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To wax or not to wax...

jack97

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As for time, I just waxed mine earlier today, took about 12 minutes. I'll scrape them and brush them for 5 before I head out tomorrow morning.

I've gotten to a point of just scraping, I don't bother with brushing.
 

Bumpsis

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Waxed ski does feel better but waxing is hardly a necessity. The only time I really will take the time and get serious about waxing is spring time where wet snow can be a drag, I mean, real drag.
Good application of some soft wax like Toko silver makes for smooth running in spring.
 

eatskisleep

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My Routine has always been like this:

Wax
Let wax dry for awhile
Scrape
Brush
Cork
Brush
 

Jay's Dip Powcher

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yes, wax.....it helps in all aspects of your ski, like putting oil in your car....put it this way, it cannont hurt to have wax on your skis....you paid alot of money for your skis, take care of em....

This is a really good rule of thumb. I am amazed...and I mean amazed by the amount of answers saying waxing is not important. It is really not important I agree it is CRUCIAL. They make it for a reason and racers use it for a very good reason. If skis came with a owners manual it would not recommend it it would demand it like a timing belt, to use the car example. Sure you can go without it but do you really want to for a long period of time? The answer is clearly no, Wax is cheap and learning how to do it yourself is cheaper, no excuses you need to wax and it is imperative for skier as well as for the ski itself.
Yes I wax everytime after skiing and yes I wax them myself. I have had several pairs of skis that only recieved sharpening and no wax for there entire life and I have to say waxing is far better at least for me. Try waxing and compare for awhile then let's see how the answers are.
I agree a $30 tune up /wax sounds crappy, invest in the tools and knowledge. Teach one how to fish and they will eat for a lifetime :grin:
 

Goblin84

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im not skiing this weekend (stupid work...which is where I am now so not working too hard)

I feel like I have this void in my life, something missing. My skis dont need tuning until next week.... I might just knock on our neighboors doors to see if i can tune their skis to give me a pair to do.
 

BeanoNYC

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OK, can someone explain to me the wax "codes?" I have some bars that are CH12 one that is CH6 and another all purpose that isn't coded. I understand that the CH6 is a harder Hydrocarbon wax. (I learned real quick when I scraped it!.) This should be used in colder dry snow, no? Also my CH12 comes in three different temperatures. What's up with that? How does the same hardness of wax span three different temperatures? School me, boys.
 

Goblin84

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CH is the hardness of the wax. The lower the number the harder the wax. The waxes all act a bit differently. Below is a basic wax chart for hydro wax. If your just getting into waxing you can pretty much stick to charts, racers go a little more indepth into it (humidty of snow, type of course, type of snow, top speed vs acceleration).

As for different temps for a CH12 wax...i got nothing for you.

and Universal wax doesnt have a code because...well its universal and goes on all


http://www.salchaskiclub.org/waxing_glidewaxchart.html
 

kbroderick

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CH12 appears to be a combi pack with one each of CH7, CH8, and CH10, as sold here.

As far as particular temperature ranges for a given wax, you can also check the source--the Swix racing wax manual. If that link doesn't work (it may be a one-off, I'm not sure), you can find it from here, which also has a "Wax Wizard" available.
 

BeanoNYC

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CH12 appears to be a combi pack with one each of CH7, CH8, and CH10, as sold here.

As far as particular temperature ranges for a given wax, you can also check the source--the Swix racing wax manual. If that link doesn't work (it may be a one-off, I'm not sure), you can find it from here, which also has a "Wax Wizard" available.

That's it! Explains a lot...thanks.
 

Marc

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This is a really good rule of thumb. I am amazed...and I mean amazed by the amount of answers saying waxing is not important. It is really not important I agree it is CRUCIAL. They make it for a reason and racers use it for a very good reason. If skis came with a owners manual it would not recommend it it would demand it like a timing belt, to use the car example. Sure you can go without it but do you really want to for a long period of time? The answer is clearly no, Wax is cheap and learning how to do it yourself is cheaper, no excuses you need to wax and it is imperative for skier as well as for the ski itself.
Yes I wax everytime after skiing and yes I wax them myself. I have had several pairs of skis that only recieved sharpening and no wax for there entire life and I have to say waxing is far better at least for me. Try waxing and compare for awhile then let's see how the answers are.
I agree a $30 tune up /wax sounds crappy, invest in the tools and knowledge. Teach one how to fish and they will eat for a lifetime :grin:

I'm tired, so this may be an incoherent, but- I never used the blanket statement that wax isn't important. My advice always comes with caveats because I know everyone isn't me. Yes, I maintain my own equipment for most things I do, but I try to do it intelligently. The reason skis don't come with an owner's manual is because it is not necessary. It's a piece of foam or wood sandwiched with composite reinforced epoxy and a sheet of sintered UHMWPE stuck on the bottom with some hardened steel edges stuck in the side.

