Thursday, May 17, 2012

Wax & Race Service

Stone Grinding & Waxing Services

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

The 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

Alley Loop Wax Report

Categories: Wax Reports | Author: Zach Caldwell | Posted: 2/4/2011 | Views: 1201

Nate Brown ran a BNS test fleet in Crested Butte this morning. Report and recommendation inside.

Nate Brown drove to Crested Butte last night, after spending much of Thursday working up a BNS test fleet. He called this morning, while thawing his feet after testing. The word, in a word, is "cold".

Air temp and snow surface temp at 9AM were both -15C. But the deeper snow temp was -25C. This means that the snowpack is really well chilled, and will take a while to warm up. The conditions and grooming are impeccable. They're running a big alpine groomer in town, and are planning to do the final grooming at 4AM Saturday morning, according to Nate and whatever inside information he has managed to dredge up.

Nate's test this morning wasn't extensive. He tested Matrix Green, Matrix Blue, SkiGo HF Green, and a special test wax for paraffins. For powders he tested SkiGo C105 and Holmenkol Cold 59 over Matrix Blue. Matrix Green was the clear winner for paraffins, based primarily on its consistency. This was particularly true close to race start time. As temps warmed a bit the other paraffins came into play.

The Cold 59 was the fastest ski by far. C105 wasn't as good, but it did speed up the matrix blue. We didn't prepare any fluoroblock optimizers. We'll test those in the morning, starting with the Holmenkol Cold Block and the C105 block.

Forecast & Recommendation:

Overnight lows will be below zero, further refrigerating and already cold snow pack. Expect cold and aggressive snow in the morning. The 4AM grooming should ensure that there is old snow near the surface, even if light snowfall materializes. If there's a real snow storm, then all bets are off!

We recommend a well hardened base, with a cold paraffin. We're putting Matrix green on here. Start Green, Toko HF Blue or Swix LF4 would also be good bets. I would recommend a cold powder such as C380 or Toko cold powder if you don't want to pursue the pure fluoro solution.

For the skis we're preparing in-house, we'll use the Cold 59 powder and plan to work with optimizers in the morning.

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