About five years ago Toby Winkler, now of Bethel, was reading about a process to manufacture skis.

A marine engineer and graduate of Maine Maritime Academy, and a lifelong woodworker and tinkerer, Winkler said, “I could do that.”

And when his friends laughed at him, he said, “It sparked me.”

Winkler, 30, didn’t proceed with caution.

“I ran my skis through a table saw to see how they were built,” he said.

His younger cousin, Jake Bracy, 24, “jumped in the deep end. He cut up his skis, too,” Winkler said.

Bracy is also a marine engineer and like his cousin, graduated from Maine Maritime Academy. He was just out of high school when they began experimenting with ski-making.

They are from Standish and York, respectively, and grew up skiing at Sunday River ski resort in Newry.

Years of college and many trips to sea later, the two are living in Bethel and honing their manufacturing technique to put YOPP Clandestine Skis into commercial production within the next year.

“We moved up here to really go at this thing,” Winkler said. They work on building their business when they are home from Merchant Marine duty.

The unusual name of the company is an acronym for “Ye Olde Perkins Place,” a family property in Cape Neddick where their great-grandfather built wood products.

As they experimented over the years, the young engineers designed and built their own ski press to join the ski layers together. They employed a computer numerically controlled router to cut out the shape.

Their aim has been to design all-purpose skis with an ample width in the middle, or “waist.”

“The skis are recreational, not competition,” said Bracy, who likes to freestyle ski. Their skis, he said, “can bomb down groomed trails at Sunday River, or do Tuckerman’s Ravine on Mount Washington.”

Winkler said the skis are tough and forgiving. “I’m a big guy, and I’m not easy on skis,” he said.

The skis differ from most mainstream ones in that they have a very high-pressure laminated wood core, which is made in-house from locally sourced cabinet grade wood.

“Most skis have lower grade wooden cores and more resin and glue, to keep costs down,” Bracy said.

The top “sheet” of the ski is a thin layer of tiger maple, which shows up as a horizontal grain. After meticulous sanding of the finished skis, Bracy does the graphics, which he can tailor to the client’s preferences.

“Due to our low volume, almost every ski we build is a custom ski on some level,” said Winkler. “We take into account the type of skiing, (alpine-touring, park, all-mountain), the type and size of the skier. Then we modify the ski characteristics based on that information and or the skier’s wishes.”

They even hope to involve some customers in the creation of their own skis.

“We love sharing the excitement of building,” Winkler said. “Seriously, riding the skis you built is an incredible feeling. One of the goals we are working toward includes for everyone to ‘lay up’ their own skis if they are so inclined. Obviously, that has its own challenges, but we hope to make that happen sooner rather than later.”

They plan to offer three basic types of skis: a men’s traditional camber, a men’s semi-rocker and a ladies’ semi-rocker.

Camber is a particular shape of a ski as seen from the side. It rests on its tip and tail while the middle section arcs upward. Rocker describes an opposite design.

Now, Bracy said, they are distributing tester skis to friends and local skiers to get feedback.

“We hope to get the locals to get in a lot of runs on them,” he said.

They have not yet settled on a price range for the skis. They are also not sure yet if they will focus more on online sales or face-to-face.

“Online is easier, but it’s nice to get facetime, and find out what kind of ski the skier wants,” Bracy said.

Aside from the YOPP acronym, the men are also frequently asked about the “clandestine” portion of the company name.

“When we first started building them, we were keeping quiet about it,” Winkler said. “People thought it was a clandestine operation, so we made it part of the name.”

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