The ski season 08/09 is about to start in a few weeks. Have you already prepared your skis for the first snow? Have you waxed your skis already, or have you actually ever thought about ski waxing? Many skiers invest a good amount of money in new powder guns, but never actually take care of them. Many people don’t even bother to maintain their skis, and only a fraction of skiers regularly wax their skis. If you are interested in waxing skis, then read this post.

Ski waxing is an important part of ski maintenance. Wax protects the base of a ski and lessens friction. Ski wax is like the motor oil that keeps a motor running and in good operating condition. Ski wax is necessary to keep skis operating well. You can go skiing without ever waxing your skis, but the performance of your skis will not come even close to the level of properly waxed skis.

Waxing skis is important – Cold snow can damage skis

You might not have ever heard this before, but as snow gets colder (like -20 Centigrade) it can actually damage the base of your skis. In cold temperature snow crystals become sharper. In order to avoid skis from getting damaged, you must use cold temperature ski wax which protects the ski base from getting cut by sharp snow crystals.

How about warmer snow? In warmer temperature snow becomes wetter, which causes more friction between the ski and snow. Warm temperature ski wax removes some of the friction, which leads to easier and faster gliding.

What equipment is necessary for waxing skis?

Different weather conditions require different ski waxes. So the first thing you need to know before waxing skis is to know the weather conditions. Next you need some tools for waxing skis.

• Ski wax for the current temperature and snow conditions
• Iron for ironing the wax into the ski base
• Vise for stabilizing skis while waxing
• Scraper for removing extra wax
• Brush for removing extra wax

Note that the iron should be a special ski waxing iron, not the one you use to iron your shirts. If you use the same iron for waxing skis, you will destroy your shirts the next time you iron them. A ski waxing iron is also able to maintain a consistent temperature, which helps to avoid burning the ski wax. Therefore it is recommended to purchase an iron specifically made for waxing skis.

It is not always easy to find a place for vise at home, but I strongly recommend you try. The reason is that waxing skis without a vise can be really frustrating: if the skis are not locked down, they keep flopping around as you’re trying to work on them. Some skiers wax their skis without a vise, but I can tell you that a vise makes waxing skis a lot easier and less frustrating.

Ski waxing scraper can be a regular car window scraper, but the best performance is provided by scrapers designed for ski waxing. Ski waxing scrapers are pretty cheap, so I recommend buying a good one. One good scraper can easily serve more than 10 years. A lousy one can break after a few days.

There are different ski waxing brushes available, from steel to nylon. It makes sense to purchase both of them, but if you want to buy only one, then choose the nylon brush. We recommend you purchase a ski waxing brush that integrates both nylon and steel brushes, like the one in this picture. A brush is used to remove extra ski wax.

How to wax skis? – Homeboy’s tips for waxing skis

Now that you have all the necessary equipment, it’s time to start waxing skis. Here are our tips for waxing skis at home.

Start by selecting the right wax for the current temperature. Check the temperature outside or in the weather forecast and find the appropriate ski wax. Notice that ski waxes are designed for snow temperature and air temperature is usually couple of degrees lower than snow temperature, so you may need to do a little bit of math here.

Start waxing skis by dripping melted ski wax from the iron to the ski base. Hold your iron about 5-7 inches above the ski base, and drip melted ski wax constantly around the ski base. One 60-gram ski wax bar should be enough for waxing five skis and three snowboards. The actual number depends on the size of your skis. If you have so-called fat skis, then you naturally need a bit more wax than for regular skis.

Next, start ironing the ski wax by moving the iron constantly on ski base. Make sure not to stop moving the iron because keeping the iron in one spot can seriously damage the base of your skis. After ironing the ski wax into your ski, let it cool for an hour.

Next you need to scrape off the excess wax. Start scraping from the tail of your ski. Hold your scraper at a 45-degree angle to the ski, and scrape back and forth. Continue scraping until you cannot remove any more ski wax.

The last phase is brushing. Start with your stiffest brush and move to softer ones along the way. Start brushing from the tip of your ski, and head towards the tail of your ski. Continue brushing until you cannot remove any ski wax with your softest brush. Clean your skis with paper towel in between when you switch from stiffer to softer brush.

Finally clean your skis with paper towel. Congratulations, you’re done waxing your skis.

How often should my skis be waxed?

It would be optimal for you to wax your skis before each skiing outing, like ski racers. But for most of us this is not possible. I usually wax my skis a few times a year. A good rule of thumb is to wax your skis every tenth skiing day.

What kind of waxing tips and ideas do you have? Do you wax your skis using a different method? Please tell us how you wax your skis and what you would do differently. Just leave a comment below.

Also check out our last year’s ski waxing tips.