If it were imperative for me as a skier, as you say, to wax my skis religiously, clearly I would. Since I don't, clearly it isn't imperative for all skiers. I could repack the hubs on my bike every week, but since ball bearings are cheap, it is unnecessary and the benefits of doing it don't outweigh the work involved even though it isn't much more work than waxing a pair of skis.

It's great that racers wax their skis constantly. They do it for a reason yes, to get the lowest friction coef. possible. That's just not important to me when I'm scraping over thinly covered rocks on a steep tree run.

The answer is, you have to find out what works for you. The way I use my skis, as was poignantly stated previously, I will end up breaking them, or de-laminating them, or blowing out an edge far before they will somehow be unskiable from not waxing them. And as a sidebar, I might point out, no one has answered me what specifically happens to them beyond saying they "dry out." Give me something more solid. What happens to the PE? Does it oxidize? Does it form a protective oxide film? Does nothing happen? Well anyway, I'm on my way to bed, rant off. Although I'm kinda hoping Steve and Austin pop in to back me up on this. At any rate, not waxing your skis ever week is not a sign of being lazy with maintenance, intelligent, maybe; lazy, no.
 

56fish

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If it were imperative for me as a skier, as you say, to wax my skis religiously, clearly I would. Since I don't, clearly it isn't imperative for all skiers. I could repack the hubs on my bike every week, but since ball bearings are cheap, it is unnecessary and the benefits of doing it don't outweigh the work involved even though it isn't much more work than waxing a pair of skis.

And as a sidebar, I might point out, no one has answered me what specifically happens to them beyond saying they "dry out." Give me something more solid. What happens to the PE? Does it oxidize? Does it form a protective oxide film? Does nothing happen?

Stainless/ceramic (bearings) don't wear quite as fast as PE.... Check address below for answer to sidebar...tmi for me!

http://www.skiwax.ca/tp/whitepatch.php
 

Marc

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Stainless/ceramic (bearings) don't wear quite as fast as PE.... Check address below for answer to sidebar...tmi for me!

http://www.skiwax.ca/tp/whitepatch.php

First off, another blanket statement for which there is not response. Being that the bearings in my bike and the PE on my skis are completely different applications with completely different working conditions, saying something like that doesn't really even make any sense. Apples to oranges.

Second, the website, you provided is hardly unbiased seeing as how they sell ski wax, and they provided no information that I didn't already know. It didn't answer any of my questions. And further more, even if they offered some useful information, how could I take their website seriously when they publish stuff like this:

When snow is very cold it is much harder and unyielding than at warmer temperatures. This results in the wax being worn away more quickly. Snow that has aged will have lost its nice snowflake structure and now look more like a small ice crystal. Aged snow is thus more dense than a snowflake and is more abrasive. Man-made is not the same as natural snow. Natural snow forms over tens of minutes or hours; man-made snow is formed in seconds. The resulting crystal is similar to aged snow, but with the crystal having sharp edges. This makes man-made snow the most abrasive of all until aging take the sharp edges off.
 

56fish

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First off, another blanket statement for which there is not response. Being that the bearings in my bike and the PE on my skis are completely different applications with completely different working conditions, saying something like that doesn't really even make any sense. Apples to oranges.

Kinda what I thought the first time you stated that.:roll:
 

kbroderick

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The answer is, you have to find out what works for you. The way I use my skis, as was poignantly stated previously, I will end up breaking them, or de-laminating them, or blowing out an edge far before they will somehow be unskiable from not waxing them. And as a sidebar, I might point out, no one has answered me what specifically happens to them beyond saying they "dry out." Give me something more solid. What happens to the PE? Does it oxidize? Does it form a protective oxide film? Does nothing happen? Well anyway, I'm on my way to bed, rant off. Although I'm kinda hoping Steve and Austin pop in to back me up on this. At any rate, not waxing your skis ever week is not a sign of being lazy with maintenance, intelligent, maybe; lazy, no.

The bases will oxidize (at least the top layer; I'm not sure how deep said oxidation penetrates), and you'll get more and more "base burn", which is micro-level damage of the structure. I've seen microscope photos of this, and it basically means that you're dragging a bunch of p-tex hairs on the snow. It's not fast, and it's particularly problematic on manmade snow due to more aggressive crystal shapes.

