Best thing I learned at Ski Tech Class

[bossass]

For new skis or snowboards: To protect and get the best performance from your new gear you need to wax. Alot. Before you use it. Do this 5 or 6 times: hot scrape. Iron in wax and scrape if off right away. Repeat. Use warm temp. (soft) wax. When you are done you can wax for conditions. The repeated hot scraping will fill all the pores in your new bases. the wax will bond with the P-tex way down deep. Your wax will last longer. 2 to 3 days instead of half a day with just one hot wax off the shelf. Think of it like curing a cast iron skillet. World cup racers (well, their techs) do this like twenty times before they even use a ski. If you have the time you will benefit from fast ass sticks. Note: a base-sand or stone grind will erase all this and you'll have to do it again. Of course if you really don't care you don't have to do any of this.

When you do the final wax make sure to let the wax cool fully (2 hours is good) before you scrape it.

If you can find a shop with a hot box they can do this for you in one day or so. A hot box is a ply wood coffin lined with that reflective foam. It has lamps inside and when turned on gets to be like 175 degrees or so. You iron in the wax, don't scrape and put 'er in the oven. The wax seeps into the pores in the base material. 45 minutes later and you'll be 20 hot scrapes ahead of the field. I don't know what you'd get charged for this, but 15-20 bucks would be worth it I think.

If you have any other questions on tuning/waxing stuff feel free to ask. I'm by no means an expert, but I'm good at regurgitating what an expert told me. The guy I learned from helped develop the newest tuning machines made by Wintersteiger. One tip I can give you is this: Take time to find a good shop. Find a tech with tons of experience. I think 75 percent of techs tuning skis either don't know what they are doing, weren't trained properly or don't care all that much. Stoke out a good tech with some beer or green and they will treat your gear like their own.

[seldon]

The real question is whether or not to scrape the boards before skiing them - after all its just "polishing the brass at the hotel vancouver. LOL!!! "

[trainnvain]

Stoke out a good tech with some beer or green and they will treat your gear like their own.

Just reiterating the important stuff.

Oh yeah, Hotboxing works wonders for the bases.

[Nate Dogg]

Obviously I'm not in the know ...never seen a hotbox around my local shops, which is where I frequent....anyone have any idea how prevalent they are, or the cost of the treatment??

By the way, thanks for sharing the wealth bossass, good information to know if I ever get off my lazy ass, assuming my lazy ass doesn't find a hotbox before then

[crashnburn'd]

Obviously I'm not in the know

Me neither

[13]

It'd be nice if wax wasn't so friggin' expensive.

The hotbox idea makes sense, but won't the heat affect the materials holding the ski together?

[gravitylover]

I just bought all the stuff yesterday for a hot box in my shop. We'll build it next week and I'll let you know how it works out. If it's as good as I think it's going to be I'll put the drawings on here for everybody to copy. I'd stay away from the heat lamps though as they will create hot spots not an even heat. You should probably use a ceramic heater on one end with vents on the other.

[ulty_guy]

The hotbox idea makes sense, but won't the heat affect the materials holding the ski together?

i wonder if my crossmax snowler blades will fit in my oven.

[schuss]

yep, that was what my buddy (used to be tune manager for SR, now is the wintersteiger west coast rep I think) told me about ski tuning. "fuck everything else, just make sure you wax it before every time you ski". Better performance and protects your bases a lot better.

[72Twenty]

We built a hot box at my old shop, but we used too-high of powered heat lamps and cooked a ski. It became our pizza oven after that. It worked wonders on day-old pizza. I think we had a little too much green from certain customers when we decided to build it.

[Below Zero]

Good Post. Good to know because I will be buying new skis soon.

[72Twenty]

Speaking of wax...

Wat brands do you guys use? My supply is critically low, so I am going to buy some more. I buy it in large quantities because my garage has become a shop for my friends as well. I usually just stick to all-temp wax. I have been using bulk Toko all temp.

Any suggestions?

[jonski]

Been using Dominator temperature specific. Runs pretty well.

I top it off with zardoz in the real warm, sloppy stuff and that helps a bit too.

Heard a few people reckon that Zardoz straight on the base isn't a good idea though, as it seems to dry the base out quicker, but on top of a wax I find its fine.

Toko stuff is good though, and also never had probs with Swix. I tried a bunch of different stuff out a few years back and thats what seemed to work.

