DON'T LET YOUR SKIS GO BAD OVER SUMMER
It's happened to everyone: you get back on snow and your gear doesn't work right. It doesn't glide or turn smoothly. You blame it on yourself. Maybe you're just rusty and out of shape.
That may not the case. The rust could be on your edges. And what's out of shape and holding you back---could be your bases.
If you don't protect your skis properly before putting them away for the warm months, they will deteriorate over the summer. Here's why: As you ski, you hit the occasional pebble or rock that scratches your base, leaving small holes where dirt, grooming machine oil and other impurities get into the base, causing slow spots. In addition, the friction from sliding over snow scrapes the base, creating microscopic "hairs." This makes unwaxed bases dry out, and they dry out even more over the warm months of summer, making them slow and harder to turn when the season starts again.
Then there's your edges, which may have gotten rust spots because they were put away with a small bit of mosture. Over the summer, that rust corrodes the metal, leaving pits which cause the skis to drag instead of glide.
The damage is doubled if you skied in the spring, when snow is usually salted. Salt is even more corrosive to bases and edges.
Mark and Matt Hodson, the ski tech geniuses who work at Sports Den in Foothill Village, tell how to make your skis like new before putting them away for the summer.
First, wash or hose them off good to get rid of any dirt or salt. Then, Mark says, "Have the bases filled in. Get a stone grind to get rid of hairs and scratches and make the base smooth. Have your edges filed and "trued" to get rid of nicks and burrs and restore the bevel (edge bevel allows the skis to turn easily)."
But the most important thing is to put a good protective coat of wax over the base, a baseprep wax that will keep things from drying out.
"You can do this yourself with a thrift store iron and a cheap bar of shop wax, or have it done. But make sure to thoroughly scrape the wax off the edges, off every part of the metal, because if moisture gets trapped between the edges and the wax, they will rust," Mark Hodson says.
He adds that now is a good time to buy wax from a shop, because it will be on sale, as will all other tuning equipment. It's good to have a stiff nylon brush, a scraper for wax removal and a diamond file to take burrs off edges.
Store skis in a cool, dry place, out of even indirect sunlight. All this info, by the way, holds true for snowboards as well.
Mark, who was a World Cup tech for the U. S. ski team, has extra advice for racers. "Race skis, especially super G or downhill skis, should not be ground, but should be hot scraped to get all the contaminants out. For racers, you're never done for the season. You should wax speed skis frequently, all summer long. The more you wax them, the faster they are."
He says that those racers going to summer camps should take care to wax the bases with a hard wax to protect them from burn and from the highly salted snow and glacier ice of summer.