Category: Repairs

As well as dropping off his K2s Colin handed over his wife’s beautiful new Rossignol Savory7 skis for attention. I’m a fan of understated tops that aren’t drowning in busy design and definitely a fan of black bases both aesthetically and to work on. The tips and tails of these skis have a hex mesh construction to save weight and this is covered with translucent blue film. You don’t really notice it until the sun shines through the tip like a techie stained glass window. Lovely job by the Rossi stylists.

However they are meant for skiing not hanging on the wall so the Chamonix trip had taken their toll with its less than perfect snow cover.

Bases were a bit scored and the base edges
were showing a lot of scratching. Reached the end of ski no. 1 inspection without too many concerns, but ski no. 2 had a nasty little surprise in store. Something had managed to rip the base right down to the fibreglass core.

There’s no alternative in these cases to cutting out the damage to leave a clean wound with undercut edges – meaning the edges of the hole are cut wider towards the fibreglass core to help the repair material stay in. What you do next depends on who you listen to – some people glue in cotton or wood to give the P-tex something to grip; Toko used to do repair powder that was supposed to be ironed in. I am firmly in the “clean it and coat the bottom in metal-grip” camp as the metal-grip will happily grip the glass and make a good substrate for the P-tex. I wasn’t able to take a compelling photo of the undercut edges so you’ll have to make do with what I did get. You can just about see on this photo that the Savory7 bases are only 1mm compared to others which are typically 1.7mm. This is to save weight and is part of the touring ski equation – light, strong cheap – pick any two.

Once the P-tex is melted in it looks like any other repair splodge and just needs to be scraped & structured:

Once the edges are honed and the bases get their two coats of wax the repair is just about visible but certainly not noticeable. Lovely skis returned to lovely condition and ready to find some snow.

John brought round a pair of Factions because he knows how infuriating it is to work on white bases 🙂

All seemed well until we got busy with the true bar. Take a look at these bases:

I have never seen such wavy bases before. They are like a ploughed field. So what looked like a simple edge & wax turned into a massive battle with the base planer to try to at least reduce the waves to a state where they can be waxed easily.

The received wisdom on base waves is to attack them at 45 degrees so you don’t just follow them up & down. The base planer holds the file at 45 degrees for just this reason:

So after many, many passes with the file I was hoping for perfectly flat – what I got was instead was flatter:

The peaks have been smeared out into ovals rather than lines so better but still not perfect. However John had never complained about the waves before so let’s not kill ourselves 3 days before Xmas.

Another concern was the huge hole shot that had been repaired some time ago with a big swoosh of black P-tex. Although it has held on for quite some time it is about half a millimetre shy of the base so it will act as a little anchor. After much furious base planing it was still keeping its head down so I roughened up the surface with a stiff brush and added more black P-tex to bring it up flush with the base. Once that was done and the other gouges repaired with clear & colourless P-tex (rather disconcertingly you can still see the original gouge even after a perfect repair) it was time to edge the skis. Faction ask for 1 degree base and 1.5 degree side, just to be awkward, but someone else had tuned the sides to 1 degree so I followed their lead. The edges came up very nicely which was a pleasant change from the Bacons.

Once waxed they looked OK and here they are with the infamous Bacons and Ross’s Atomics, awaiting collection from the Cave:

 

John brought round a range of skis. As well as the Whitedots, he apologetically handed over a set of LINE Sir Francis Bacons. For a pair of skis that had lain in a moist roofbox for six months they didn’t seem too bad – a bit of rust here and there, but the groovy graphics hid a nasty little secret.

During the routine check a small bulge on the base turned out to be a bit
more significant – you can barely see it with the naked eye, or in the photo on the right, but a particularly evil stone had not just gouged the base but had managed to split the side edge altogether.

With luck the photo below makes it clearer once the bulging blue P-tex has been cleaned away. Sadly the picture doesn’t get any happier as the rail is showing significant rust inside the ski:

It’s hard to see on this photo but the P-tex is very slightly coming away from the edge for an inch in each direction and a thin strip of rust is peeping out.

Anyway before we do anything else we need to decide how to handle the split rail. Choices are

1) Glue, fix up & smooth down then ensure this stays an outer edge for ever after;

2) Cut out 2″ of dodgy rail, insert & screw in carefully measured replacement rail, glue up & edge;

3) Chuck ’em in the bin and get something else.

