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

Junior Nationals - Quick Recap so far

Categories: Shop Blog, Wax Reports | Author: Eric Pepper | Posted: 3/9/2011 | Views: 1441

Junior Nationals Sprint and Mass Start Classic

Quick Recap

Here’s what we have seen so far. – C22/C105 Solid, SkiGo C55/99, SkiGo C105 Powder, Zeros, and Hairies have all had a great week so far at Junior Nationals.

We have been running a topcoat combination of SkiGo C22 solid and C105 solid. That ran really well on the sprint day and tested well again the morning of the classic. For application of that we are applying the C105 first, heavy on the front tip quarter of the ski and lighter on the tail, we then rub the C22 solid right over the top of that, light on the first quarter and then heavier as we move towards the tail, hand cork, let cool, brush. This combination was also extremely successful for us at US Nationals in Rumford back in January. We have also liked SkiGo C55/99 Fluid a lot(also very good at US Nats this year), it won our topcoat test the morning of the classic race and was consistently at the top for us on the sprint day. Various teams for the first two races here have used both of these extensively.

For the mass start classic races kick was obviously going to be the focus on most teams given the conditions. Testing the day before the race SkiGo C105 powder was 3^rd for us, but very close to 1^st and 2^nd. We advised teams to go with C105 as we felt it was the safest call and we knew that most teams would want to get powder down the day before in order to put their full focus into kick waxing. It turned out to be a really good call as it then won our feel test the morning before the race.

The weather for the classic race was 0C and lightly snowing. The track varied a lot in consistency throughout the course but featured a mix of powdery snow, water, ice, and glazed tracks. There were 3 solutions that we were happy with. “Zero” skis had a very good day out there and many skiers used them to success. We made up some test skis with hairies on them and they were fantastic and in my option the best solution we had. With both zeros and hairies the manner in which you rub up the base plays a factor so it is good to play with application methods when the conditions present themselves. The other thing that we liked at times was Holmenkol Red grip wax. I haven’t used the Holmenkol line much, but Roger had a race earlier this year in similar conditions where it ran well for him and again today it was pretty good. I definitely preferred the hairies, but for teams struggling making those the Holmenkol Red worked.

Not to turn this into a advertisement, but BNS accidentally doubled up on Fischer Zero picks this past season so we have 60 pairs still in inventory and are offering a sale price of $350 on all Zero and RCS Skate/Classic skis that we have we have on hand in the 2010-2011 model. This is a great opportunity to pickup Zeros at discounted pricing.

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