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

Owl Creek / Aspen Super Tour Classic Update

Categories: Wax Reports | Author: Zach Caldwell | Posted: 2/11/2011 | Views: 1233

We pulled into Aspen just after noon today, and ran some tests during the afternoon. Discussion and recommendations inside.

T-shirt weather in the AVSC stadium at 1PM is apparently deceptive. A guy with my Eastern sensibility starts looking for the klister/hardwax mixes when I feel that kind of heat. But the ambient temperature stayed a degree or two below freezing, and the tracks never really glazed. After overcoming my initial overwaxing we settled on something in the range of Guru violet as a good solution to today’s classic wax. We’ll test a bit more starting in the morning.

On to the action. I ran a speed trap test with 8 pairs of skis split between paraffins and powders. All of the powders were faster than all of the paraffins. We like when things work out that way – it makes the decision making process pretty easy.

Rank	Wax	Time	% back	Confidence
1	Ski Go C44	7.97	0.00%	99.51%
2	Holmenkol Mid 08	0.01	0.13%	81.01%
3	Holmenkol Mid	0.01	0.18%	53.05%
4	Ski Go C105	0.02	0.21%	30.65%
5	Matrix Blue	0.02	0.28%	20.02%
6	MatrixRed	0.03	0.33%	5.19%
7	Ski Go 242/Ultima	0.04	0.55%	57.40%
8	ITO Blue (test wax)	0.06	0.75%	62.95%

For a classic race we’re quite happy running with our speed trap results. I would have picked the C105 for feeling, and we’ll run more extensive testing for Sunday’s skate race during the day tomorrow. But for the classic racing I trust the results from the trap test.

Forecast & Recommendation

For the past couple of days the forecast has been looking quite warm. As of now NOAA has backed off a bit and is calling for a high of 32 degrees F. Expect the snow tomorrow to stay relatively cold and dry. With kick wax in the violet range for the later races.

Paraffin: Matrix Blue is a good bet. We ran a limited test in order to be able to provide good ballpark recommendations for the classic race. Adam St Pierre of the Boulder Junior Nordic Team said that he liked the Ski*Go HF Blue as well, and that Matrix Green was running similar to Blue. The Matrix Red fared well in the test, but it had one really good run than might have skewed the result a bit. I have much more confidence with the colder range of paraffins.

Powder: C44 or Mid 08. No question the powders are providing a good boost in speed. C44 provided consistently good trap times, but not fantastic feel. This is a fine call for a classic race. Mid 08 has been consistently excellent for us in these conditions, and I’d have good confidence in that as well. It’ll be important to do a good evaluation of powders for feel for Sunday’s race.

We’ll run fluoroblocks in the morning, as well as hand structures. Look for another report tomorrow afternoon more focused on Sunday’s event. If you have to wax before Saturday travel I would bet good money on Matrix Blue and Mid 08.

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