Today’s skis come with strange signs on their top sheet. Back in the day of straight and long sticks there was one simple line where you put your bindings and that was all. Mogul skiers sometimes mounted ~1cm forward for increased ability in fast short turns. But it was pretty simple and you didn’t have to think about the issue that much at all.

Then came the super sidecuts, fat skis, twin tips and all the modern gimmicks. You began to see young guys mounting their bindings even forward of the true middle point of the whole skis!(e.g. Jon Olson is famous for that).

For the old school skier something like that sounds pretty ridicilous, doesn’t it? But wait! As the ski industry started to notice that not everyone is a GS skier who just wants to cruise groomers on maximum speed, things got more complicated also for the user of the equipment. Now you had to know what you want to do with the skis, what’s your ability, favourite terrain etc.

K2 skis (with skiers like Seth Morrison on their team) has been on the forefront with the thought that binding mount is a personal preference. That’s what I found on their web site, and I think it is pretty spot on:

With today’s twin tip all mountain, and park and pipe specific skis, riders are commonly mounting their skis forward from a traditional mid sole mounting point. The main benefits are increased control when riding or landing switch, and a more neutral balance in the air or on rails. For this season, all Factory Team skis have a mounting scale on the sidewall running from traditional mid sole mark, to a 7.5 cm forward marking. Following is a general guideline for where to mount these skis. If you are uncertain, the best bet is to go conservative at first and stick to a traditional mount.

0 to 2cm forward: All Mountain Riding – If you plan on skiing mostly outside the park, and want the ski to behave like a traditional ski, you should stay on the conservative side and mount closer to the traditional mid sole mark.

3 to 5 cm forward: 50% All Mountain, 50% Terrain Park – When mounting beyond 3 cm, you will lose a little of the traditional feel of length in front of the binding, but with more tail, you gain the control in the air and riding switch. Seth Morrison mounts his skis at 5 cm forward.

6 cm to 7.5 cm forward: Terrain Park or Switch Riding – If you bought the skis primarily for the terrain park, or are focused on riding switch in the backcountry, you may consider mounting your skis this far forward. While you may sacrifice forward directional float and stability, it’s made up for in switch riding and landing balance and performance. From 6 cm to 7.5 cm forward is where Pep, Benchetler and Mahre typically mount their skis.

You see, today’s skiers differ from each others, and actually quite a lot. I have a strong old school mogul background and like to be able to drive the tips and stay forward in any situation. Even though I like to do some park skiing too and try some switch stuff here and there. I’ve also noticed that even on big mountain skis I like some tail for some added stability on landings (not that I go too big but still…).

So, it is pretty easy to see that I’m somewhere on the middle ground of the pure all mountain skier and a hard core new school jibber. If I would buy new K2 skis I’d probably mount them somewhere around +1 to +4 depending on the model. For a pure park ski I would go even further forward. (See the pic below: the author skiing crud on the older 189cm K2 Seth Pistols mounted at +4… the mount felt a bit too forward but still totally manageable, even on tricky snow!)

The mounting point is no big dilemma. You just have to know what you want and if you are unsure consult your local ski shop and/or the skiers in the know (I’d say demoing a lot of skis, if possible, is the key here). On most cases it is pretty safe to mount the bindings for the recommended “traditional” (often called “mid sole” point) mark. This applies for most piste/intermediate skis, as well for most race skis too. Freeride skis are different animals though – at least you probably see “traditional” and “modern” line on most skis today, meaning that you can choose the more traditional (all-mountain, mostly go forward) ski behaviour or the more modern, freestyle oriented style (switch riding, take offs and landings, rails and jibs etc.).

I like the thinking of K2 where they see the graph as a continuum: not just traditional vs. new school but a much more complicated choice of personal preference. Remember that it is very much possible to do switch tricks with traditional mount and ski big lines (well) on close to center mounted skis, it just take some adaption and skills, of course.

Ok, some might think that this info was pretty useless – trust your shop and manufacturers recommendations etc. Anyway, I’ve found out that the internet is full of questions considering the mounting points of different skis. And that these questions have rised alot of unsecurity, especially among the less experienced skiers. Quite alot of people also seem to follow current trends pretty blindly without any real clue of what they are doing.