RED (Burton), One Ball Jay, and some other stuff I can't remember all worked but nothing special.

But get the right temp mix and your away - little more work if you have to change wax after only a day, but worth it.

[13]

Wax every time before you ski?!

F that.

[Duker]

Toko is what we primarly use at the shop I work at. We did experiement with poorboy wax for a while last year, not sure if it worked any better but good heavens It smelled good. Definatley worth it just for the party in your nose.

[Below Zero]

Speaking of wax...

Wat brands do you guys use? My supply is critically low, so I am going to buy some more. I buy it in large quantities because my garage has become a shop for my friends as well. I usually just stick to all-temp wax. I have been using bulk Toko all temp.

Any suggestions?

For a recreational skier, I think that having a cold and warm wax is just fine. I found some cheap sticks of Holmenkol at Tognar for $4.99 for 105 gram pack. Works for me, but to be honest with I can't tell the difference.

And 13 - why not wax everytime before you ski? - it doesn't take that long and you will obviosly glide better and waste less energy!

[bossass]

I was a bit worried about the hotbox cooking my skis too, but apparently it's fine if it is not hotter than 175. The hotbox at my shop isn't insulated quite well enough, so it's like 140. We just leave the ski in longer to compensate.

For the hot scraping before you take your new sticks out, or for hot-boxing, you can just use the cheapest warm wax you can find. Anything will do really. Sometimes shops sell unwrapped shop wax for like a buck a bar. Five or six hot scrapes should cost about 5 bucks in wax. A shop might sell you some shop wax in bulk if you ask nicely too. See if you can find some in bulk on ebay or something.

Here's a great trick to conserve wax I found out. Instead of dripping it on the bases, then spreading it out do this: Press the bar of wax against the iron for a second or two. Then rub the end you just pressed to the iron on the ski. It's like spreading around that pasty glue from a glue stick, you know the kind you used in elementary school to glue constuction paper. Repeat until the whole ski is covered. Then just iron in that layer. You end up using probably half the wax of dripping and since you spead it around before you iron, you get complete coverage. "We need total coverage!"

Make sure your iron is on the lowest setting it can be while still melting the wax. If you see the wax on the iron smoking, it is too hot. Turn it down and let it sit before you proceed. Too much heat burns and smokes away most of the best properties of the wax.

[gonzo]

Good stuff dudes.

Any pearls of wisdom re: edges? I can get the job done, but feel like a small child wandering into a conversation sometimes...not really sure of myself...confusion...nausea...dizziness...

[bossass]

IMPORTANT:

When scraping wax pull or push the scraper across the ski like you are spreading butter. So, if you are going tip to tail the scraper should be at a 45 degree angle leaning towards the tail. The other method scraping is like scraping ice off your windshield. This is bad for the bases and people only do because it's faster. It churns up the wax on the base and more often then not takes the base material along with it. The recommended way pushes the wax down into the base while scraping it off. It takes a bit longer, but is way easier on the base material. Use your thumbs to bend the scraper just a bit to get those areas that are hardest scrape off, like the near the edges and at the tip and tail. You want to remove as much wax as you can.

[Magoo]

More waxing info than you'll ever need (and hotbox plans):
TOGNAR

[FNG]

We had a hot-box at my old shop as well. I'll definitely second that bit about reheating pizza. We mostly used it to warm up the skis of gapers who came in asking "Why won't my skis slide?". It also seemed to help the epoxy cure on delams.

As for wax, I use 3 temps of basic Swix CH. Sometimes I put some flouro on too if I'm burning groomers.

[PacRimRider1]

Definatley worth it just for the party in your nose.

Reasoning like that is why aliens are currently living in my refridgerator.

[Darkside]

Haven't used it yet, but the techs at my shop love the Poorboys wax.

[mtbakerskier]

Another tip: Folow the hot box deal with cycle waxing. This can only be done if you have an on mountian access to a place to wax and scape. ski one run at a time skiing as fast as you can, followed by an imediate hotwax, do not scape reapeat 4-5 times. After this your skis will be defintly dialed in. The idea is that the prolonged aplied friction from multiple fast runs forces the wax deeper into the ski.

Other tips after hotwaxing besure to cork and brush your bases.

[72Twenty]

Sometimes I throw on a little Zardoz at lunch too.