Colin became my first repeat customer by dropping off a couple of pairs of twin-tip Volkls. His idea was an edge & wax for each or anything they needed which is a nice way to kick off the commercial discussion.
The skis looked superficially similar on top with no obvious model name and the same not-too-radical shape. However underneath they differed hugely with one set with normal black bases and one with completely white bases.
They also varied in terms of the state they were in.
The blacks had been attacked by a shark at some point:
Whereas the white bases had also been to the seaside but only to lie in salty water for a few months:
The initial thoughts were black bases – repair gouges, restructure base then edge & wax, whereas white just clean off the rust then a coat of wax. However the base flatness check revealed seriously convex bases on the black skis so a more heroic approach was required. Normally I’d recommend a quick trip to Blues to drop off the skis for a base grind but that’s a 10 day turnaround as they make their way to Edinburgh & back so instead the new SkiVisions base planer (strapline – “this machine eats skis”) was taken out of its cage:
I know it just looks like a file in an ergonomic holder but what a file! Absolutely brutal. Anyway you really need to check flatness after each run to make sure that you don’t consume the entire ski.
Once the base was flat the base edges needed to be reset properly – usually they just need a swipe to keep them clean. However Volkl didn’t pay the extra for the tough steel that DPS use so it wasn’t too onerous a task to reset them to 1 degree. Side edges on Volkls are two degrees and again easy to get them sorted.
Two coats of wax and the worst of the shark bites were gone and the bases were ready to be shown off in polite company:
The white bases on the other hand were proving more problematical. The edges were fine, just rusty – but so rusty that it started turning into a full edge & wax which wasn’t really required. Also the bases were soaking up the brown goo developed by the diamond file lube & the rust getting to know one another. So a halt was called before the white bases turned completely brown. As if that wasn’t bad enough actually waxing white bases is a nightmare – I suspect these ones are extruded rather than sintered as they positively repelled the wax at first then when you are scraping you just can’t tell how you’re getting on the way you can with black bases.
Anyway they are done and look – on top of everything else they are impossible to photograph nicely! I’m definitely not a fan – a new prejudice to add to my collection!
