Dave has gratifyingly taken my advice and snapped up a pair of ex-rental skis for a song. They’re not pretty but he understands that there’s a gorgeous base hiding under all those scars and rust:
The skis were Head & Salomon, both of which had almost completely black bases (another Brownie point for Dave) so they were easy enough to plaster with new P-tex:
Once the excess P-tex is scraped off the bases were structured using the SkiVisions ruby stone then finished off with the base plane.
The Heads leave the factory with base 1 degree edge 1 degree and as that is the most common “do ’em all the same” setting for rental planks they were fairly easy to tidy up. The Salmons on the other hand should be 1,2 so the frankly revolting edges had to be beaten back to specs.
Having stopped advertising the Cave due to other commitments, I’ve had lots of returning kit which means the edges are a breeze – done right once then just maintain them. So it’s a while since I’ve had to wrestle a pair of skis into submission, and you forget just how physical it is. If you ever need to do it yourself, the sequence is 1) shave sidewall 2) run your coarsest diamond file up and down the edge to try to get rid of any case-hardened burr 3) work the edge back to 2 degrees with the file guide & your coarse steel bastard file 4) stop to wipe the sweat from your brow and curse whichever dumpling buggered them up in the first place 5) get the edge to a decent state with the steel file, checking for burrs as resetting an edge will always give a mean burr 6) remove burr with coarse diamond file 7) use your diamond files & guide on the edge, fining up from 100 to 1600 grit (or whatever you’ve got) 8) check for burrs again 9) if OK polish side & base edges with gummi stone. Congrats – you’ve done one edge, only three more to go.
Next up is of course soak in a gallon of pink base renew wax, scrape & brass brush, then top off with green universal wax, scrape, brass brush then polish to a high shine with nylon/horsehair soft brush. Remember to remove the brake retainers…
Dave took advantage of the at-cost velcro separators that I got from the Piste Office last season and keep forgetting to mention to people (only three Scottish pounds per pair to you effendi), and he asked for some maintenance tips which I think I’ll make into a new blog post.
