Month: February 2024

Martyn’s Gear

Neighbour Martyn made the arduous 20 metre trek from his garage to mine to get two sets of his skis sorted and his wife’s K2 board as well.

He dropped of a pair of Atomics which gave no issues beyond the very rusty state of the side edges, which took a lot of filing to get clean, plus a wacky pair of Fischer skis that have a weird fishtail and a bizarre bulge at the tips which I think he called a snow keel or similar.

Once the bases were tidied up on both skis, they rather unusually both needed 3 degree side edges to get to spec which was easy enough. But the waxing – help ma boab. I’d already done the Fischers once before but the bizarre bulges seemed to be even more infuriating to wax than I remembered.

Anyway they finally succumbed and were ready for the mandatory radiator picture:

Julian’s Völkls

Julian was an early client of the Cave and dropped off his Völkls for an edge & wax. There was nothing unusual to report other than a wee ding next to the edge which needed some metal grip to fill:

Once that was sorted there were a couple of trivial gouges to fill and plane, base/side angles 1/2 degrees, coat of base renew wax and a coat of Holmenkohl Alpha warm weather wax and Bob’s your uncle.

Once they were waxed I couldn’t find the repair so the only after photo is below:

Doug’s problematic edges

Doug’s a returning client so gets the 10% loyalty discount. All good so far, but he wasn’t retuning skis that I had already fettled – he dropped off two sets of skis that had been mangled by the guy with the hockey mask from the Texas Edgesaw Massacre (maybe I’m mixing my movies here).

Edges are, to use the technical photography term, a bugger to photograph, but these were so weird I ran up to grab my DSLR. Still the photos are a bit ropey but if you screw your eyes up you might see on the photos what was very plain to the naked eye:

See those little half moons? All the way along the base edges on all four skis. WTF?

At first I thought the side edges had escaped but they also had the “blind man with hangover using hand-held grinder” effect. The base edges also had some serious scarring from exuberant rock-hopping:

Anyway the Cave loves a challenge so both sets of skis (Origin Liberties and Dynastar Chams) got the full elbow grease and swearing treatment to beat them into shape. Both skis are 1 degree base/1 degree edge and they took the surgery very well.

It’s springtime now so I used the Spring (warm/wet) wax instead of the universal, which pretty much guarantees a 10 degree Celsius drop in snow temperatures in the next week or two.

Here they are in the inevitable radiator photo:

Easy Money

Elliot dropped off a set of Salomon Supercross and Scott Aztecs for a service to celebrate the 4 days of snow we had in Scotland in January.

Both skis are a little older, enjoying their golden years as it were, but that really appeals to me. Skiing is a pretty environmentally unfriendly activity at the best of times, and me refusing to use forever chemicals like hydrophobic wax finishers doesn’t really make much difference, but Elliot keeping skis going for ten or fifteen years is admirable. Especially with those lovely, easy to work on all-black bases and edges that are broadly where they were on leaving the factory.

In fact both sets of skis also had pretty much flat bases, not always a given these days, so they only needed minor filling to some base dings, edging to original specs and they were ready to go: