Wrong wax?

A snowHead

I've just had my skis professionally edged and waxed only to find that they have become very sticky on the snow. I don't know whether this is because the temperature has dropped 1OC or whether they have simply used the wrong wax. Can anyone please tell me whether I should take them back to the ski shop and try to get them to redo the wax or whether I can just use a rub on a wax, such as Toko Express, over the top of the new wax to get the skis to run properly?

A snowHead

You say it has dropped 10c so what is your ambient temperature? It defiantly could be to do with waxing.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

It was around -12C at 2000 m.

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Work with the shop. I'm sure they'll redo. But, seriously consider learning to do it yourself. You'll be far better off when you finally do it yourself. Numerous brands (wax) around with Swix controlling/owning many. They're a monster............, driving "lesser" brands off the shelves.

HERTEL (USA) is a cottage industry brand by comparison that is no stranger to various ski pools (they deny it as they have to......., they're under agreement to use Swix product). Hertel's claim to fame has been from Day One a all temp spectrum wax (there are other specialty within their inventory) that is Hertel Hot Sauce, now Super Hot Sauce. It goes everywhere and is phenomenal. Durable, too. No need as Terry Hertel proved decades back to play this silly game of various temperature waxes. His is a polymer, that's the diff............ Check out their website.

Also acquaint yourself with something like Zardoz................

https://hertelwax.com/pages/the-science

https://www.zardozboost.com/

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

@Mike S, sticky sliding forwards, or sticky/catching when drifting sideways?

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@Mike S, Waxes work with snow temperature not ambient/air temperature. Broadly speaking, Cold wax -10 to -30, Warm Wax 0 to -6 and Universal 0 to -30. Ski shops will always use universal unless you ask for a specific wax and as the temperature will change tomorrow I wouldn't bother getting them redone unless you intend to take the Eurotest. Stickiness usually goes after a few hours of use or as snow temp increases.

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

+1 for Zardoz, just started waxing family skis, always put a layer of Zardoz on after the wax, scrape and polish.Keep it with me all the time. Never had a real issue with universal wax, +5 to -20

After all it is free

Thanks for all the replies and information. @clarky999 Interesting that you ask. It certainly felt more sticky/catching when drifting sideways - and I don't think that it was just sharper edges. Anyhow, I rubbed on some of the Toko Express onto the bottoms, this morning, and the skis felt much better today.

*Ski* the Net with snowHeads

-12c normally means cold dry snow, and that's snow which is actually pretty hard to have good glide on. Add wrong temp wax, and it gets really bad. But if it's "sticky/catching when drifting sideways", then it's edges not wax. Little bit changed base angle to what you are used to (smaller degrees that you had) and you get exactly that.

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snow reports

It's on the hard, flat piste that you're really using the edges to make the turn, like a racer on a water-injected race run. The more surface snow there is, the more of the turning work can be done by the bases acting like snowplows.

@Mjit, trying to visualise it, but I think that’s probably right.

Also never an issue when carving and actually using the edges; it was when flattening off the angles and scrubbing speed that I really noticed it. Quite disconcerting to be fast carving down a section then relax and go to scrub some speed approaching a crowd on a corner, only to l suddenly have so much friction it felt like I had to fight not to fall over my downhill edge!

You know it makes sense.

@clarky999, it's like @Mjit wrote... edges really engage on hardpack (ice), while on soft there's more "giveaway" from soft surface, which also gives you more room for such issues to go by unnoticed.
When carving you put ski on edge and you want edge to engage as soon as you put ski on edge. When running ski flat, you want to have some space, before skis engage, as you will never be able to run ski perfectly flat all the time, and that's reason why pretty much everyone skis 0degrees base angle on SL skis (SL skis are meant to be run on edge), while for speed, base angles are anywhere between 1.2 and 1.8 degrees (more space for moments when skis are not 100% flat, yet you still want to slide them "flat" and not engage edges). So when you put ski on edge you want it to engage, so you don't see that as issue. When running it flat, or sideslipping, you don't want ski/edge to engage, so you notice this hookup as distraction, but in reality it's same thing, edge engages, just once you want it other times you don't. Hope it makes sense, as my English is not really all that great describing these things Smile

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

@primoz, thanks, yep makes sense! Hard enough for me to describe in English too haha!

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Wrong wax?

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