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Dave and Mark dropped off 3 sets of skis between them – Dave’s Scott Superguides got a good going over ages ago when I fixed his stray edge, and Mark was a recent convert just dropping off more planks for some TLC. It’s always nice to see repaired kit back after it’s had some serious use and Dave had taken no prisoners in his efforts to wear down Scotland’s mountains just using his ski bases. Mark’s skis had gone a long time without any love & attention as well. These pictures more or less reflect the state of all 6 planks:

It took quite a bit of P-Tex to fill in the worst of the gouges. As always the critical scratches are the cross-wise ones – the longitudinal grooves end up as part of the renewed structure unless they’re really deep.

You can see a few transverse scratches still left but generally these are too shallow to fill and pretty much disappear as the base is scraped and then restructured.

One thing about restructuring bases is the phenomenal amount of wax they suck up. Once the edges were sorted – no trauma here, they were more or less at factory settings, just a bit blunt – the pink “base renew” wax was gulped down like someone returning from a week in the desert who has just been handed a pint of chilled fermented beverage. Once that was soaked in for an hour or so it got scraped off, the green universal top wax was added and finally everything scrubbed up beautifully:

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:

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.

Marielle dropped off her son’s Atomic Redsters for an edge & wax. I tried to take a couple of snaps but they really didn’t turn out well so you’ll just have to use your imagination.

A quick check revealed that the bases were only very slightly concave, which was good – some Atomics are really concave and benefit from being ground closer to flat – not a five minute job with my manual tools.

The second thing I noticed was that all the scratching was longitudinal – no transverse gouges at all. For me this is the mark of someone who actually skis, rather than sliding. I’ve never seen the owner actually skiing so I can’t comment definitively but the planks look like they’re used by someone with good technique.

As is often the case with kids’ equipment the scratches were very minor and the edges in pretty good shape – children just don’t have the body mass to really mess up their equipment. However there were three little scallops on one edge that I couldn’t quite figure out – they were behind the heel binding so they weren’t park damage, which is always directly underfoot. They were deep enough that I couldn’t file them out completely. So, only one damaged edge means that we make sure that ski is always on the right foot from now on so it’s not a tragedy.

As always the Atomics run a 1 degree base/3 degree edge bevel and these were no exception.

The bases are proper all black bases, easy to work on and they give a gratifyingly high shine when polished.

Finally as an Aberdeen Snowsports member Marielle got a discount and a couple of foam/velcro ski straps for her own skis.

Emily is a stalwart member of Scotland’s largest cycling club, Deeside Thistle, and is therefore a Friend of the ManCave. In the current language of online marketing this “unlocks” outstanding discounts to the already very reasonable rates.

Emily dropped off two boards, a used Rome and a brand new Salomon Highpath Splitboard.

Regular readers of the blog will know that I’m a fan of proper 100% black bases. They’re made of the proper P-Tex, lovely long chain polyethylene strands all squeezed together to make a nice firm base but with plenty of space between the PE strands to suck up hot liquidy wax. I’ve never seen it confirmed but I’m certain that black P-Tex has carbon black in there to protect the chains against UV light, just like black ty-wraps – that’s why you should only ever use black ty-wraps for outdoor applications – today’s free life hack from the Cave.

If you want to make the ski tech’s life a bit more tricky you can select a board with a few blocks of colour. The scratches don’t really care about your bold patches of colour and zoom through them all, making for blotchy repairs where the black base and colours meet. Not the end of the world though.