A quick call to Jon Coster at the Piste Office revealed that the pragmatic skier’s solution is 1) so we’ll go with him and see what other delights the skis have to offer.

The edges are horrible but John has been careful to keep a left & right ski so the less-used edges can be saved, to an extent anyway. Obviously there are other gouges, one of which seems to have a bit of quartz wedged in it – a wee memento from a past trip.

The bases are neither convex nor concave but have an M profile with two longitudinal ridges and a central valley. Whatever, it needs to be sorted if only to make it easier to wax the damn things.

So let’s start by gluing up the edge:

Following a good night’s sleep the skis sadly hadn’t tuned themselves so it was time to dig out the base planing file and grind away to try to achieve a flat base profile. They are big skis and the workshop was knee deep in P-tex & filings by the time the bases were acceptable.

The hole I made around the break has a fair bit of Araldite lining it but there is plenty of steel exposed so out with the metal-grip and the gas-fired base mender soldering iron. Metal-grip is basically P-tex with added kryptonite so it sticks properly to steel. Once the Metal-grip is smoothed and the other remaining gouges are filled & scraped it is time to veeeeery carefully file down the highs around the repair.

This photo makes the edge look proud of the base but in fact it isn’t – the edge sinks away slightly so I took a further photo to try to show the repair in a better light.

 

 

Edging the skis was a thankless task as the base & side edges were so tatty. Even taking into consideration the fact the base angles had to be reset from scratch after the base grind they still had some serious grooves which show up as nicks in the side edges. Still, the edges were eventually functional if not pretty and it was time for some Zoom purple rehab wax followed by Green Universal wax on top. Ultimately they have come up well enough to ski for maybe one more week in the Alps if John is careful to keep them on the correct feet but I wouldn’t expect a very long life from them.

Finished photo at the end of the following blog, because John had left yet another set of skis for attention.

Colin became my first repeat customer by dropping off a couple of pairs of twin-tip Volkls. His idea was an edge & wax for each or anything they needed which is a nice way to kick off the commercial discussion.

The skis looked superficially similar on top with no obvious model name and the same not-too-radical shape. However underneath they differed hugely with one set with normal black bases and one with completely white bases.

They also varied in terms of the state they were in.

The blacks had been attacked by a shark at some point:

Whereas the white bases had also been to the seaside but only to lie in salty water for a few months:

The initial thoughts were black bases – repair gouges, restructure base then edge & wax, whereas white just clean off the rust then a coat of wax. However the base flatness check revealed seriously convex bases on the black skis so a more heroic approach was required. Normally I’d recommend a quick trip to Blues to drop off the skis for a base grind but that’s a 10 day turnaround as they make their way to Edinburgh & back so instead the new SkiVisions base planer (strapline – “this machine eats skis”) was taken out of its cage:
I know it just looks like a file in an ergonomic holder but what a file!  Absolutely brutal. Anyway you really need to check flatness after each run to make sure that you don’t consume the entire ski.

Once the base was flat the base edges needed to be reset properly – usually they just need a swipe to keep them clean. However Volkl didn’t pay the extra for the tough steel that DPS use so it wasn’t too onerous a task to reset them to 1 degree. Side edges on Volkls are two degrees and again easy to get them sorted.

Two coats of wax and the worst of the shark bites were gone and the bases were ready to be shown off in polite company:

The white bases on the other hand were proving more problematical. The edges were fine, just rusty – but so rusty that it started turning into a full edge & wax which wasn’t really required. Also the bases were soaking up the brown goo developed by the diamond file lube & the rust getting to know one another. So a halt was called before the white bases turned completely brown. As if that wasn’t bad enough actually waxing white bases is a nightmare – I suspect these ones are extruded rather than sintered as they positively repelled the wax at first then when you are scraping you just can’t tell how you’re getting on the way you can with black bases.

Anyway they are done and look – on top of everything else they are impossible to photograph nicely! I’m definitely not a fan – a new prejudice to add to my collection!

Colin also left a pair of DPS Wailers. Not a brand I am too familiar with, so off to the website for more info: https://www.dpsskis.com/

First thing to hit me is the pricing.  Ouch! The Wailers cost more than my car, especially once the Carbon Fibre & Unobtanium bindings are added.

