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

BNS Birkie Testing Plan and Early Notes

Categories: Wax Reports | Author: Eric Pepper | Posted: 2/20/2011 | Views: 2268

Birkie week has arrived and things are shaping up nicely. BNS is already in Hayward and will begin testing on Monday. We wanted to give you a quick layout of our testing plans for the week. It's going to be a whirlwind with all the wax service and the expo. We have the trailer on hand and have had a lot of product shipped in for service work and for retail. So please stop by at the expo and let us help you stock up your wax box. For more details on our plans during Birkie week check HERE. Please join us in the Twin Cities for our wax clinic at Theodore Wirth Park 7PM Tuesday.

Here is the NOAA forecast for Hayward.

Here is the NOAA forecast for Cable.

Conditions should be ideal for racing next week with a mixture of old and new snow that should provide a solid, fast base with enough new snow to give good kick for classic skiers. We'll update things as we get a better look at the trail on Monday and Tuesday.

The forecast is calling for fairly cold conditions in the days leading up to the race, and with some old and new snow mixed in. We'll see how things shake out in our tests, we will be testing all brands of wax, however, so we will choose whatever is fastest on the trail, regardless of the brand.

Testing Plan:

Monday - Zero Testing, double checking to make sure our test fleets are matched well and that the results of our tests are valid. We have 40 pairs of test skis divided into five fleets of 8. We "zero" all of these skis by cleaning the skis of previous wax tests, then wax everything with the same wax. We then run each fleet through the speed trap and get results that allow us to determine if any of the pairs need to be taken out of the fleet and also calculate a correction factor if needed in later tests during the week.

Tuesday - AM testing, paraffin and powder. Eric will be testing before heading to Minneapolis to pick up Nathan and conduct the evening wax clinic at Theodore Wirth Park at 7PM. Although still quite a ways out from race day, early testing such as this will help us get a feel for what is running so we can try out more options and narrow things down a bit.

Wednesday - AM Testing, paraffin, powder, topcoat, hand structure.

Thursday - AM Testing, paraffin, powder, topcoat, structure. Hopefully by the conclusion of this day of testing we will have our paraffin layer dialed. There is some new snow in the forecast so we will keep an eye on that.

Friday - AM Testing powder, topcoat, hand structure.

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