No sooner had I dropped off the newly repaired Scotts with Doug than I was picking up another set from his mate Dave. Dave’s skis are a year older and, remarkably, had sustained even more damage than Doug’s. It’s not often you see a bulge like this:
The destruction continues on the underside:
The edge started to come away after a bump and Doug decided he had nothing to lose by sticking some unnamed adhesive in there before heading off for another week’s skiing. It all seemed to hold together but it means an extra step for me as I have to pick all the gunk out of the wound.
Regular readers will know that there is only one path from here – clean out the gunk, straighten the edge as far as is possible, sloop some hot Araldite in and clamp that puppy good & tight for a couple of days.
Once the wraps were off it didn’t look too bad if I say so myself.
The edge is shiny with Araldite which will need to be cut off, but not bad – only a slight upward curve . The base was even better with a nice straight line and the topside bulge completely absent:
You can see from that snap that the base was pretty badly scraped up. Here’s another picture of the damage, before the edge was glued:
As I’ve pointed out before there’s next to no P-tex on these touring ski bases, so we need to weld in new material and scrape it down to size.
Just in case that doesn’t look like enough new P-tex here’s another one:
The photo above highlights a couple of things – mainly the shocking state of dave’s bases, but also my mantra about long linear scratches not really being a problem – they just become part of the structure. I’ll only fill them if they’re just a bit too deep to ignore. However the diagonal scrapes, and any hollows, will need to be filled as best we can.
So, after scraping off the excess P-tex, structuring the base, sorting the edges and waxing the skis here’s the original knackered edge:
You can still make out the scrape that led to the edge battering but it’s all pretty much where it needs to be and ready to go off and find some early season snow. Here’s another shot, this time with Fraser’s much less problematical K2s:
Despite the use/abuse my ski’s had suffered, a visit to Johns has seen them restored to condition they have not been in since their first day out! Top notch job. Cheers!