Thursday, May 17, 2012

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Stone Grinding & Waxing Services

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Boulder Nordic Sport is a full-service ski shop offering premium stone grinding, ski and waxing services at our retail locations in Boulder, CO and Portland, Maine and now at events with our traveling race service shop, BNS Mobile.  Top racers from across North America send their skis to us because we do the best quality work in the country.  Have your skis prepared by the pros and see how much better they go!

BNS Mobile

BNS Mobile - Professional Race ServiceThe BNS wax crew hits the road in our new rig, BNS Mobile, pushing our goal of providing World Cup Service for Everyone at events across the country.  BNS Mobile travels to races offering professional race waxing services and a mini-BNS store. It serves as a base for our testing and waxing operations and is a great resource wherever you are headed.  Visit the BNS Mobile page for more information, including event schedules and the latest test results and wax recommendations.

Stone Grinding

Stone grinding flattens the ski base, removes burnt and damaged base material and provides important micro-structure.  Bottom line, it makes your skis faster and easier to wax.  We have advanced Tazzari stone grinding machines set up in our Boulder shop.  Skis can be dropped off at our Boulder, CO or Portland, Maine stores.  If you are shipping skis to us, please ship directly to our Boulder store.  Click this link to see our Stone Grinding Menu and Service Schedule/Lead Time.

Hot Box Wax Treatments

Saturate your base with wax for durability and glide.

Basic Saturation $19: Basic Saturation involves applying a very soft paraffin wax to the ski and placing it in the heat box for 90-120 minutes at a temperature of about 55 degrees Celsius (131F). This ensures excellent saturation of the base. The skis will need to be hardened with colder wax for the appropriate conditions.  This hardening can be done with 2-3 layers of ironed-in wax or hot box treatment.

Extreme Saturation $29 (Recommended): This is a two-step process with the first step being application of a very soft paraffin which is placed in the heat box at low temperature (50-55C) for a long time (6-12 hours).  The skis are scraped and a harder paraffin wax is applied followed by the heat box at 60C for approximately one hour.  This second step is still very safe for the skis, but the temperature but may hasten any inevitable movement of the base away from dead flat.  We notice that some skis, especially older models, tend to get concave tips and tails after heat boxing, even after grinding.  The same thing will happen over time and with ironing, but the heat box may accelerate the process.

This treatment will saturate the base and then harden it to a level where it can be race-waxed with high-temperature fluoros and cold waxes.

Race Ready $49: Extreme Saturation plus finish with the specified Swix race wax (LF, HF or HFBD).  The skis are saturated, hardened and then two layers of LF/HF are applied, scraped and brushed, leaving the skis ready to race or for application of Swix Cera F pure fluoro.  Cera F treatment can be added for $20.

Race Wax Services

BNS wax techs offer race waxing services out of the shop and on-site at several events each winter.  We can prepare your skis for any race, just bring them in and we'll get them ready to go.  $39 for High-Fluoro (LF & HF Layers) and $85 for pure fluoro (LF, HF + Pure Fluoro). 

Weekly Nighthawks race special: $15 for a race prep LF wax.  Drop your skis off any day by 3PM and pick them up the next day after 2.
  

Wax Recommendations

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West Yellowstone Sprint Wax Recommendation

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Race likely to be cancelled, but in case it happens...

With brutally cold temperatures moving in and roads closed and preventing the timers, TD and USSA representative from getting here, it looks 99% certain that the Sprints schedule for Wednesday are not going to happen.  But we tested some waxes today and have some ideas for Wednesday, if it happens.

disclaimer: BNS imports SkiGo and Holmenkol waxes to the US. We do our best to provide objective test results, but now you know our bias and can take this into account as you choose your waxes.

Forecast

Get the latest from NOAA here.

This Afternoon: Snow. High near 24. Wind chill values as low as -15. Breezy, with a southwest wind around 28 mph, with gusts as high as 39 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. Total daytime snow accumulation of 5 to 9 inches possible.

Tonight: Snow. Low around -13. Wind chill values as low as -24. Southwest wind between 8 and 18 mph, with gusts as high as 25 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New snow accumulation of 3 to 7 inches possible.

Wednesday: A 50 percent chance of snow showers. Mostly cloudy and cold, with a temperature rising to near -7 by 10am, then falling to around -17 during the remainder of the day. Wind chill values as low as -42. West wind between 6 and 11 mph. New snow accumulation of less than one inch possible.

Test Results

Tuesday 10:30AM, Temp at time of test -5C snowing like crazy, very windy.  Due to the inability to do an objective glide test, we tested for feel by waxing one wax on a single ski and then skiing for feel eliminating the slower feeling ski of each pair until we had 3 waxes that were clearly better than everything else we tested.  We tested 10 waxes on 5 pairs of test skis with one wax on each ski.  Swix has asked us not to publish test results on their waxes, so that is why there are some missing from the results below.

In general, Higher Fluoro content was working better.

Here is our top three, by FEEL:

  • SkiGo HF Blue
  • SkiGo HF Green
  • Toko HF Blue

These were "decent"

  • SkiGo C380
  • Holmenkol Matrix Blue

These were not good:

  • Holmenkol Matrix Green
  • Start HF80 – not good
  • SkiGo LF Green – not good

Recommendations/Discussion

Testing in the conditions we had today is tough and the results are not incredibly relevant for tomorrow's race given the expected chill that is moving in.  Temperatures are already dropping dramatically this afternoon and it looks like it will be frigid tomorrow with significant snowfall overnight slowing tomorrow early and changing into snow showers.

With the high humidity and new snow, High Fluoros are currently running significantly better than other waxes.  With dropping temperatures, the snow is likely to dry out, but we feel that it is smart to wax with cold HF waxes and then possibly have a backup of an LF or straight hydrocarbon wax.

Given what was running well today, safe bets:

  • Skigo HF Green
  • Toko LF Blue
  • SkiGo C380

We would also do up a pair as a backup some hard Hydrocarbon or LF waxes:

  • Start LF80
  • SkiGo LF Green
  • Swix LF4

We expect that fluoro blocks will probably be good, but it will depend on what happens overnight.  These are easy to test race day and could be very important for fast skis in the sprint.  We will post test results in the morning if the race is happening.  Look for the Holmenkol/SkiGo bench at the stadium for our race morning test results.

Kick waxes will have to be tested at the race site as well.



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