DIY base grind with a belt sander?

[garyfromterrace]

Anybody done it? There's no stone grinder anywhere near me. I heard you could just wet your base and then use a fine grit on a belt sander and with some care can get an acceptable product.

I've some skis that I thrashed last season in the rockies and it would take me an eon to flat file the base edges to something acceptable. I know, I've tried.

[Eluder]

take pics!

[grinch]

Ive tried it but it wasnt great . Maybe i needed to give it more practice. On a ski tuner i like complete passes with even pressure. Its just more consistent and easier to not screw up.
I dont really do it often now though. I just p tex. Take the ptex down with a bastard file , scrape with a metal scraper. Wax and call it good. Rockies may require a poly patch or 3 before the ptex. I havent had to do that for years though. Praxis/on3p and this side of divide and its ptex once or twice a season. If i was base or edge high i might get a light base grind and a stone grind. I try to avoid grinding. Im not in any gates and ill save the thicckness. Even when i was in a shop i most often used the belt grinder on the ski tuner to just do my edges. Hit them between the detuned parts and gtg. Others are more particular. Maybe you want a grind though. In any case a bastard file takes the dripped ptex down pretty quick to the point you scrape with the metal scraper. Run the edge of the scraper on your belt sander to get the ski scraped flat faster. 1 beer/pair but moar is better


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[garyfromterrace]

Yo Grinch, I feel ya. But my problem is not so much with the bases as the base edges. They're thrashed. I tried flat filing and it will take way way too long. I figured I may give the belt sander a try as a last resort. I would much much prefer a stone grind but there isn't one within hours of me.

[Shorty_J]

Yo Grinch, I feel ya. But my problem is not so much with the bases as the base edges. They're thrashed. I tried flat filing and it will take way way too long. I figured I may give the belt sander a try as a last resort. I would much much prefer a stone grind but there isn't one within hours of me.

Alpinlord has a product that works on the ski visions tool but uses a file do most of the work.

Not sure if that's in your retirement budget or not?

If you want to try the belt sander I'd make sure you do it on a very low speed... I'd be worried about melting the base and if you do that you won't get any wax in there and I'd think it would be ruined.

Report back if you try it.

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[grinch]

Yo Grinch, I feel ya. But my problem is not so much with the bases as the base edges. They're thrashed. I tried flat filing and it will take way way too long. I figured I may give the belt sander a try as a last resort. I would much much prefer a stone grind but there isn't one within hours of me.

Oh ya thats a pain. Sorry i misunderstood the problem. Stone grind would be the ticket for sure. What about a file holder with the bastard file? Maybe thats what your using though. I wouldnt use a belt unless my base needed a grind as well. Maybe one of those little hand stones? You probably have one of those too. They take a bit of time too. Ive trained my self to not notice edge burrs. More work than training for ak considering ocd

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[bodywhomper]

Suggest looking at alpinoids skivision base structure tool and his new base flattening attachment if it fits your budget.

https://www.tetongravity.com/forums/...d.php?t=333166

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[ill-advised strategy]

If you do this, the better way is to secure the belt sander in your vice and move the ski over it....instead of vicing the ski and moving the sander by hand.

I had a Fontaine wet belt in my old ski shop and was able to do some very high quality tuning with it, but it took a lot of feel and practice to get it right, and getting it wrong was really bad. Generally 150 grit was good, but grinds were always terrible until the belt was very worn in, so I’d crank away on a new belt with junk skis for awhile before touching anything I cared about.

If you’re going to try it, I’d try it on a dumpster/thrift store ski first. If you’re getting good results and you’re confident, go for it. It’s not impossible, just risky.

[N1CK.]

Good new file + guide and do it by hand. Id think more could go wrong with the belt sander than the benefit of saving time.

[ill-advised strategy]

Also, are you sure there aren't any places to get a stone grind near you?

There's a phone app that will help you find a place, it's called Grindr. Just install it and see if anyone nearby wants to grind!

[galibier_numero_un]

Good new file + guide and do it by hand. Id think more could go wrong with the belt sander than the benefit of saving time.

^^^ x1000 ^^^

[Jong Lafitte]

Also, are you sure there aren't any places to get a stone grind near you?