I wholly expect to trash my patrol skis within two seasons, tops, but I still tune and wax them every week or two. It helps that I'm tuning my beer league skis anyhow, so I'm already in the shop, but I still feel that the time it takes to wax the other skis is worthwhile. Better glide is a good thing, even on skis that go places that result in ski damage. One place it's particularly noticeable is when poking around in the woods on pitches that have less-than-ideal steepness for alpine skiing and on traverses getting to and from the goods.
 

kbroderick

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Second, the website, you provided is hardly unbiased seeing as how they sell ski wax, and they provided no information that I didn't already know. It didn't answer any of my questions. And further more, even if they offered some useful information, how could I take their website seriously when they publish stuff like this:

When snow is very cold it is much harder and unyielding than at warmer temperatures. This results in the wax being worn away more quickly. Snow that has aged will have lost its nice snowflake structure and now look more like a small ice crystal. Aged snow is thus more dense than a snowflake and is more abrasive. Man-made is not the same as natural snow. Natural snow forms over tens of minutes or hours; man-made snow is formed in seconds. The resulting crystal is similar to aged snow, but with the crystal having sharp edges. This makes man-made snow the most abrasive of all until aging take the sharp edges off.

Er, that seems to be largely correct (albeit not well-written) to me. Snow crystal structures are different depending on age, temperature, and method of formation, and more abrasive snow is more likely to cause white fuzzies (which I refer to as "base burn", contradicting the "base burn" definition of being an idiot with an iron offered by the website in question). Anecdotally, I haven't had a significant problem with white fuzzies since I moved to Vermont, whereas they were a constant issue when I was skiing at Sunday River all the time (and waxing quite often, too, as I was racing at the time).
 

Marc

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Kinda what I thought the first time you stated that.:roll:

This is very simple. I was using another example of what would be considered over maintenance to illustrate how I thought waxing every time out is over maintenance. I was not comparing the wear characteristics of ball bearings to polyethylene, you were.

The bases will oxidize (at least the top layer; I'm not sure how deep said oxidation penetrates), and you'll get more and more "base burn", which is micro-level damage of the structure. I've seen microscope photos of this, and it basically means that you're dragging a bunch of p-tex hairs on the snow. It's not fast, and it's particularly problematic on manmade snow due to more aggressive crystal shapes.

But the bases don't drag in snow anyway (or shouldn't, theoretically). The snow melts under the base as the base rides over it which allows the skis to slide. Wax simply makes the base less water permeable and therefore provides more lubricative fluid on which the ski slides.

Man made snow consists larger crystal sizes so I can see that it would be more resistant to melting because of its lower surface area to volume ratio. If the base oxidizes then I would imagine it would only do so on the surface similar to a corrosion resistant metal like aluminum or stainless. I've never seen a base left over the summer unwaxed become totall oxidized. Often, the white discoloration is barely visible and in any case, I have a pair of seven year old skis that have been left over all the summers of its life without wax and low and behold, the base is still there. Go figure.

Er, that seems to be largely correct (albeit not well-written) to me. Snow crystal structures are different depending on age, temperature, and method of formation, and more abrasive snow is more likely to cause white fuzzies (which I refer to as "base burn", contradicting the "base burn" definition of being an idiot with an iron offered by the website in question). Anecdotally, I haven't had a significant problem with white fuzzies since I moved to Vermont, whereas they were a constant issue when I was skiing at Sunday River all the time (and waxing quite often, too, as I was racing at the time).

Alright, I was a little confused at first by how everyone exactly used the term "base burn." In any case, I've never had it in any noticeable amount, nor has it ever really harmed a pair of skis I've had. Certainly it wouldn't take off as much material as stone grinding, and how many times do people have that done of the life of a ski? I appreciate the anecdotal evidence in this topic since there seems to be a lack of any hard data on the subject.

And this:

When snow is very cold it is much harder and unyielding than at warmer temperatures. This results in the wax being worn away more quickly. Snow that has aged will have lost its nice snowflake structure and now look more like a small ice crystal. Aged snow is thus more dense than a snowflake and is more abrasive. Man-made is not the same as natural snow. Natural snow forms over tens of minutes or hours; man-made snow is formed in seconds. The resulting crystal is similar to aged snow, but with the crystal having sharp edges. This makes man-made snow the most abrasive of all until aging take the sharp edges off.

is only partially correct and at any rate, is clearly written by someone who does not really know what they're talking about. Snow is not harder when it is colder, it just requires more energy to bring to its melting point, therefore the water layer at the snow/ski interface would be thinner and the snow may be more abrasive because of that reason. Aged snow can become facetted snow, yes, however "look more like a small ice crystal"??? Snow is a small ice crystal. But aged snow can also become rounded anyway and have signifcantly different properities than facetted snow.