Emily’s Rome took things to a whole new level with a screen printed design on the base:

Now generally I like a challenge but this is taking things a bit far. Fortunately there was very little damage to the base, just some weird half-moon dings…

…and very light scratches that didn’t actually scratch the edges, so really superficial (note lightly rusted base edge as well):

Following the very light base repairs and hardly any swearing at the black/white transitions, it was time to sort the edges. Rome is a fancy label of Burton, rather like Lexus is to Toyota, so I figured they’d be running base 1 degree/edge 1 degree. The website looked like it was going to help but came up with a not very helpful “edges are 90 degrees”, meaning they could be 7 and 7 degrees if they wanted. The usual way to find out is to colour up the edges with a sharpie and run the file over the edge in your suspected angle. which revealed not only that they’re approximately 1/1 but also that they’d never been sharpened before, as the sidewall was flush with the side edge:

You need to cut away a mm or so of the sidewall to fettle the side edges so carefully avoiding the thought provoking latin:

Edging the Rome presented no problems and it took a couple of coats of wax very nicely. Photos at the bottom of this post.

The Salomon Highpath Split Board was an interesting one, brand new and Emily was only after a few coats of wax to get the base started. I like the split concept of tramping up to an inaccessible pinnacle somewhere then trying to get back to safety in one piece. I’m not so convinced that two little latches will give the board the structural integrity you might be hoping for when you’re having a battle against the mountain but then I’ll never be the person in that position.

It was noticeable as soon as you started to handle the board that the edges were supersharp with a burr in one direction that was like a knife blade. “No worries” I cavalierly stated, “I’ll just knock the burr back as part of the wax job”.

So even though I wasn’t supposed to be investing time in the edges I couldn’t help but notice that the base edges didn’t seem to have any bevel at all. They’re just flush wth the base. This seems unlikely as the whole point of base bevel is to stop the edges grabbing when you’re going in the straight line with a flat board. The orthodoxy, for skis at least, is that you might run 0.5-0.7 degrees if you’re a racer looking for fastest possible turn response; 1 degree for most mortals and 1.5-2 degrees for freestyle and park types who really just want to keep the edges out of the way. But no-one would specify 0 degrees base bevel (except Bataleon, who put wings on their boards to keep the edges way off the ground). So, luckily, the brief on this job wasn’t to fettle the edges beyond using 200 grit file to take the worst of the burr. However I’m assuming that the board might well reappear in the Cave in the future so I had a peep at the side edges as well. Salomon charge a lot for this board and have quite a lot of info on their website as well as various YouTube videos explaining all their tech. They state that the board has 2 degrees side bevel in the middle and one degree at the tips, and sure enough I was able to photograph the transition:

Again I wasn’t charging to look at the edges but couldn’t help inking them up and giving them a swipe, only to find I couldn’t replicate either angle with my file guides of 1, 2 & 3 degrees. So who knows. The side angle is relative to the base of the board, not the base edge so it didn’t matter that the base edge was still under suspicion. Just another snowsports mystery I guess.

So going back to the actual task in hand, waxing the base, there were a couple more anomalies compared to normal practice. Usually skis and boards will ship with transit wax to protect the base & edges. It’s cheap as chips (I have a couple of blocks of it in the cave, still waiting for the first client to ask for an oversummer protective wax) with no clever additives and tends to be quite brittle when you come to scrape it off so it’s worth gently warming the base first before scraping. The Highpath just didn’t appear to have a gram of wax on it. Nada de nada. Also, the base had a weird sort of speckled effect, like the cheapest worktop you can find. Is it made from recycled P-Tex or something? Why yes! According to Salomon it’s made from “100% recycled base and bio-resin”. Anyway the base proved to be a right faff to work with, as it’s not really flat in any orientation, making ironing in the wax fiddly. Obviously bases that are hard to iron are horrible to scrape as the scraper is expecting to find flat surfaces. Finally the two coats were scraped and the topcoat polished but throughout the base seemed to be very reluctant to absorb any wax. Very odd and I’ll be interested to see what it looks like after a week’s use.

Here are the final pics of both boards ready to be picked up:

Richard has brought his own skis in for service before and this time he excelled himself by bringing two pairs in the height of summer – no chilblains for me this time. Both sets were direct from China specials and as such were probably at an attractive price point. A bit of Google stalking for Hasiky led to this Alibaba sub site for Hasiky, which features an interesting wee video of the hard-working employees layering up a board, adding epoxy and sticking it in a mould for shaping/curing. If you delve deeper they drop into the text that they either still do or have in the past made K2 skis there.

