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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Intermountain Junior Championships

Categories: Wax Reports | Author: Nathan Schultz | Posted: 2/11/2011 | Views: 1139
Similar conditions to Boulder Mountain Tour make for great racing

 

Testing at Lake Creek Friday in speed trap and by feel revealed results simliar to last week's Boulder Mountain Tour.  The snow has not been refreshed with significant new snow, so it is very old and granular.  We don't have any data to publish due to lack of reliable internet connection - this was phoned in.

Forecast: Click here for the latest weather forecast from NOAA

Recommendation: Testing-based

Base Layer: SkiGo LF Graphite iron, cool, scrape brush with SkiGo Long Steel brush or Holmenkol Microfinish Steel.  This underlayer improved skis dramatically last week in our tests and we recommend it this week based on last week's test.  If you don't have a hard graphite such as SkiGo, Rex or Start, don't use it, instead use a green LF wax such as Swix LF4 or Start Green.  Something to harden up the base to deal with the aggressive snow.

Race Paraffin:  Holmenkol Matrix Black/Blue or Holmenkol Matrix Blue.  SkiGo HF Violet and Swix HF6 are also good choices.

Fluoro Powder/Top Coats: SkiGo C105.  For optimal results, iron in C105 powder, cool, scrape, brush with a stiff nylon, then a softer polishing brush (horsehair and/or soft nylon), then apply hand structure race morning and coat with a quick hand corked-in application of C105 solid (or powder), let it cool, and then brush out with a horsehair brush followed by 2 light passes tip to tail with a soft steel brush.

Comments:  The Matrix Black/Blue excels in this type of snow, and our testers liked how it felt so much that they decided not to put on fluoro powders.  They will probably just run the Black/Blue and then apply hand-corked fluoros in the morning if they are fast.

Sturtevant's in Hailey is a Holmenkol dealer and has Matrix Blue and possibly Matrix Black/Blue available.  Call (208) 788-7847 to see what they have available.

The skate race is short enough that a corked in block application will be fast enough to make a difference.  The abrasive snow will strip the corked fluoro pretty quickly, but it should last 5-8km and it will make a significant impact during that time.

Have fun and enjoy the nice Sun Valley skiing!

We will try to post kick wax recommendations for Sunday's classic race.

note: BNS imports Holmenkol and SkiGo waxes, and also sells waxes from Swix, Toko, Rode, Solda, Rex, Guru, Innovax, Magnar and others. We search for the fastest waxes for our customers and our testing is professional, objective and transparent. We make our best effort to test what we think is the best from each brand.  However, given that we are testing more options from Holmenkol and SkiGo, there is a bias toward those brands.  With this full disclosure, you can assess the legitimacy of our testing yourself. Visit http://swixracing.us/nordic/waxrec.php and http://tokous.com/racewaxtips.htm for their official recommendations. If you have any questions please contact us.

 



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