Edge & wax – Page 2 – ManCave Services

We three boards

It’s getting close to Xmas so a cheery festive heading. Martin dropped off a brand new Rossi and a used baby Burton while Stuart dropped off his big Burton for a quick edge & wax. Here they are before – note the brown rusty edges on the baby Burton:

And here they are after a good deal of rust removal. The Rossi had OK edges for a brand new board, pretty flat & even rather than the lumpy grinder marks some new kit has. Stuart’s board was in for the second time and was dealt with very quickly.

As the tops are quite attractive here they are too:

A Tale of Two Atomics

Having threatened to drop skis off for at least the last two seasons Roger finally walked the 20 metres from his house to the Cave to drop off his sons’ Atomics. His cunning plan is to use them himself so he brought a boot for setting up the bindings too.

As is so often the case they looked OK on a quick once over in the living room but the bright lights of the Cave often highlight defects that have been missed.

First the good news: even though they’re Atomics (a pair of newish Redsters and a pair of slightly more mature D2s) the bases were reasonably flat, so no need to plane them down as is so often the case with the Austrian planks.

However the D2s had a little secret: at some point one of the edges had split. Hard to see any peripheral damage to explain what insult actually caused the split; usually there is a gouge or bulge from the rock but I can’t really see any smoking gun here. What you can see, for technical interest, is a little burr at the bottom of the side edge to the left of the crack. These are the very devil to photograph and it’s good to see I snapped this one by accident.

Anyway, regular readers will know the pragmatic response to this type of damage comes in three steps:

Pour some warm Araldite into the crack and leave for 48 hours
File to approved angles
Mark the ski, in this case left, to make sure the crack will always be on an outside edge in future.

Here’s the repaired crack, all sorted and shiny:

So once the D2s were organised the Redsters had a wee tale of their own to tell. Not quite so impressive but they had endured a little bump at some point, and this time the stone had left a bit of base damage too. See the way the light only reflects off half of this little section of edge:

That’s because the light is reflecting of the left hand side of the ding. It’s not massive but again, once it’s been filed into submission we need to mark up this ski so that the ding stays on an outside edge from now on.

Once the bindings are set up for Roger’s snazzy boots they’re all ready for collection. John’s wavey Factions and Myles’s Armadas are in the shot too but they were soooo easy to fettle, having been through the Cave already, that there’s really nowt to say about them.

A Gnu or two

It’s December, the Cave is getting a bit parky so it must be time for snow bums & bunnies to dig out their rusty gear and get it sorted.

The annual multi-channel, multimedia, star-studded marketing blitz resulted in 4 sets of skis & 3 boards arriving to kick the season off. Here they are during the dullest part of any service – dewaxing/base cleaning.

Once they’re all clean the Rossi and white based Gnu needed some base repairs:

Neither of them was too bad but still needing some TLC. Once the bases were scraped and structured they drank immense amounts of base wax. In fact the white Gnu needed a third coat of wax to get to spec, something I’ve not had to deal with before – and I’ve worked with some pretty dried out bases. Both boards had pretty battered edges too but nothing terminal.

Eagle-eyed readers will recognise Susan’s blue Gnu. As it’s returning to the Cave for a freshen up it just needed a quick once over to get it back to perfect condition. Here they are all sorted and ready to be collected.

Peter’s lesson

Peter dropped off four sets of skis back in April with a view to getting a lesson at some point. Finally in early July the planets aligned and we were able to get to work on his K2s. Here are a couple of shots from the pre-lesson work:

Crossways scrape on the base – there were plenty of these

All the scrapes and gouges filled ready for scraping

By the time Peter and Kurtis arrived all the K2s needed was a quick edge & wax. There were two of them so they got a ski each to work on.

One good thing about working on skis in July is the natural light flooding into the cave, as well as no need for beanies or buffies. All very civilised.

Here’s Peter diamond filing an edge:

And here are the finished skis:

Colin’s Salomons

Colin took some time out of coordinating all of NE Scotland’s cycling activity to drop off his venerable Crossmaxes. They are the classic red white & blue jobbies and had me all teary with nostalgia for the days in the late 80s when all you would see at the Shee were crappy grey Rossi rental planks for the hoi polloi and the posh folks on their Crossmaxes.

Speaking of the Shee one of Colin’s skis had picked up a Glenshee Kiss:

It’s just as bad as it looks. In fact worse in the flesh as WordPress are a bit funny about uploading full fat photos.

Anyway down to the core and also right up to the edge means working in some metalgrip first then topping up to base level with P-Tex. It’s hard to get it absolutely perfect but it came out OK:

You can still see a shadow where the gouge was but it’s flat to the touch and after a few days’ skiing it will blend right in.