Anyway what had Richard done to his skis since their last service? They didn’t look too bad on first glance but as is often the case they needed more base work done than I expected:

However there were no terminal gouges and the edges were still in pretty good shape, so as they’d already been fettled by me previously they needed very little elbow grease to get them singing again.

The distaff side of the relationship presented a set of Nico skis, also direct from the People’s Republic. The bases were in OK shape but goodness me the edges were all over the place. Richard reckoned that they’d never been serviced so the edges must be what they left the factory with plus some wear and tear.

The closest I could find to the existing edges was side 1/base 1 so that’s what they got but it was a real struggle to get them there with the wildly varying angles.

As always I feel better disposed to skis once they’ve been waxed & polished up so I’m actually looking forward to seeing these one back again – they’re made to a decent standard, nothing delaminating, bases flat so better than some of the European-branded planks that come to the Cave.

In keeping wth the main trend of the 22/23 season Iain is another multi-repeat client. Normally that means a nice straightforward job just following the last edging job. However, he managed to smuggle in a new-to-him set of Atomics that had clearly had a hard life. I can only imagine that many long hours in the park, specifically on the rails, can give you edges like these:

I’d handed these over to Andrii, 2022’s ski tech apprentice of the year, to complete so obviously I was in the pub when he called to ask what to do next. When I finally met the edges face to face I realised that no amount of filing could sort them properly. They did get a good seeing too, and I made £20 from selling the swarf to Pandarosa, so not all bad, but finally we had to stop. The key problem here is that you ride the rails with the edge directly under the centre of the boot (or at least you do if you want to keep off the “massive fail” section of YouTube) and of course when you finally want to turn on hard ice that is the same area you want to have a lovely sharp edge. However, Andrii pointed out that the damage is only on one side of each ski so you could run them on the correct feet for actual skiing and the wrong feet for park rail fun. Just goes to show why we should all have diversity our hiring process.

Once the Atomics were sorted it was time to sort the Bataleon DOA, which had also seen some serious use since it last graced the Cave with its presence. Regular readers will remember that Bataleon boards have longitudinal “wings” that lift up at the edges, so they think it’s OK to run the base edges with 0 degrees. Hmmmm. Once the base edges get scratched up (yes I’m looking at you Iain) it’s a bummer trying to file out the scratches as you end up filing the base as well as the metal. Last time I wrapped some masking tape around the file to give the lowest possible angle and trying the same trick again sort of worked without giving gorgeous results. Side edges are 1 degree and presented no problems other than the usual stainless thing of not wanting to take a decent edge until your files are all bald.

The Bataleon did present a good opportunity to get some base repair training in for Andrii and here are a couple of pics of him hard at it with his nice new Drager mask:

I like Andrii’s attitude – tell him what to do and he gets on with it regardless of the palls of acrid carcinogenic smoke wreathing his face. It reminds me that I need new filters for my respirator as well.

Finally the Black Crows were an absolute dream to work on – last done by me, no serious new damage: bish, bash and, frankly, bosh. Job’s a good ‘un. Still trying to explain to Andrii why all jobs aren’t quite so simple.

Here are the usual suspects lined up for the inevitable identity parade:

Martin has been a loyal client of the Cave for a few years now and regular readers may remember his Capita DOA from a previous post. He dropped off the DOA plus a couple of baby boards for some early-season fettling. It’s always a pleasure to work on gear when it’s still above freezing – hint hint.

The DOA looked pretty good but had some rust and a couple of small nicks in one of the edges so unlike last time when I just gave the (brand new) edges a light once over this time they got a proper seeing to. Capita claim base and side edges are both 1.5 degrees but inspection last time revealed the side edges were 1 degree at the edge and 2 degrees right next to the base – so yes 1.5 degrees on average I suppose. This time it was necessary to clean up the side edges properly so they are a nice shiny 2 degrees now with no sign of the striations that had been left by the grinder that Capita used for the (somewhat peremptory) factory set.

