As with many things in life, the better you take care of your skis, the better they will perform for you. Here’s a list of tips to help you maintain your XC ski bases so you get the highest performance and a longer life out of them. Summer Storage Checking Base Flatness Peeling & Scraping [...]
Posted in Base Preparation, Tech Tip - Written by Sierra Nordic on November 16, 2011Place a scraper across the width and sight down the base to look for any gaps or unevenness across the width of the ski base. A true bar (roll pin) can also be used and is essential on clear bases. Check the ski at several points along the entire base. It is quite possible for [...]
Posted in Base Preparation - Written by Sierra Nordic on November 16, 2011Sharp leading edges are undesirable on cross country skis because they make the skis grabby. With skating skis, a sharp edge will cause the ski to hook into the snow during the push-off, slowing the ski. The front 12-14 inches and the rear 5-6 inches of the edges should be made quite round. To determine [...]
Posted in Base Preparation - Written by Sierra Nordic on November 16, 2011DE-BURR THE BASE Structuring a ski can rough up the surface of the base, even if there are no visible hairs of base material. Start by going over the base with a brass brush. While adding very fine structure brass brushing also lines all the surface fibers parallel with the direction of travel. Brush in [...]
Posted in Base Preparation - Written by Sierra Nordic on November 16, 2011SHARPENING STEEL SCRAPERS At SIERRA NORDIC our preferred steel scrapers are the thin ones made by Sandvik for fine woodworking. Keep the steel scraper sharp by drawing it across a mill bastard file. Place the file on a bench and pull the scraper (held vertical, perpendicular to the file) across the file. Don’t put the [...]
Posted in Base Preparation, Tech Tip - Written by Sierra Nordic on November 16, 2011WAXING (return to top) After the bases are peeled and structured, they must be immediately waxed to prevent oxidation. Brand new skis should be waxed with a pure paraffin wax, without any additives like silicon, graphite, or fluorocarbons. Testing of different waxes from all the wax companies has found the Uniblock yellow wax from STAR [...]
Posted in Tech Tip, Waxing - Written by Sierra Nordic on November 16, 2011STRUCTURE When a ski moves across snow, the snow crystals are melted from pressure at the point of contact and the ski glides on a thin film of water at each contact point. A water droplet can become attracted to both a snow crystal and the ski base. As the ski base moves, the water [...]
Posted in Base Preparation - Written by Sierra Nordic on November 16, 2011When the season ends, the ideal treatment for ski bases is to iron a layer of wax onto the glide surfaces and then leave this thin layer on the bases all summer. Waxable diagonal stride skis should have any kick wax or klister cleaned off, then 2 or 3 layers of either green kick wax [...]
Posted in Base Preparation - Written by Sierra Nordic on November 16, 2011For optimum performance, the bases of skis need to be flat both side-to-side and down the length. Bases that are high at the edges (“railed”) tend to be grabby when on edge. The skis behave unpredictably, especially when skating or in turns. When the center of the base is high (“base high”), the skis tend [...]
Posted in Base Preparation - Written by Sierra Nordic on November 16, 2011Early in the season it seems that I’m not as organized as I’d like to be. Everything takes a little longer than it will later in the year. Ever heard of the plumber whose pipes leak? The mechanic whose car knocks? That’s me, the ski tech with neglected skis. I usually have little time to [...]
Posted in Tech Tip, Waxing - Written by Sierra Nordic on November 15, 2011Loading...
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