mechie.

After being left to settle for a day, the skis are cut into shape, then ground (to remove rough edges) and waxed, scraped and polished – Mechie explains that he uses a hot wax rather than cold, as this opens up the pores of the material, allowing the wax to sink in.

Outside the workshop, Mechie’s hobby is, unsurprisingly, skiing. ‘For me, there’s a particular feeling you get when you’re in the mountains with clean fresh air and amazing views,’ he says. ‘It’s really liberating.’ nixsnowsports.com

Above James Mechie in his north London workshop.

Right The core of the skis is made of bamboo; the edges are steel. Interview by Jessica Carpani. Photographs by Maxwell Anderson