There's a phone app that will help you find a place, it's called Grindr. Just install it and see if anyone nearby wants to grind!

[singlecross]

If you do this, the better way is to secure the belt sander in your vice and move the ski over it....instead of vicing the ski and moving the sander by hand.

I had a Fontaine wet belt in my old ski shop and was able to do some very high quality tuning with it, but it took a lot of feel and practice to get it right, and getting it wrong was really bad. Generally 150 grit was good, but grinds were always terrible until the belt was very worn in, so I’d crank away on a new belt with junk skis for awhile before touching anything I cared about.

If you’re going to try it, I’d try it on a dumpster/thrift store ski first. If you’re getting good results and you’re confident, go for it. It’s not impossible, just risky.

^^^ This, all of it. The problem I foresee at home is having a wide enough belt to cover the whole ski base and edge, and keeping the belt wet enough not to burn the base. Belts on the tuning machines spin pretty fast and have lots of water/ emulsion to cool and lubricate. Good luck.

[Ted Striker]

^^^ that's the first thing that popped into my mind too: it would be very difficult keeping it wet enough.

[old goat]

forgive me if I'm being obvious but before you can file your base edges you do have to get the base including the edges flat, otherwise your edges will be too far off the snow. Once the base is flat it shouldn't take long to reset the edge bevel with a file and guide.
I haven't belt sanded my skis but I'm very familiar with the damage a belt sander can do, even on a flat surface, and a ski is not a flat surface, what with camber and rocker. Getting the base completely flat from side to side without any gouges would be very hard IMO.
If you do try the sander has to cover wider than the ski--since 4 in is 101 mm you're probably talking about a stationary belt sander, not hand held.

[garyfromterrace]

Also, are you sure there aren't any places to get a stone grind near you?

There's a phone app that will help you find a place, it's called Grindr. Just install it and see if anyone nearby wants to grind!

So i figured I'd take your advice and try to find a grind in my area. Sure enough a large hairy man named Bruno is coming over to help me "tune up". He seems nice. But I'm a bit concerned that he wants me to dress in a bunny suit when I answer the door. The missus is once again suggesting that I spend too much time talking to my internet "friends".

If you do this, the better way is to secure the belt sander in your vice and move the ski over it....instead of vicing the ski and moving the sander by hand.

I had a Fontaine wet belt in my old ski shop and was able to do some very high quality tuning with it, but it took a lot of feel and practice to get it right, and getting it wrong was really bad. Generally 150 grit was good, but grinds were always terrible until the belt was very worn in, so I’d crank away on a new belt with junk skis for awhile before touching anything I cared about.

If you’re going to try it, I’d try it on a dumpster/thrift store ski first. If you’re getting good results and you’re confident, go for it. It’s not impossible, just risky.

I think I'd like to try this route. I have plenty of skis in various sheds that I can practice on.

So something I didn't add to this discourse is that I really don't need these skis to be race tuned for hard packed snow. We really don't get that much here and I have other skis in the quiver if things ever did get hard. I am very impressed with ski vision and alpinord's stuff however I don't want to buy new files and a bunch of gear and use it once. I don't race anymore and I really don't ski hard pack conditions on the ski hill. Sure I'll hit some refrozen mank occasionally touring but the skis I'd use for that actually still have edges.

^^^ that's the first thing that popped into my mind too: it would be very difficult keeping it wet enough.

^^^ This, all of it. The problem I foresee at home is having a wide enough belt to cover the whole ski base and edge, and keeping the belt wet enough not to burn the base. Belts on the tuning machines spin pretty fast and have lots of water/ emulsion to cool and lubricate. Good luck.

Wife continually spraying water on ski and sander?

forgive me if I'm being obvious but before you can file your base edges you do have to get the base including the edges flat, otherwise your edges will be too far off the snow. Once the base is flat it shouldn't take long to reset the edge bevel with a file and guide.
I haven't belt sanded my skis but I'm very familiar with the damage a belt sander can do, even on a flat surface, and a ski is not a flat surface, what with camber and rocker. Getting the base completely flat from side to side without any gouges would be very hard IMO.
If you do try the sander has to cover wider than the ski--since 4 in is 101 mm you're probably talking about a stationary belt sander, not hand held.

