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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BNS at The Minnesota State High School Championships

Categories: Wax Reports | Author: Eric Pepper | Posted: 2/16/2011 | Views: 1404
Testing Results and Wax Recommendation Added

 

BNS is in Biwabik for the Minnesota State High School Championships. We are excited to get to take in this iconic event. I arrived this morning to a beautiful day with bright blue skis and great course conditions. I setup a speed trap and begun running skis at 9:45am, but it was a windy with some headwind gusts. Trap times seemed to be varying a bit as a result of these gusts so I bagged the speed trap. At 10am I began running skis by feel. Snow Temp was -2C. I ran paraffins, then powders, and then topcoats and structure. I ran the top choices again around noon to check on a recommendation for the classic race. Results and recommendation below. Be sure to check out my notes on handstructure.

Notes: Hand Structure will be very important. Of all the waxes I tried the skis that had a simply SkiGo LF Blue wax and had the various hand structures I tested felt the best. Tomorrow I will be trying a few additional structures combinations from what I tried today.

We will be testing top coats in the morning before the skate race.

Kick waxing is going to be fun, it should get quite warm. I am hoping to get out on some kick skis this afternoon. I will also be testing kick at the venue tomorrow.

Please feel free to ask questions.


Wax Recommendation SKATE

Base Layer: SkiGo LF Graphite, scrape, brush.

Race Paraffin: Holmenkol Matrix Black/Red. Either the Black/Red or the SkiGo HF Yellow would be good choices. They were quite close with the Red/Black running better in my early test and the HF yellow pulling ahead at Noon.

Fluoro Powder: SkiGo C44/7. Hands down the best in the morning. At noon the C22 had caught up.

Topcoat: SkiGo C22 solid. The blocks were definiately better than the liquids, which I found a bit surprising. I'll be taking a look at this again tomorrow to see if the liquids catch up at all.

Structure:Finite Finish AF10. It is a staight linear press in tool.


Wax Recommendation CLASSIC

Base Layer: SkiGo LF Graphite, scrape, brush.

Race Paraffin: SkiGo HF Yellow.

Fluoro Powder: SkiGo C22.

Topcoat: SkiGo C22 solid. The blocks were definiately better than the liquids, which I found a bit surprising. I'll be taking a look at this again tomorrow to see if the liquids catch up at all.

Structure:Finite Finish AF10. It is a staight linear press in tool.


TEST RESULTS

Paraffin

1.       Holmenkol Matrix Black/Red

2.       SkiGo HF Yellow

3.       Swix HF8

4.       Holmenkol Matrix Red

5.       Holmenkol Matrix Blue

6.       SkiGo HF Violet/HF Yellow 1:1

7.       SkiGo HF Violet

8.       SkiGo HF Orange

Powder

1.       SkiGo C44/7

2.       Swix SuperCera

3.       SkiGo C22/C44 1:1

4.       Holmenkol Wet

5.       SkiGo C22

6.       Holmenkol Mid

7.       Swix FC8x

TopCoats

1.       SkiGo C22 Solid

2.       Holmenkol Mid Block

3.       Holmenkol Mid 08 Black

4.       Swix FC8WS

5.       Holmenkol Wet Block

6.       SkiGo C44 Fluid

7.       SkiGo C22 Fluid

8.       SkiGo C107 Fluid

            SkiGo C55/99 Fluid

 

Hand Structure

1.       Finite Finish AF10

2.       Finite Finish AF10 with V05 over the top of it

3.       Holmenkol Cross Strucutre with 2 rollers, medium pass

4.       Finite Finish V10

 


 

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 Swix and Toko for their official recommendations. If you have any questions please contact us.



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