Thread: Removing skin glue from ski bases?

Hello!

I managed to leave my ski mountaineering skis in a black box all summer long, with skins on. Needless to say, a lot of the glue is now on the bases (and I may have to retouch the skins' glue, yikes).

I am thinking a good old hot scraping should work but don't want to end up with a glued iron either. What do people do? I'd like to avoid using solvents since they dry bases quite a lot.

drC - Fumbler

I use the orange clean degreaser to clean pine tar off of my bases, and as long as you're using the brand name stuff, it doesn't dry the bases very much. Try it out on a small section near the tails.

what he said - Citra-Solv won't damage the bases, but once you've gotten all the glue and degreaser off, you'll probably need to wax

I tried some of that citrus stuff and it didn't do shit.

Acetone, isopropanol or heat (iron with the paper bag deal), didn't work either.

Coleman white gas worked like a charm, though.

Bases needed waxing something fierce after that.

This was from glue peeling off BD/Ascension standard STS skins, though I'm pretty sure it was from one of the bad glue batches.

Related question: at the end of the season I dropped one of my skins into a pile of hay, sticky side down. Now there is all kinds of grass/hay/greenery stuck to the skins. And some scraps of plastic grocery bags.

All of these items tear very easily, making them near impossible to remove. Any ideas?

I did the same thing last summer.

I used a citrus solvent and two hot scrapes. They were fine.


Particle...........tweezers? hee hee

Brown paper grocery bag between iron and ski base. Get base hot with iron. Scrape with metal scraper. Same process for skins. Should do the trick.

Originally Posted by Kya

Brown paper grocery bag between iron and ski base. Get base hot with iron. Scrape with metal scraper. Same process for skins. Should do the trick.

listen to the man. he is wise beyond his years.

I'll try the paper bag. Thanks mangs. Particle, time to reglue?

Thirded on the brown paper bag. Newspaper works too.

Particle-you're going to be regluing your skins.

paper bag 4rth, or better yet- skiing about fifty feet on man-made or refrozen spring snow will do the trick too.
Citrus degreasers leave an oily film on the base, and any kind of harsh chemical is not good for you or your bases.

Originally Posted by H-wood

paper bag 4rth, or better yet- skiing about fifty feet on man-made or refrozen spring snow will do the trick too.

Maybe, maybe not. As I said above, the iron/paper bag trick was pretty much useless in my situation. I went through several bags and got some of the shit off, but plenty remained, YMMV. And I'd already skied through a shit-ton of refrozen the day before I removed the glue goobers from the bases.

Originally Posted by H-wood

Citrus degreasers leave an oily film on the base, and any kind of harsh chemical is not good for you or your bases.

I'm wondering how bad solvents actually are, whether they do permanent damage or just dry out the bases. Does anybody know for certain how the chemmistry works? I'm curious.

Originally Posted by Tri-Ungulate

I'm wondering how bad solvents actually are, whether they do permanent
damage or just dry out the bases. Does anybody know for certain how the
chemmistry works? I'm curious.

Tri-U, I can't give you the stochiometrically-correct answer that you
seek, but I can say that I've used nothing but Coleman fluid to clean
my bases (skin glue, wax, whatever) for years.

As far as the long term safety of doing so goes, I can't say. I'm a gear
whore, so it's rare for me to ski a pair of skis more that 3 or 4 years.

In those timeframes, I still haven't noticed any bad effects from using
it.

cheers,
john

Brown paper bag: it rocks! I had 5 minutes and did one ski and trust me there was a lot of glue there; it just got off so easily when warm. I'll come back to it and will finish with a couple hot scrapes. Sweet. Thanks for the advice.

For those who care, the glue is from BD Ascension Clipfix skins from 3 years ago. Other glues may give you different levels of trouble.

drC

Here's what works for lots of clumps of old skin glue from skins that were left on over the summer:

Use the brown paper and iron to get the major part of the glue off, and heat the ski base to facilitate the next step.

While still hot, wipe the remainder off the base with varsol and a shop towel. The still warm glue is now easily dissolved by the varsol.

Use the citrus cleaner to remove the varsol residue.

Use the new style glass cleaners like 'invisible glass' to remove the citrus cleaner residue.

Now you can reapply your base wax if that's what you normally do, or leave the base as-is.

Originally Posted by Tri-Ungulate

Coleman white gas worked like a charm

This worked for me! Considering the skis with glue on them, have countless days and should be retired, I didn't think twice about doing harm to them.

Thanks all for the info

Originally Posted by Particle

Related question: at the end of the season I dropped one of my skins into a pile of hay, sticky side down. Now there is all kinds of grass/hay/greenery stuck to the skins. And some scraps of plastic grocery bags.

All of these items tear very easily, making them near impossible to remove. Any ideas?

A heat gun with scraper but you will have to take off the glue and reapply. I do this with a heat gun and scraper. This is by far the easiest way to remove and reapply the glue. Once you heat up the glue with the heat gun it is really easy to take off or put on.

If you don't have a heat gun get you can get one online for $20 or less. They will cost you $50 at the hardware store.

MEK

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