No, good point. The ski is 115 underfoot so the width of the sander could be an issue. As far as the edge angle though, I really do foresee only skiing softer snow with the skis I'm proposing to fix here. I know that sounds stupid to ski techie types but I really don't ski icy hardpack (where edge angle would matter.)

Thanks for the advice here guys, appreciate it. And, feel free to flame on me for being cheap and lazy. I am.

[galibier_numero_un]

Waiting for these skis to appear on gear swap
[edit] I sympathize with how much work is involved in fixing seriously railed skis, but a shortcut like this is very risky.

... Thom

[swissiphic]

Anybody done it? There's no stone grinder anywhere near me. I heard you could just wet your base and then use a fine grit on a belt sander and with some care can get an acceptable product.

I've some skis that I thrashed last season in the rockies and it would take me an eon to flat file the base edges to something acceptable. I know, I've tried.

Gary; I had some really badly railed skis ground reasonably flat for the key 1.5cms in from the edges at the Shames ski shop... he was an experienced tech and really took his time and changed the grit a few times. Dunno if they still have the belt machine and/or an experienced tech though?

If they're rock skis, what about just trynna get rid of the bigger burrs with an xtra course diamond stone then filing what's left if you really want some edge?

And...who the hell is this mythical Bruno character? U talkin' about hippy Darryl's neighbor in Rosswood?

[garyfromterrace]

Gary; I had some really badly railed skis ground flat up at the Shames ski shop. Dunno if they still have the belt machine though?

Nope. One of the lads there suggested I DYI.

[Shorty_J]

You'll probably need to run the belt sander on an angle to cover the full width.

Make a "TR" so I can try this when you're done.

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[GoldenBC]

Just get a base bevel file. Easy.

If you belt sand a ski, you will get rid of the base structure. Structure is almost more important than wax. Don’t do it.

[old goat]

If you only ski soft snow with these skis why bother flattening them and redoing the edges? OTOH if you fuck it up you won't notice. But if you ever take them to a shop they'll laugh.

[telepariah]

For cleaning up ragged edges my tool of choice is a panzar file. Use a light touch because if you dig in, you could rip right through the edge. But if you are careful, it will smooth your edges out to the point where you can bevel them and detune if necessary. I don't like to get stone grinds very often because they take away too much thickness and can go really wrong if the tech you are trusting with your skis is not sufficiently experienced. I've had one base grind in the last ten years and that was on a ski I was testing that shipped too railed for me to fix with hand tools.

[TrueNorth]

I’ve tried a bunch of different techniques for DIY base grinds on my xc rock skis, and by far the easiest and most successful was an orbital sander followed by a few quick passes of the SkiVisions stone base tool to remove the hairy swirly texture left by the sander. Maybe with a belt sander you could skip the SkiVisions step, but an orbital sander was all I had available at the time. I used an old worn sanding pad to avoid sanding the base too aggressively.

[RShea]

Are you talking about a hand held belt sander (typically used for wood and other things were portability is needed? Or one of the Wintersteiger wet belt sanders type of devices?

If it truly is the metal edges that you are trying to fix, then the belt will probably not work the way you think it will from what I have read and understand of the process. They are used for flattening the sintered or extruded base material and not as good at doing a major removal on the metal edges. A local shop and rental place has one of the big floor models and the local sports store that closed down had one also. The shop still uses files for the edges and then does the base material on the wet belt.

There are the hand held tools to do metal edges- Dremel type of edge grinders- Wintersteiger Discman 2 Professional Ski Race Edge Tuning, Swix Evo Pro Edge Tuner, EdgeTune Pro II and probably some other power driven devices that may work as a start for the messed up edges if you do not think a good sharp pansar file and then moving down to a few good top quality chrome cut files and do it by hand then progress to the diamond files ... Ski Vision has a base and edge sharpener http://skivisions.us/1693.html

Of course there is also always the pack up the skis and ship them off to a shop that does have a proper stone grinder if they really are worth saving and not just a trial and see how good or bad these come out type of trial and error learning projects...