Cold Weather Waxing Notes: COLD WEATHER WAXING Cold weather waxing is one of the hardest parts of this thing we call skiing. The waxes are rock hard and brittle, the snow is generally harsh and slow, and the waxes are hard to use and frustrating to work with. Here are some secrets of the trade that should help you get consistently fast results. • Every wax company should make their coldest waxes in powder form. They are easier to use, go onto the ski better, and generally yield better overall results. • Get a cheese grater and grind up any waxes that are not in powder form. This applies to every green wax on the market. Either take the grater to the wax right over the ski or grate an entire bar of wax in an old parmesan cheese container. Just make sure to clean the cheese container well, as Parmesan does not make a ski faster!!!! • The important thing is that you get A LOT of wax on the ski. This is crucial because the iron temps are so hot to melt these cold waxes that there is a risk of damaging your bases by not having enough coverage. The ski should be completely covered by wax, no base should be visible. This actually does not use as much wax as you would think. • After the ski is covered, take a tip to tail pass with the iron just like normal. On the first pass it may take a bit longer than usual, this is ok. Try to stick to approximately an eight second pass for the next five or six passes. • Although it is better to let the ski cool, it is a Catch 22 with extremely brittle and hard cold weather waxes. When you do let them cool, it is challenging to scrape the ski and it can take a long time. We have had great results with scraping the skis nearly immediately after waxing with the coldest weather waxes. They seem to retain their durability with no issues and there is no noticeable performance lapse. This being said, we also have had some great results with allowing the wax to cool completely. This will mean added work on your part, but if you can bear it then by all means, do. • A very important part of cold weather waxing is making sure there is some wax in the ski already. If you are using green waxes as a training or race day wax, then be sure to put a graphite base layer wax in before you use the green one. Just scrape and brush well before waxing with the green wax. • Leading up to important races in cold weather we highly recommend putting in layers of SkiGo LF Graphite as it is very hard. This hardens the base up and provides incredible durability. Hard graphite is best for this, as Moly’s tend to not be hard enough. • When in doubt, do two layers of cold weather wax. It will never hurt you and it can only help the durability of the wax. • Don’t fall prey to the theory that the only good cold weather wax is Start Green. Although there certainly are times that Start Green can be a good wax, it is not the be all end all of cold weather waxing. There are a lot of good cold waxes out there that have evolved a lot over the years, you should try them because some of them are lightning fast in the right conditions. A few of our favorites are SkiGo LF and HF Green, Start HF80, Holmenkol Matrix Green, Swix HF4, and Beta Cold Powder. All of these can be mixed 1:1 with SkiGo C380, P16, or Toko Cold Powder with great success. • It is 100% necessary to ski on the ski and rebrush. Completely brushing out these very hard waxes is nearly impossible, thus when the skis are sliding on the snow the excess wax heats up and drops out to the surface of the ski. This will lead to drag as the excess wax drags on the snow. This step is often overlooked and does lead to very slow skis! • Overbrushing is not a word ever used in cold weather waxing as long as you are using the proper brushing and techniques. Start with a fine steel brush, proceed to a good horsehair brush, then work to aggressive brushing with a stiff white nylon brush. After skiing rebrush, termed “scrubbing” with a stiff white nylon.
Posted on: Tue, 21 Jan 2014 18:06:31 +0000
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