my poor knees
Member
Hey people, new guy here, long winded post but season's over for me so thought I would strike up a tuning thread. I skied about 100 days tops on my Volke tiger sharks and they're shot already. I ski very aggressively in moguls and trees and like many at Killington I hit and slide across rocks. They took quite a beating and have a split edge and a huge hole down to the core. They were repaired and patched but the patch never holds and keeps falling out. There's supposed to be a better material than p-tex but out of the 1/2 dozen shops that tried to repair them, all used ptex and none of the repairs lasted more than one outing. I'm tired pf paying these shops to tune my skis and I may be wrong but the "machines" they use don't seem to do a very good job. All the pros on youtube do it by hand so I'm thinking that's the way to go on my new virgin skis.
I used to tune my own and have most of the tools but gave up do to lack of confidence and laziness. Now that I watched all these youtube videos I realize I was doing it pretty good just not often enough. Now that I have been skiing for many years I am realizing the importance of sharp edges and tuning and want to keep the new skis tuned properly so I'm going to attempt to do them myself by hand from now on. I'll keep the base at a 1 degree and sides at 3. After only 3 days on my new skis I can already feel burrs and dings. I have the beast edger and base tools and all the associated diamond stones and files. I do my own waxing and scraping. What I am missing is a good brush for the structure and a good sidewall planer if I need one ? and a good set of vices.
So just wanted to share some of my experience and tips so tell me if I'm right or wrong. I usually go skiing 3 -4 days at a time, I'm not going to tune them everyday, MAYBE hit them with the gummy but I now realize they need attention after every trip. My plan is to knock off the burrs on the base, the base is usually the quickest and easiest. The edges seem to have the most burrs which I knock off by hand slightly and finish with the edger and diamond stones. I work my way down to a fine stones until I can hear the tool glide without making any major grinding noises. Then I don't like to detune much, I pass the gummy over the edge with little to no pressure. Then I brush off the skis,hot wax and scrape ( metal scraper ) and take the wax from the edges. I don't usually brush the structure figuring the first few runs will take care of that? but I will start if I should. So should I stay away from the machines and keep tuning my new skis by hand or use the machines ?
I used to tune my own and have most of the tools but gave up do to lack of confidence and laziness. Now that I watched all these youtube videos I realize I was doing it pretty good just not often enough. Now that I have been skiing for many years I am realizing the importance of sharp edges and tuning and want to keep the new skis tuned properly so I'm going to attempt to do them myself by hand from now on. I'll keep the base at a 1 degree and sides at 3. After only 3 days on my new skis I can already feel burrs and dings. I have the beast edger and base tools and all the associated diamond stones and files. I do my own waxing and scraping. What I am missing is a good brush for the structure and a good sidewall planer if I need one ? and a good set of vices.
So just wanted to share some of my experience and tips so tell me if I'm right or wrong. I usually go skiing 3 -4 days at a time, I'm not going to tune them everyday, MAYBE hit them with the gummy but I now realize they need attention after every trip. My plan is to knock off the burrs on the base, the base is usually the quickest and easiest. The edges seem to have the most burrs which I knock off by hand slightly and finish with the edger and diamond stones. I work my way down to a fine stones until I can hear the tool glide without making any major grinding noises. Then I don't like to detune much, I pass the gummy over the edge with little to no pressure. Then I brush off the skis,hot wax and scrape ( metal scraper ) and take the wax from the edges. I don't usually brush the structure figuring the first few runs will take care of that? but I will start if I should. So should I stay away from the machines and keep tuning my new skis by hand or use the machines ?