The above on mind, I made a list for help and/or avoiding the most common mistakes:

1. As K2 recommended: If you are uncertain, the best bet is to go conservative at first and stick to a traditional mount.
2. However, if you are screwed, don’t hesitate to remount. A general rule is that a well constructed ski takes two to three mounts easily without any problems.
3. If you want just one pair of skis with real all-mountain ability, demo bindings are one solution. So you can easily move the binding point for different purposes. Demo bindings have their disadvantages though (additional weight, additional height, some “slop” on the system etc.). If you are a recreational skier that skis only under ~15 days a year, demo bindings could serve you very well.
4. All good shops know this but it is not stupid to always check: don’t trust the marks on the top sheet, they are often mislocated and suprisingly much too (this is due to manufacturing process of the skis, I won’t go into details here). Marks on the sidewall are much better reference but if you want be 100 percent sure – MEASURE. Using the standard method of always measuring from the tail (or tip) of the skis, you can’t go wrong. This is especially important if you mount your own skis (then you probably know what you are doing anyway!) but I’ve also noticed that some shops think quite conservatively and tend to mismount when asked to center mount/mount far forward. Measuring first and then giving the exact binding location to the shop is always a good way to make sure you get what you want.
5. Stiff and straight skis tend to be more sensitive for small changes of the binding location. Do not get too experimental with the so called “charger” skis (e.g. Rossinol Bandit B-Squads, Head Supermojo 103′s, Igneous FF’s etc.) (Too) long, stiff tail leads easily to very bad skiing, for many different reasons.
6. The great mounting thread on TGR forum - read and learn alot more…
7. Older (before 06/07) K2 skis had the scale (graph on the sidewall) off -2cm. The real “0-point” thus being +2 on the graph. Count that in when comparing different options.
8. Generally, on telemark skis things have gone to the other direction than on alpine skis: it is simpler now. Earlier people calculated complicated (for me at least) “balance points”, “chord centers” etc. but today most (good) telemark skiers I know simply mount using the same recommended marks than alpiners. Telemarktips.com has more info on this than you probably ever want to know but I recommend to check the site out anyway. I don’t know so much about telemarking that I’d go into deeper details (although I plan to ski some more tele this spring btw. Telemarking is just fun, gotta admit that!)
9. Speaking about telemarking: I don’t want this sound like a K2 ad but I really like their insert system on the telemark line too. I wonder how long it would take the alpine manufacturers to figure out a reliable insert standard? I mean, snowboarders have had inserts for ages and now even telemarkers do (at least partly). Why is this so hard for the industry? It would make so many things easier for the skier IMHO – for now we can only wait and see…

I was supposed to bring the test skis back in one hour, but I “borrowed” them for another hour more because I wanted to ski the race with those brand new Atomic skis. Finally I brought the skis back, and the dude asked me “so, how did you like these skis“? I replied “yeah, pretty good. I won the race. Thanks“.

That day I realized the meaning of ski maintenance . Keep your skis in good condition and you can take the best out of your hobby. If you want maximum performance, wax your skis regularly.

Basic waxing is pretty easy and it doesn’t take much time. Waxing decreases the friction between the ski and snow, and therefore provides better gliding. Before talking about waxing, let’s find out what is needed when waxing your skis.

If you are not a race skier, basic knowledge of waxing should be enough. If you are a race skier, then you need to develop your waxing skills much further. Anyhow, at this post we discuss about the basics of waxing, which is enough for most skiers.

Start by waxing your skis with a hard base wax in order to create a water resisting hard base. For this purpose you can use the cold weather wax from known wax makers, such as Swix, Betamix and Start. The cold weather wax is then scraped warm to the ski, after which the extra wax is brushed away. Start brushing with the copper or steel brush, and brush only from tip towards tail, not in the opposite direction! Finally by using the nylon brush you brush the ski slippery. You can test how slippery the ski is by letting the brush move on the ski. If it moves easily, brushing is done well. If it gets stuck, there is still some wax to be brushed away.

Many people are satisfied already in this phase, but if you wish to have your ski even more slippery, continue waxing with the wax designed for the current weather. After you have spread the wax on the ski, wait until it becomes cooler and harder. After that scrape the extra wax away, just like said above.

To get the best out of your hobby, wax your skis regularly. Personally I recommend waxing your skis at least once a week if you ski every weekend.

If you need ski wax, you can find many different brands in Amazon.

Bindings might have differences, but basically they work like this; Front binding locks your boot from the top and sides. There are two things to be adjusted in the front binding. In some bindings height and width are adjusted by hand, while in some bindings this is done automatically. The release sensitivity is always adjusted by hand. Personnel in a ski service do this by adjusting the screw in front of the binding until the correct DIN number is reached. With rear bindings the pressure towards the front binding is adjusted by adjusting the distance between bindings. If this is done wrong, the front binding does not work. Stiffness of the rear binding is adjusted based on skier’s weight, skills and snow conditions. As soon as the right stiffness level is found, both front and rear bindings are adjusted to the same DIN level.

What do you need to know before adjusting ski bindings?

DIN stands for Deitsches Institut fur Normung, or German institute for standardization and was started as a method of measuring industrial standards in Germany. The modern DIN ratings for ski bindings assess weight, height, length of boot, ability and age and provide a very good standard for ski binding adjustment.