One of the baby boards is a Burton with straightforward 1 degree base & side edges, like almost all snowboards, but the other board (an APO – had to look that one up) had, bizarrely, 1.5 base & side edges, definitely today’s quirky choice. Both the baby boards had noticeably concave bases, not worth fixing for a beginner board, but the APO also had one edge sunk very slightly below the level of the base. In practice this just means that we end up filing some of the base when we file the base edges – nothing critical, just another symptom of banging out low-cost boards as cheaply as possible. As noted previously no-one makes 1.5 degree side edge file guides so the board now boasts shiny 2 degree edges just like quirky uncle Capita.

Finally just a quick note that Andrii, one of my Ukrainian guests, has been training in the Cave and the baby Burton was his first completely solo job. Hopefully the improved flow of equipment after the last 2 wilderness years will give him plenty to get on with while I make some hay in the enhanced oil price environment.

Hugo dropped off some skis a couple of seasons ago so he qualified for the satisfied returning client discount. I happily took in his Dynastar Chams (supposed to be “born in Chamonix”, not sure what that means). Sharp-eyed readers will have spotted that the cover photo for this site was taken high above the Chamonix valley and I’m not going to pretend that I don’t have a soft spot for the area.

Suitably softened up by fond memories of my daughters learning to ski while staying at the Club Med in Chamonix (tip: just tell the ESF that your kids are 5 years old, they don’t check) I took the Chams to the Cave only to find that they had suffered an amateurish disc grinding edging at some point in the past. You need to look closely but you can see the dark areas every centimetre or so:

Anyway the damage to the edge in question was much easier to see than to photograph. Regular readers will already know that crap edging jobs don’t just leave you with dodgy angles, they harden the steel from which the edge is made, so when the next tech comes along they’re left with the thankless task of breaking through the hardening before they can apply a nice, smooth, stylish edge. Which takes ages. But it’s worth it 🙂

Here are Hugo’s skis following a bit of base repair, edging & waxing:

You know those adverts for DIY stores, where a guy in spotless white overalls is standing painting the centre of a big, perfectly flat wall? It makes it look easy, and glosses over (see what I did there?) the hassle of stripping the old wallpaper, filling holes, skimming, letting it all dry, sanding, priming, letting it all dry, clearing up all the dust, then painting the fiddly corners, high parts of the wall, low parts of the…you know what I mean. I’ve seen a few YouTube vids of ski techs tackling base repair jobs without any meaningful discussion of what process they went through to decide exactly how to sort the repair. For instance, take a look at Ben’s Atomic Backlanders which have clearly suffered a wee ding:

So there are a few ways you can approach core shots like this. If it’s a big area it’s worth cutting a P-tex patch to fit, aralditing it to the base, giving it a day or two to get really strong then blending it in with repair P-tex and your base doc iron. However we have a long narrow gouge and it’s thin gauge P-tex (common on touring skis to keep the weight down) and I’m out of skinny P-tex so it needs to be filled with repair P-tex. P-tex doesn’t stick to fibreglass so you either glue a bit of cotton fabric into the hole, to give the P-tex something to grab, or you can line the fibreglass with Metalgrip – basically P-tex with added glue. This is handy as you can fill the remaining gap with P-tex the same day rather than waiting 24 hours for the glue to set. It doesn’t work on big holes as the heat to melt the P-tex tends to re-melt the Metalgrip and give depressions that just can’t be filled. However a narrow gouge like Ben’s is a good candidate.

So once that’s done we can take a look at the edges:

Although the edges looked horrible they were still the original 1 degree base and 3 degrees edge like all Atomics, and they had never been brutalised by a cack-handed service so they came up a treat.

Here are the Backlanders filled, structured, edged, with base & top wax and ready to go:

And here’s a quick snap of the unbranded foamy velcro-ey ski straps that you can add to your order for only £3 a pair if you want to keep your bases shiny on the way to the slopes: