Author: jrsands66

Rachel dropped off two sets of skis, bravely volunteering her own K2s for a lesson while her other half’s Heads joined the queue with the others. Both sets had a few gouges on the base so we extended the lesson to cover prepping, filling & scraping the gouges.

First though the bases weren’t perfectly flat so they got a quick once over with the base planer. Once the bases were flat, gouges filled and scraped level and the bases restructured it was finally time to set the base bevels. The edges were pretty rusty and dinged (“I’ve had a lot of fun making that big a mess of my edges”) but they were happy to succumb to a few passes with the file guide. The side edges, on the other hand, put up plenty of resistance with the first edge refusing to play ball. Although the sidewall was conscientiously planed away the panzar file zinged away making that distinctive, high pitched riding on plastic noise regardless of what we tried. Eventually it was beaten by inhuman amounts of filing with a 200 grit diamond file. Naturally the next three edges all behaved themselves impeccably. Despite the beaten look of the steel they took a nice edge – here’s Rachel just putting the icing on the cake with the gummi.

The extra time used on base planing, gouge filling & filing the cussed edge meant that we were keen to get the waxing sorted quickly. Fortunately Rachel proved to be a world-class wax scraper, and despite protestations that she never irons she was a dab hand at that too. It could be argued that we didn’t spend the prescribed amount of time waiting on wax for either base or top coat but by now the combined stomach rumbling sounded like the Harley Owner’s Club firing up for a quick blat to Flora’s café so we pressed on.

The final result was worth the suffering and the K2s were at least as gorgeous as the Heads. Here’s to a great holiday in Morzine.

Linda found time to visit the man cave for an edge & wax lesson on her venerable Rossignols. Despite their advanced years the bases were in great shape except for a smear of rust on the edges:

Well a bit more than a smear but superficial really.

As always the party begins with donning the appropriate size & weight of coveralls, then a base flatness check. Unlike most modern all-mountain skis which tend to be a little concave at the fronts then flat under the binding to the tails, the Rossis were nice and flat at the front trending to a little concave towards the tails. Still, the lovely condition of the bases meant we would have been particularly cruel to charge in and start flattening.

Base edges are one degree and they needed little more than a few swipes to get all the Sharpie ink (and rust) off and settled into their old glory. Linda is using the 200 grit diamond file in the photo which is just long enough for the base file guide and needs careful finger support to keep it all together. Diamond file enthusiasts will note the spray bottle of highly specialised diamond file cutting fluid (Aberdeen tap water) on the bench.

A key part of learning to tune your own gear is to involve all your senses in the job. Fingers are great at feeling inconsistencies that you might not see; files running on plastic sidewall instead of steel edge make a high-pitched whizz and nothing really beats the 10x hand lens for getting to see exactly what’s going on. Lots of people struggle with hand lenses but Linda got the style straight away – hold it close to your eye and move your head close to the area of interest. Sadly all she got to see here was rusty pits on the inside of her edges but no matter – she’s around the curve of the tip so we don’t really care other than for aesthetics.

The side edges were a little odd in that they appeared to be somewhat rounded. Normally they reflect a single flash of light as you move your head sideways – they are after all supposed to be flat. Linda’s edges seemed to be a bit convex and reflected light like the back of a spoon. Who knows what has gone on there in the past. Anyway the edges took a few strokes with the sidewall planer to shed their overhanging plastic then a few aggressive swipes with the panzar file to get flat enough to file normally. After that they were fine and were given the usual chrome file, 200 grit diamond, 600 grit diamond and a final swoosh with the gummi to keep the edge sensible.

Linda opted for base Renew wax and Universal top wax:

And in a matter of minutes the skis were glowing like the metal on the edge of a knife, as Meatloaf once sang:

Look at that lovely original structure, still looking great after all these years.

Finally no lesson is complete without a shot of the proud owner showing off her handiwork – remember for the usual £23 cost of the edge & wax she got to do all the work herself. Just picture the satisfaction you could have hurtling down an alpine slope knowing that you had tuned your skis yourself…

John has waxed & edged his own stable of skis already but wanted to make sure he was doing it right. As ever we’re happy to oblige. Remember, getting a lesson doesn’t cost any more than having me do the work.

He came round with a set of Line Sir Francis Bacons which looked OK at first glance but proper inspection with the hand lens revealed a break in one edge – more on that in a future blog post. Once the tears had dried we got to work on his Whitedot Carbonlite touring skis.

As always, following a brief inspection the bases were checked for flatness with the true bar. Well they were sort of true with a bit of an M shape going on longitudinally and a definite bulge under the heel binding on one ski. Nothing too radical but worth watching in future. It’s the sort of thing you can’t see without a true bar & backlight so if you’re the sort of person who skips medical check ups in case the doc finds something then maybe the true bar isn’t for you.

Next step as always is to double check the base bevels with a sharpie and file in the appropriate base file guide. They were already at 1 degree as per manufacturer’s guidance so they were just given a few swipes to clear rust and a couple of minor scratches.

Before we could do any edging the sidewalls needed planing. Although the skis had been tuned once before there was a good bit of plastic in the way of the edging tools. As always getting the right combination of weight & speed to plane the sidewall perfectly smooth takes plenty of time & patience, especially as these walls had been left pretty lumpy by the last guy. If in doubt many fast & light strokes always beat one huge heroic effort. And finally, don’t be frightened to use a knife to remove big lumps if the alternative is shattering your planer blade.

Although pretty new the skis had been tuned once, in France. Whitedot changed from a 1:1 base:side bevel to 1:3 in 2014 so in theory the skis were new enough to have the more radical sides. Out with the sharpie once more, and we found that three of the edges were pretty much one degree with one edge significantly less than one degree. This is unusual and is probably due to the last guy not planing the sidewall radically enough and the file riding on plastic sidewall not steel edge. If he took skis with a 3 degree edge bevel and took them down to 1 degree (because that’s what the previous year’s models were and not everyone checks bevels before they start tuning) then he will have taken plenty of steel off the edge and his files may well have been riding on plastic even after a cursory bit of sidewall planing.

Anyway we’re here to edge & wax skis not cast aspersions about other techs, so on with the edging. John opted to keep the 1 degree side bevel as he’s been happy so far so it was just a case of getting the right combination of speed, weight, file noise and flair:

Like a lot of activities when you get it right it feels right so I think John achieved his ambition of getting more confident on the edging side of things. As always chrome file then 300 grit diamond then 600 grit diamond then gummi the edge back to just sharp not silly sharp.

John tried out a few angles with the wax scraper, including this one pictured left. As always touring skis are a drag to scrape just because they are so big.

The scraping showed up the weird M-shaped bases again but some furious brushing left them in tip top condition. Here’s John showing off his planks and just ready to head back home and dig out a few more sets of skis for the treatment.

Now the easy ones have been done it’s nearly time to sneak another peek at the Bacons – if we’re feeling strong enough…