There are few things you need to know before you go to a ski service to get your bindings adjusted. You need to know your

1. Body height.
2. Body weight. Be honest, also in the store or ski service. Knowing the right weight is a must in order to get bindings adjusted.
3. Your skiing ability (type of skier). Be honest again as you describe your skiing skills and experience, because all these have an impact when adjusting bindings.
4. Your age.
5. The boot sole length of your ski boots (just take the boot with you to the store).

Equipment you need in order to adjust ski bindings

Make sure you have these equipment before you start adjusting ski bindings.

1. Your skis with bindings and your ski boots (obvious)
2. DIN chart (you can get the right DIN chart from your ski binding manufacturer, ski shop or the Internet (here’s an example for Salomon bindings). If you can’t find, contact the local representative of your ski bindings (importing company or manufacturer).
3. Screwdriver
4. Tape measure
5. Paper and pencil to make notes

How to adjust ski bindings? – General procedure

So finally we dive deep into the topic of adjusting ski bindings. Just follow the steps, but remember that you are adjusting your ski bindings on your own responsibility. If you crash due to loose bindings, you can only blame yourself. We give you general instructions for adjusting ski bindings, but because there are so many different ski bindings in the market, our instructions may not work well with each and every binding. Anyhow, the result of adjusting ski bindings depends on the person doing the actual work, no matter how good instructions he/she is given. If you feel unsure, please walk to a ski service or ski store and let a certified ski tech adjust your ski bindings.

In general this is the procedure of adjusting ski bindings.

1. Calculate your personal data with the DIN chart. This is an easy step as long as  you have the correct DIN chart. Use your pencil and paper to document calculation steps and end result, which is the DIN number.
2. Double check your calculations and see if they sound reasonable. In general the DIN number should be small if you were a light beginner skier. Also if you were heavier and experienced skier the number should be high.
   
3. Adjust both toes and heels of the bindings to the visual indicator setting derived from the DIN chart.The large screws in the front and back of the toe and heal, respectively, are used for adjustment and the dial is easy to read and will change with the setting. Please notice that this may differ between manufacturers.
   
4. Test release settings. As soon as your bindings are adjusted, it is time to test the system. If you see something wrong, such as front binding opening, the whole adjusting procedure should be repeated. Test your bindings always when you enter the slopes. A rule of thumb is that you should be able to open your front bindings just by twisting your foot to left or right. Notice that if you ski race tracks (gates), you need to adjust your bindings tighter so that they stand higher pressure.

These were the general instructions for adjusting ski bindings. Please remember that many things can go wrong when adjusting ski bindings, and that’s why ski shops and services have their certified ski technicians. If you are not familiar with ski binding technology and binding adjustment procedure, we really recommend you to let a certified ski tech to adjust your ski bindings.

I for sure have made hundreds of sketches in the margins of school books and papers, meeting memos, advertisement etc. The reality is though that I am no handy-man. Maintaining my mountain bike is as technical it gets to me. Anyhow, I’m really interested about the design and innovations in ski (and snowboard) technologies. Luckily I have friends that can build skis, and there are also lots of small boutiques and independent custom ski makers who can make your dream skis from your specs. So, designing/engineering your own skis might not be as complicated as it sounds first.

Check out SkiBuilders.Com!

Paging through the forums might give you some great ideas for making your own skis. There are also pictures and specs of some pretty wild and innovative skis. An element of passion is tangible in this site. I can only imagine the feeling you get when you are cruising through some dream snow with your own handmade beloved skis..

I have a project with a friend of designing a pair of pretty specialized and innovative pair of skis. The project is still on the sketch level but I think we might be onto something pretty good. Stay tuned for later post on the issue!

[UPDATE December 12th 2008: Please check also our more detailed article in ski sizing].

This is a question for which you can quickly get 5 different answers or even more. The truth is that there is no exact answer, and therefore the answers differ a little bit from one another. Anyhow, let’s list the rules of thumb. These should help you to find the right length for your skis when you go buying new guns. The length of your skis depends on what kind of terrain you ski. For example, the length of your skis should not be the same on slalom tracks and backcountries. In this instructional article I focus on traditional alpine skiing, not backcountry skiing, ski-touring or such.

How to determine the right length for your skis?

1. Giant Slalom (Super G): your own height

2. Slalom: your own height – 10/15 cm.

3. Ordinary skiing on slopes: your own height – 5/10 cm.

As you see, skiing different terrains requires different skis. If you don’t ski trails such as slalom or super G, you’re skis should be the length of your height – 5/10 cm.

Do you agree with me? Disagree? Please leave your comments and say how you would decide the length of your skis. As stated above, there is no exact answer. These are my rules of thumb for finding the right length for your skis.

These tips are for adult skiers. If you are buying skis for your child, stay tuned. We will write also tips for defining the right length for kids skis.