Finally a photo of Colin’s finished skis alongside Dave’s superlight Völkl tourers, waiting to be picked up:

Jonny’s bump

Jonny dropped off his K2 board along with his lady friend’s Salomon. Both of them had seen some base ripping action:

Jonny’s base is pretty mashed but most gouges are longitudinal. The photo doesn’t really show the washed out, scratchy white effect that he has managed to achieve. Take it from me it looks very tired.

Ms Jonny’s board just has slashes all over it in every direction. As you’ll know by now there are few things more likely to cheer up a tech’s day than having to fill gouges in a black/white/colour repeating base. Here it is with a kilo of repair P-tex in it:

And the next photo shows the base once it has been scraped flat. For once I nailed all the gouges first time and and the base didn’t need a second bite of the base iron to get it sorted:

Still looks dull because the base hasn’t been restructured and there’s no wax yet. However it’s nice & smooth to the touch. And I’m knee deep in P-tex shavings.

Jonny’s board mainly had longways scratches, which normally I leave as they just become part of the structure. However some of them were just too deep to leave so they got some clear & colourless P-Tex:

But Jonny’s main issue is at the end of the board, not the middle. Who knows what the impact looked like but the outcome was a comedy duck bill. Hard to photograph but check out the reflected light on the first snap to get a feel for the degree of bentness:

Now this poses a problem as it is only slightly delaminated and not falling to pieces. If it was more knackered it would be a case of cutting out the P-Tex, bending the edge back, reassembling and gluing. However, it’s not too bad so let’s see if we can just apply Araldite, brute force & wishful thinking:

In order to encourage the edge to roll back into a better angle the top sheet former is actually a spade handle.

It all seemed to be holding at first – here’s the excess epoxy waiting to be cut off:

However the snow gods weren’t smiling on this occasion and the edge managed to pull the scoop back open again, so the edge had to be taught a lesson. Edges are really easy to bend when they’re sitting on the bench – you can easily curl them up if you need to send a few metres to Aberdeen from the factory in Central Europe – but once an edge is glued into a sandwich of four or five layers of wonder material to make a board it all gets a bit harder. Finally the deed was done and the scoop re-glued, but the teeth marks from the various gripping tools can be made out by a discerning eye:

However it is pretty straight, tightly glued up and should withstand all but the roughest handling. As well as having slick, flat, waxed bases & lovely sharp edges, the bases have recovered the original colours that they had in the shop instead of the washed out look:

Priors

Ali dropped off her Rossis and brought Mr. Ali along to hand over his Priors in person. I’ve read about Priors (hand made in Whistler) but these are the first ones I’ve had my gloves on.

First impressions: they share some DNA with DPS skis – nice uncluttered tops & bases, thin, light. Flat. The bases are hard and don’t melt as soon as they see the base doc iron. However, obviously, they could have used proper black P-Tex for the bases instead of wishy-washy blue.

Also, DPS make sure the owner doesn’t need to shave his sidewalls. And they tune the edge by hand before selling them. Prior hand over rather wiggly edges, which resisted all attempts to photograph. They’re sorted now though.

Ali’s Rossi’s were pretty nice but had some existing ham fisted base repairs from a P-Tex candle. Did my best but really it’s best to avoid putting that low boiling point mince into your bases if you can.

Staggering to the exit

Julian dropped off a family of skis before his Easter ski trip. Here they are all shined up:

They look great and Julian can hold his head high in the baggage reclaim area as he drags them to the transfer bus with his wife & kids racing ahead, not offering any support whatsoever (maybe that’s just my family).

However closer inspection reveals that the daddy Völkls are actually on their last legs.

Take a quick look at the base when it arrived at the Cave:

That wee nick only had to dig down about half a millimetre to reach the wooden core. It looks like the Völkl design team cut weight by using skinny P-Tex. The edges are also skinny.

So once the holes are filled and scraped we get a chance to step back and…

Oof! See the black tabs from the edges shining through the P-Tex? You can feel the lumps along the edge. Not much life left there.

Sadly the edges are already disappearing down the side so although we would normally prescribe a base grind to bring everything down then reset the edges there simply ain’t no base left to play with. Tricky.

So I carried on and finished the job but there’s only one more holiday left in these puppies I’m afraid.

Finally, and I’m not pointing the finger here, Julian mentioned that he has an edging guide & file that he swipes over the edges from time to time. All I’m going to say is that you really, really need to spend an extra few quid on a sidewall planer. And you need to use it, at least once per edge. Just sayin’…

Weekly round up

In between the snowy weather and my recurring trips away from Aberdeen it’s all been a bit hectic and taking photos tends to be the first thing that is cut when it’s getting frantic. So I was pleased to see that I did remember to take a couple of snaps of things that caught my eye.