Second thing is the finish:

To say they are plain would be to wildly understate how dull they are. Grey crackle plastic anyone?

Thirdly this is the first ski website I have seen that states clearly what the owner should ask for at the tuning shop. Why don’t all manufacturers do that?

 

 

But the real shock comes when you pick them up and find that they weigh half what typical all-mountain skis weigh.  Despite the fact they are twice as big. Here they are under my Atomics. 2cm wider, 20cm longer and half the weight.

 

 

That makes for some challenges. No mass, basically a carbon fibre sandwich, and carbon fibre is dismal at heat transfer. Which basically means that you are three times more likely to burn the bases when you do any work on them as the heat has nowhere to go. And there is work to be done…

 

 

 

 

But wait a second, unlike most skis the edges seem to be especially resistant to gouging. Plus they’re slightly wider than usual.  And what’s that weird corkscrew of steel?

 

 

 

 

And those strange transverse scratches, just visible on the left? Curioser & curioser.

Anyway, out with the true bar and we find both skis are very slightly concave, but we should be able to  bring it down just with base edge filing.

Not much demand for 1.5 degree base so the file guide is still in the box.

But even with the hard chrome file the edges take ages to show progress.

 

Finally the concavity is sorted and it’s time to P-Tex the gouges.  Remembering that the heat has nowhere to go I end up taking three bites of the cherry to get all the gouges, getting a few more each time but all the while aware that a few seconds too long with the heat gun will lead to much wailing and gnashing of teeth as the matrix buckles, melts or worse.  The gouges near the edges are especially reluctant to play ball. Finally, with a lot of pussyfooting, we’re there.

A few strokes with the structure tool, a final check on flatness and time to sort the side edges.  Again they seem to be especially hard.  And maybe there is a bit more width than normal.  Slowly it is dawning on me that DPS have made a set of skis that they expect to be looked after – they have used special, wider edges, made of tougher steel that resist gouging but that can be sharpened for ever.  The sidewalls are set back from the edges so no need for planing – the edge is well exposed.  Even the base seems to be tougher to plane than normal.  You pay a lot for these skis but you get feather weight and real enthusiast’s tunability, rather than fancy graphics.  But you wouldn’t necessarily spot that in the shop – it only dawned on me after working on them.

Even waxing is walking a tightrope, with the low heat resistance of the skis. To play safe I check the melting point of the various waxes in the cupboard and the Zoom universal claims the lowest so it’s a bit of thermostat fiddling then two coats of Zoom to avoid overheating the bases.

Once they’re done they fairly glow and the initial gouges are nowhere to be seen. You would still have to know that these are top drawer skis as they don’t shout out their class.

So a real learning experience for me and I will be looking out for DPS riders in future as they clearly know their onions.

 

Colin dropped off a couple of pairs of skis for a makeover. These are proper backcountry skis – long, quite wide with featherweight Dynafit touring bindings and grommets for your skins.

The K2s have seen some life with heavy scoring on the bases and grooved edges:

We can’t file these right down so the edges will have some bumps. However these skis aren’t for winning at slalom so perfect edges shouldn’t be critical.

 

We can fill the base gouges though.

 

Once the skis are dewaxed it’s time to check the bases for flatness with lamp & true bar. We’re looking for a hair’s breadth of light right across the base:

Doesn’t get much better than that.  So our job is to fill the gouges, flatten the P-tex and return decent structure to the bases.

 

Plastic surgery never looks pretty right after the theatre…

 

 

 

…but after a lot of P-tex shaving and a few runs with the structure stone it’s looking a lot nicer.

 

 

K2 recommend 1 degree base bevel and 2 degrees edge so that’s what we do this time.

With steel file followed by 200 grit and 600 grit diamond files, the edges take a nice polish but if you look closely below you can see that the serious grooves would need another 0.5 mm off the base to get a perfect edge. That’s too much material lost for a ski that is supposed to be surfing waist deep powder rather than carving hard pistes so we’ll live with it.

 

Base wax followed by Zoom all-season universal wax on top

 

 

 

Nicely shined up after a good scrape & brush

 

 

Now they’re back in shape they should only need occasional waxing and a light swipe on the edges with a diamond file to last the entire season.

Now onto Colin’s DPS Wailers – will post a few pics of them in a day or two.