At any rate, it is enough for me not to trust the rest of the website, and further, I still have no evidence before me to suggest waxing should be used for much more than making your ski slide faster.
 

Jay's Dip Powcher

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This is very simple. I was using another example of what would be considered over maintenance to illustrate how I thought waxing every time out is over maintenance. I was not comparing the wear characteristics of ball bearings to polyethylene, you were.



But the bases don't drag in snow anyway (or shouldn't, theoretically). The snow melts under the base as the base rides over it which allows the skis to slide. Wax simply makes the base less water permeable and therefore provides more lubricative fluid on which the ski slides.

Man made snow consists larger crystal sizes so I can see that it would be more resistant to melting because of its lower surface area to volume ratio. If the base oxidizes then I would imagine it would only do so on the surface similar to a corrosion resistant metal like aluminum or stainless. I've never seen a base left over the summer unwaxed become totall oxidized. Often, the white discoloration is barely visible and in any case, I have a pair of seven year old skis that have been left over all the summers of its life without wax and low and behold, the base is still there. Go figure.



Alright, I was a little confused at first by how everyone exactly used the term "base burn." In any case, I've never had it in any noticeable amount, nor has it ever really harmed a pair of skis I've had. Certainly it wouldn't take off as much material as stone grinding, and how many times do people have that done of the life of a ski? I appreciate the anecdotal evidence in this topic since there seems to be a lack of any hard data on the subject.

And this:



is only partially correct and at any rate, is clearly written by someone who does not really know what they're talking about. Snow is not harder when it is colder, it just requires more energy to bring to its melting point, therefore the water layer at the snow/ski interface would be thinner and the snow may be more abrasive because of that reason. Aged snow can become facetted snow, yes, however "look more like a small ice crystal"??? Snow is a small ice crystal. But aged snow can also become rounded anyway and have signifcantly different properities than facetted snow.

At any rate, it is enough for me not to trust the rest of the website, and further, I still have no evidence before me to suggest waxing should be used for much more than making your ski slide faster.


Well with all of this typing and resistance to drink the kool aid we are all drinking you could have waxed your skis about 5-7 times OR googled why it is important to wax your skis :lol:
 

kbroderick

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Man made snow consists larger crystal sizes so I can see that it would be more resistant to melting because of its lower surface area to volume ratio. If the base oxidizes then I would imagine it would only do so on the surface similar to a corrosion resistant metal like aluminum or stainless. I've never seen a base left over the summer unwaxed become totall oxidized. Often, the white discoloration is barely visible and in any case, I have a pair of seven year old skis that have been left over all the summers of its life without wax and low and behold, the base is still there. Go figure.

The bases won't oxidize into nothing, they just won't function as well. The oxidation process affects the microstructure, preventing wax from penetrating the ski should you decide to try it in the future. Otherwise, you just end up with a less-functional base structure, which will sometimes appear shiny and burnished rather than white and discolored.

Alright, I was a little confused at first by how everyone exactly used the term "base burn." In any case, I've never had it in any noticeable amount, nor has it ever really harmed a pair of skis I've had. Certainly it wouldn't take off as much material as stone grinding, and how many times do people have that done of the life of a ski? I appreciate the anecdotal evidence in this topic since there seems to be a lack of any hard data on the subject.

Base burn (i.e. the super-small white fuzzies caused by skiing on aggressive snow without adequate wax in the base) doesn't fully remove material, it only starts to pull it out. That--and the coincident damage to the microstructure of the base--is why it's a significant issue, particularly when glide is important. If the base burn isn't particularly severe, it can usually be remedied by using a steel scraper or a base planer to remove the offending material, wire brushing, and then waxing. If it's more severe, a stone grind (and the usual post-grind ski prep) will usually solve the problem.

At any rate, it is enough for me not to trust the rest of the website, and further, I still have no evidence before me to suggest waxing should be used for much more than making your ski slide faster.

Waxing doesn't just make your skis slide faster, it makes them slide more consistently, including when pivoting through a turn. If neither more consistent sliding nor faster gliding matters to you, then you probably have little reason to wax (other than, perhaps, to keep the base in better shape so that p-tex is better able to bond to it during repairs; however, I'm not sure how much difference the condition of the base matters in that scenario, anyhow).
 

drjeff

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If you don't want to wax the bases, then don't! It will just mean that on powder days, my freshly waxed skis will glide that much better and get me to the lift that much quicker, so my 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th tracks etc, will happen before yours! :rolleyes:
 
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