Brian’s F1 Rip’n’Wuds:

Brian bought these very expensive skis on a whim on holiday last season but felt they were a little bit flexy underfoot so he scoured the dark web for someone who could supply a couple of plates of woven carbon fibre. Our favourite tech guru Jon Coster at the Piste Office fitted them for Brian. To be honest it doesn’t really matter if they make any difference to the handling, the plates look gorgeous.

I can’t even remember what brand these skies were, but this comedy whisker of white P-tex cheered me up as I tried to sort out the rest of the base which had been sanded at some point in the past as part of an in-resort service. Sanding P-tex always results in fur on the base which is a pain in the neck to remove, so if you’re ever tempted to try it please don’t. The skis came up quite nicely in the end but I forgot to get the phone out for the “after” picture:

Lesley brought a load of equipment in for a service and all was going well until the edges on her Dynastars were subject to inspection. You can see on the left that the edges were waving in & out a bit. I sometimes wonder if there’s a ski servicing tool that is actually designed to leave this hopeless finish. Anyway it left the edge significantly hardened, and once through the hardening it became clear that the edge was less than one degree:

If the bottom of the edge (side nearer the base) doesn’t get touched by the file in a one degree edge guide then the edge must be less than one degree. You can see the dark strip next to the base bevel in this photo. Again, who knows what the last guy thought he was doing or if he applies any sort of quality assurance to the equipment before it goes out the door. Anyway, loads of elbow grease later the edge looked as its creator intended it to – straight, shiny and one degree all the way along:

Sadly another pair of the skis Lesley dropped off had suffered the same treatment. Not only is is a drag for me to break through the hardening – the first edge alone took 25 minutes to get back to a decent state – it means I have to take off more steel than I want to get back to the proper bevel. Anyway, they should be much better to use now.

Finally, these three boards were dropped off in varying states of wear. They all left in good shape, although Aidan’s Salomon has been “repaired” by someone with a black P-Tex drip candle in the past which has left it streaked with black as though it had been attacked with a sharpie.

I’m really not a fan of drip candles as you can’t warm the base first, the P-tex is extra soft and the person applying the P-tex gets lungfuls of toxic smoke. When you need to repair over an old drip candle repair the candle P-tex will start to boil before the decent quality, stiffer, higher melt point stuff techs use is even melted, which makes getting a good repair a pain in the neck. Apart from that, all three boards had good flat bases and came up very nicely. Tor’s Nitro is a lovely piece of kit, except for the silver foil that they decided would look good on the base but doesn’t make repairing scratches any easier.

That’s it for now, more entries when I’m back from my travels on 26th March.

Tom’s Volkls

Tom dropped off a pair of used Völkl tourers and some new Rossi Soul 7s. Naturally that invites comparisons between the two. I’m a fan of Völkls – never seen a pair I wouldn’t be happy to own – but the Soul 7s are gorgeous and like most men I’m a sucker for a pretty face.

So let’s cut to the chase and start scoring.

Flatness – both sets spot on. 1 point each.

Base abuse – Völkls definitely have the edge here as Tom has battered them to death.

Nothing that can’t be fixed but some attention required, including that wee spot where we’re down to the steel.

So we’ll call that Völkls 1, Rossis 0

Edges. Tricky. Let’s start with the Rossis. Brand new, so like a lot of skis they have a shabby grinder job on the edges:

Looks a bit rubbish? That’s because it is

Now I understand that if you’re competing against “race to the bottom” Decathlon skis you need to cut a few corners, but Rossi have pretty much stopped European production for all but their very top skis so they’re paying someone in China or Vietnam a dollar a day to chuck the skis through the grinder, so perhaps they could go crazy and teach that guy to change the wheels when they’re worn out? You can actually see not just the striations on the edge but the bumps right on the very edge. Run your thumb down the very edge and it goes “zizz”. It can be fixed – here is the same edge after a bit of TLC:

Sadly the Völkls were a bit rubbish as well, with lumpy grinder marks but also one edge on each ski sitting at about two degrees and the other sitting at about three degrees. Not only does this waste my time but I have to decide where to leave them for the client. In this case three degrees won, despite the Völkl standard being 2 degrees. Less steel was sacrificed getting to 3.

So the score for edges is -2 for both skis.

Weight: Völkls are bigger in all dimensions but weigh less so 2 points.

Waxing was a doddle for both with their lovely flat bases, and it’s hard to tell new from old once they’re finished:

Völkl left, Rossi right

So the winner is definitely Tom for having these great skis in his quiver. I’d take the Völkls if pushed.