New life for Mark’s more mature skis

Mark took the advice of repeat client and friend of the ManCave Martin and dropped off his skis for a retread at the Cave. They’ve seen some use over the years:

I can’t remember if this snap is the Volkls or the Rossis but they were much of a muchness. Actually not too many angled gouges, which are the problematic ones – regular readers will know that the nice straight longitudinal lines just become part of the base’s structure – but certainly a couple of quite wavy lines.

Once the bases are thoroughly cleaned – I think I cleaned off more heather than wax – they are checked for flatness then the time-consuming job of welding fresh P-tex into the bases begins. All four skis were pleasingly flat, and you’ll note they have commendably black bases to make my life much easier.

Quite a few ManCave clients think they want a “base grind” to get the lines & gouges out of their bases. As I don’t sell new skis I explain that it’s way better to add P-tex then remove the excess rather than grind off your precious base P-tex and base edges. Yes it takes longer but it preserves the life of the skis. That P-tex will be either 1.6mm, 1.2mm or for super-fancy touring skis it might be 0.8mm thick. Not much left once you’ve had someone mindlessly grind half of it off.

Anyway here’s the inevitable pic of the Rossis following an hour of plastic surgery:

Once the P-tex is scraped flat with a cabinetmaker’s scraper (Google it if you’re not sure; getting the burr just so is one of those things that separates ski techs from mere mortals) all the lines not filled in are about to be incorporated into the new structure that is added to the base with a ruby stone. I didn’t think to take any photos but the ruby stone gives a very even set of longitudinal lines down the base. It’s not the fancy structure that you get from a Wintersteiger machine https://www.skitalk.com/ams/wintersteiger-jupiter-for-an-out-of-this-world-tune.219/ but it’s more than good enough and saves me spending $500k on a big green machine.

It’s out of chronological order but here’s a pic of the bases once they’ve been filled, scraped, structured, waxed & polished:

Let’s straighten out the warp in the space/time continuum by going back to the edges. Eagle-eyed readers will spot that this edge has never been touched since leaving the factory – rusty, lines, and the sidewall exactly as the edging machine left it in the factory:

And here it is after sidewall planing and filing to the usual Rossi 1 degree side bevel:

Once all four skis were edged (the Volkls are 1 degree base/2 degrees edge for any trigonometry geeks out there) they soaked up previously unheard of quantities of the Zoom pink rehab wax, but took a lovely shine with the Zoom universal wax on top.