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

Wax Testing Results 3/28 - Super Tour Finals Prologue

Categories: Shop Blog, Wax Reports | Author: Zach Caldwell | Posted: 3/28/2011 | Views: 1576

Speed Trap Results 3/28
Discussion Below

Rank	Powder	Time	% back
1	C44/7	6.457	0.00%
2	Maplus med	0.004	0.06%
3	HP05	0.017	0.26%
4	TK50	0.017	0.27%
5	Mid 02	0.021	0.32%
6	Mid 08	0.021	0.33%
7	C22	0.027	0.42%
8	C105	0.030	0.46%

Rank	Paraffin	Time	% back
1	Matrix Blue	6.448	0.00%
2	LF Graphite /Matrix Blue	0.007	0.11%
3	Matrix Red	0.009	0.14%
4	Speed Base Mid	0.010	0.15%
5	Ski Go HF Violet/Yellow	0.013	0.20%
6	Rex RCF Pink	0.030	0.47%
7	RCF Grpahite /Matrix Blue	0.037	0.58%
8	HF80	0.038	0.59%

Today's testing mostly confirmed what we've seen so far here in Sun Valley. Matrix Blue remains our pick for paraffin. We've seen Matrix Red get really good in afternoon testing, but the snow has stayed dry through race time consistently. In today's test the LF Graphite underlayer did not speed up the Matrix Blue, and the RCF Graphite underlayer was considerably worse. Given that tomorrow's race in short, we're not running graphites on race skis. We've already got Matrix blue on tomorrow's race skis.

The powder testing was a little more convoluted, and didn't inspire huge confidence in any one wax. C44 was clearly good throughout the test. But HP05 went from being worst in the first two runs, to winning the last three. We'll run C44, HP05, Maplus Med and one or two others in a feel test first thing tomorrow and make a final call on race powder then. I guess if I had to make the call now it would come down to a choice between C44, which was consistently great, and HP05 which became great after a little skiing.

Our plan for the morning is to run powders first thing. Then we'll turn our attention to optimizers and hand structures, which we'll continue to work with throughout the morning, since we've got some guys who won't start until after 11. Once the powder call is made, and the athletes have picked their skis, we'll powder the race skis, and look for the most up to day topcoat and optimizer call.

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