OT: Ski maintenance
 

I have a big ski season coming up this winter and I’d like to learn how to maintain my skis. What do I need to know and to buy so I can get started?

Wealth of info here
 

Nordic or downhill? If Nordic, I used to race when I lived in Michigan and I have all the stuff needed ( swix iron, brushes, tons of wax, even a bench mounted form). Don't really need it down here in florida.

Great resource. Skimming through this now. I’m looking for a 20/80 kind of maintenance plan for home — 20 percent of the items for 80 percent of the results to start, and then fill in the blanks as I get more into it. For example, a few basic tools solve most of the basic issues in the bike world. What’s the equivalent in skiing?

Downhill skiing primarily

Most good ski shops will hold a clinic or two during the season to teach the basics of ski care....waxing, deburring....etc. They are typically free and are used to sell you the goods you need to do a proper job.

I'd contact your local shops and see if anyone offers a clinic. Back in my ski shop days I gave a few of them and they can be really fun and informative.

dave

Ski maintenance is relatively easy and fun to do and quite cost effective once you get going. But you definitely need the right tools, equipment and workspace.

So starting off you want a waxed ski with a sharp edge. That covers 80% of what you need.

#1 You need to be able to affix the ski to work on it. It is impossible/very difficult to wax and tune a ski unless it is in a set of vices and then attached to either a work bench or a portable tuning table.
#2 Which means you need to have a space / garage / work area to do this. Plus, being able to deal with the mess of a lot of wax shavings and melted wax.
#3 waxing iron
#4 plexi scrapers plus plexi scraper sharpening tool
#5 metal scraper
#6 brass brush
#7 nylon brush
#8 edge sharpening tool (s)

The biggest investment are the vices and tuning table/workspace then the iron.

Tognar is a good source also https://www.artechski.com/

At a minimum Toko universal white wax does a really good job and can be bought in large bulk sticks. Swix wax is just as good.

Check these series of waxing and tuning videos out from StartHaus. I found them to be quite helpful:

https://youtu.be/u-HkPtILe4k

I have a swix quick hand edger, a can of their new aerosol wax and a fine brush. This is just maintenance between a real tune. Gotta take care of the base, too. You can't do that at home

Beyond that, hit a real ski shop with a good tuner/tuning machine now and again so you get a decent base, ceramic edge (1 degree and 2 degree) and IR wax. You can thank me later. The IR wax and the swix aerosol are light years ahead of ironing or the whole hot box/house fire thing

Dropped off my new Elan Wingman 82 CTI with my tuner of choice today. Don't trust any shop with the Montana robot, BTW

Do you have a good place to perform the work? I used to stay with friends in Aspen and my host was a home builder/carpenter with a nice well-equipped home shop where we waxed our skis daily. It was easy because we didn't have to clean everything and put it away after every use. If you are living in Santa Monica and commuting to the mountains you MIGHT be better off letting a shop near the slopes do it for you.

It’s a logistics problem. There really aren’t any good ski shops in a lot of urban areas. That means to get someone in California who knows what they are doing it’s either in Mammoth or up in Tahoe. So OP wants to drive up and hit the slopes in Mammoth what’s he to do? You have to arrive early enough the night before to drop off your skis assuming they can get to them.

I can do everything at home except base grinding and waaaay less expensive and time consuming than dropping them off, picking up etc.

There’s no magic to waxing and tuning you just need the right workspace, tools and a little practice and you soon arrive at a very efficient formula that produces great results.

What does this mean? You skiing 100 days this year? You trying to qualify for masters racing championships? Where are you skiing and what kind of gear are you expecting to tune?

I'm a former racer, now an instructor, getting 40 days a year and can't see any reason to tune for yourself anymore unless you're racing. If you're skiing "good" conditions (not New England ice), there's even less reason to sweat it. Also, it's pretty easy to overtune a ski when doing it by hand and take off too much material, shortening the service life of your $1k ski. You can't replace an edge like you replace brake housing or a chain. If you grind that edge too much, you're f'd.

The smell of P-Tex. It's been a while.

My go to is:https://www.racewax.com

good videos etc... and decent deals.

When I skied every weekend in VT, I would get a season tune where I dropped the skis off Sunday and picked them up Fri night. It was a great deal (~$150) and easy. Skiing in New England demands good edges.
After retiring, my skiing habits changed and a season tune wasn't an option, so I had to go back to tuning them myself, something I hadn't done in 30+ years. I needed new stuff.

I contacted a buddy with kids that raced for years, and he pointed me to a few places. I ended up getting a kit from The Race Place, but lots of other places have good stuff, too.
You'll need a vice, files, an iron, scapers and other assorted small stuff, all contained in the kit.

It's a good idea to start with a good base and to have a tune done by a good shop with a good machine. After that, your tunes will take less than 30 minutes.

As usual, YouTube is your friend. The places where you can get tuning tools usually have a section of videos, too. Don't get too wrapped up in videos that are geared towards racing as that's way beyond what you're looking for.

Pray for snow!