Nick dropped off three sets of skis for edge & wax prior to heading to the hills for a holiday. What seemed like a simple job got a bit more complicated.
First a quick shampoo to clean off any remaining wax and crud:
Then base flatness check, shave the tops of any gouges, scratch them up to help the P-tex stick and then they’re ready for a scrape & structure:
Once the bases are sorted the base edges were done – still no drama – all three skis are one degree and the base edges were anyway in good shape.
However, it all went a bit Pete Tong when the side edges presented themselves. The Salomons & K2s should be 2 degrees and the Atomics 3 degrees. Instead all three sets were somewhere between one and two degrees, and they all exhibited a bizarre wave down their length – think of thumb prints on a pie crust except along a steel edge:
I drew some red lines on the photo to try to highlight them but you might just have to trust me. The edges have the tell-tale longitudinal, continuous striations left from tuning so they didn’t leave the factory like that – someone has done it to them. I can only imagine someone has used a hand-held grinder or something. The file guides just don’t let you make the wavy thing.
Anyway the most appropriate course of action, following a few seconds of incredulous head-shaking, was to reset the edge angles to what they were when they left the factory. It’s a shame as whoever reduced the edge angles must have removed quite a bit of steel to do it and now here I am removing yet more steel to put them right.
So once the edges are sorted and the huge fuzz of swarf has been swept up it’s a relatively simple case of wax, scrape & brush to a high shine. Nick is already looking for a lesson when he returns and if you have a lot of skis to look after it certainly makes financial sense to do it yourself.
