Neil’s stable of skis

Spurred on by Ally’s recent shop full of skis, Neil thought he’d go one better and bring in five pairs for attention. And attention is what they sorely needed – have a look at this typical gouge:

Or this rusty edge (blending into the wooden plank for the vice so it looks a bit odd):

At the risk of sounding like I’m giving a lecture, please try to dry off your gear after a day out. You can see in the snap above the water staining from the binding sneaking down to the edge – this is where the water was hiding when Neil left the skis to stew in his roofbox. Even without getting the entire edge back to bright metal, see how much steel had to come off a single edge:

You’ve paid for all that metal and it won’t last forever, so please try to get busy with the tissues once you leave the slopes. I know all your mates with their rental gear just dump it and head to the bar but sometimes you have to suffer a little for the gear you love – just ask anyone who’s had a classic car.

One wee point to make if you find yourself surrounded by budding skiers and are tempted to buy everyone their own planks – you might want to consider getting skis with the same base & edge bevels. Neil’s planning to return for a lesson and he’ll be finding out then that the Dynastars are 1,1 the K2s 1,2 and the Atomics 1,3 so he’ll be buying three edge guides to keep on top of everything. Don’t bother buying a variable edging tool – they fill up with swarf from the bastard file and water from the diamond files and you can probably guess what happens after that. Get the edge guides the pros use – simple aluminium ones.

Here is the line up after the base wax has been scraped, patiently waiting with the rest of the backlog for their top coat then the finished article ready for collection: