Waxing the skis
and preparstion before the first line...
Insert: 08.12.2012
Well every rider was waxing his gear in the past. Skis or snowboard are not always liding the snow in optimal way. So you have to help them. Well if the face is steep enough you can go without waxing you skis. But prepared ski is the best! There are many guides and reviews about how to wax a ski or snowboard. But when it comes and you have to do it by yourself without any ski/snowboard official service then you will face the real problems and issues and you will figure out how expensive this can be.
At the first time you will probably hit a problem how to hold the ski. Better to say how to fix the ski to the table. Well I was digging into the Google and I have found one nice from TOKO. But the process for freeride skis was about 240 euro. Which is quite expensive and it is a half of season skipass in Austria. So here came our classics “Home made stuff”. I took planed planks and glue them together and I have also put at the top some window seal. This whole action took me about two hours and cost 10 euro. But the result is amazing. You can see the result on the picture.
Now I realized what I need to prepare:
1. Cleaning the surface
I am not waxing skis after every riding day. Who does it is, by my opinion, somebody with a lot of free time. I ride the skis about 5 or 6 times without waxing and the ground will scratch all the old wax from the skis. So you do not need to remove it. Just remove any mud or dirty places by a bronze brush or by any other a rough brush.
2. Spreading the wax
You can spread the wax by melting on an iron and just put it on the whole surface if the ski. I have to confess that freeride skis can take a lot of candle wax so please prepare more candles than usual. After that just make a nice wax layer by the iron. It is important to not use very hot iron otherwise you can destroy your base
3. Removing wax by a scraper
Well here it worth to invest a bit more money for some nice plastic scraper. Of course you can use a workaround again and ask somebody to cut a piece of plexiglass about 4mm thick. And you won the battle. The TOKO scraper costs about 7 eur. I personally use the scraped wax for the next waxing because the consumption of candles is significant.
4. Polishing the wax
The last step of this whole procedure is to polish a wax on you base. There are a special polishing brushes but again it is possible to solve this by another way. I found a piece of the rough carpet and glue it to piece of wood. That was quite enough. And I can resommend another nice tip which I saw on YouTube. Some guys were using a toilet brush with a accumulator drill. For the first time I was thinking that it is nonsense to use a toilet brush for the base polishing. But when I came to supermarket and I saw that it costs 1 euro I gave a try to it. Well after couple of attempts I realized that this is a very cool way in combination wit accumulator drill. After this I just used piece of carpet to finish the polish.
I hope this guide will help you before you will go out and ride some nice lines. Hope you will get a nice speed after waxing your gear. What I have not mentioned here is that you can fix some big holes in the base. But this is only a temporary solution.
Author: Klikos
Now I realized what I need to prepare:
- iron - some old one is enough but you can also buy TOKO for 45 euro
- brushes - for removing old wax or for wax polishing
- something to remove old wax – well I do not have this one but it is used quite often
- plastic scraper – for removing additional wax
- wax – well this is a bit tricky because you need different wax for many types of snow but I do not care about this and using normal candles – Wallachian cheap solution
1. Cleaning the surface
I am not waxing skis after every riding day. Who does it is, by my opinion, somebody with a lot of free time. I ride the skis about 5 or 6 times without waxing and the ground will scratch all the old wax from the skis. So you do not need to remove it. Just remove any mud or dirty places by a bronze brush or by any other a rough brush.
2. Spreading the wax
You can spread the wax by melting on an iron and just put it on the whole surface if the ski. I have to confess that freeride skis can take a lot of candle wax so please prepare more candles than usual. After that just make a nice wax layer by the iron. It is important to not use very hot iron otherwise you can destroy your base
3. Removing wax by a scraper
Well here it worth to invest a bit more money for some nice plastic scraper. Of course you can use a workaround again and ask somebody to cut a piece of plexiglass about 4mm thick. And you won the battle. The TOKO scraper costs about 7 eur. I personally use the scraped wax for the next waxing because the consumption of candles is significant.
4. Polishing the wax
The last step of this whole procedure is to polish a wax on you base. There are a special polishing brushes but again it is possible to solve this by another way. I found a piece of the rough carpet and glue it to piece of wood. That was quite enough. And I can resommend another nice tip which I saw on YouTube. Some guys were using a toilet brush with a accumulator drill. For the first time I was thinking that it is nonsense to use a toilet brush for the base polishing. But when I came to supermarket and I saw that it costs 1 euro I gave a try to it. Well after couple of attempts I realized that this is a very cool way in combination wit accumulator drill. After this I just used piece of carpet to finish the polish.
I hope this guide will help you before you will go out and ride some nice lines. Hope you will get a nice speed after waxing your gear. What I have not mentioned here is that you can fix some big holes in the base. But this is only a temporary solution.
Author: Klikos
