 Poster: A snowHead
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A mate of mine has just bought up a pair of new Speedwave 12s. I was doing the first hot wax on them tonight and noticed on one of them a slightly (very slightly) convex patch about 10cm long by 1cm wide toward the tail of the ski. This only became apparent when scraping the cooled wax - the scraper was dragging slightly and not scraping the base evenly. I didn't even notice this patch at first when the skis just had the buffed transit wax on them.
Now, is it fairly common for brand new skis to have slightly convex patches?
It's so slight (less than 0.5mm) that I wonder whether I should just ignore it?
Or should I gently take a double cut file over that section? (I'm pretty expert with files as do a lot of metal and plastic work with them, and I do a lot of car body work so know how to flat things properly)
Cheers folks
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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petemillis, I'd let him ski them, I would be very suprised if he noticed anything different between the 2 skis. However if you feel strongly about it then don't ski them and take them back to where ever you bought them (internet?). I expect that they will offer a base grind which means you will loose the base edge angle unless they are very good at servicing. Alternativly as you are into bodywork stuff put some P38 in it. 
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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petemillis,
a) first check your plastic scraper and possibly sharpen it
b) check the ski with a true bar
c) not a double cut file but a metal scraper
It is not as common for this to be a factory problem as it has been in the past (no saying it can't happen)
quite a few other things can make for a report such as yours, though they might look slightly different first-hand to the tuner, such as:
- uneven edge to the plastic scraper <- can vary almost randomly-appearing
- bending of the plastic scraper proper along the direction of pull <- happens with bigger scrapers and stronger tuners
- uneven cleaning of the base with citrus cleaner or uneven heating with the iron so that a hard wax bonded better to some sections and not others
- someone already went at these bases with a file, and bent the file whilst "flat-filing" <-not uncommon but appears "rounder" than some of the other syndromes
- differential heating/cooling of the ptex after the hot wax so that the slightly warmer section stuck up a bit <- changes
- "pushing out" of the ski tails whilst skiing on abrasive snow so that the sections closer to the edge are more worn <- usually combined with greyishness or slight concavity nearest the edges
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Thanks guys. They can't go back very easily for a base grind as they were bought from abroad via t'internet (which is a shame - if he'd got them from where I got mine I could have whizzed them down the road in under an hour!).
So, I've just done it meself. I took a Draper Engineers Knife Edge Square (£2 from my local motor factors), ran a metal file across the straight edge of it to create a hanging burr and used that. It's now much better. Just got to get the wax on again now.
I can only assume they must have been like this from the factory as they are brand new. When I heat bases to wax I never leave the iron in one place and I always have the iron way cooler than the temperature it would smoke the wax at.
It looks as if some of the wave on the base is intentional - when I put a straight edge across the base towards the tail of each ski if looks like there are 3 slight troughs and 2 slight peaks between the edges (sort of _/\/\/\_ with the ski the right way up - obviously not that dramatic - each trough and peak is only a fraction of a mm and it's no more than a very gentle wave). The problem I had was that on one of the skis, one of the peak was protruding below the edges by less than 0.5mm. Is this sort of thing likely to be intentional so the ski can hold more wax or something? Or is it likely to be that the bases were prepared at the factory in some weird way? The rest of the ski base is perfectly flat. Maybe it's all just random!
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Good job.
| petemillis wrote: |
| Is this sort of thing likely to be intentional so the ski can hold more wax or something? |
It doesn't sound like it. I'm off to true bar some Speedwaves now.
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| Or is it likely to be that the bases were prepared at the factory in some weird way? |
Weird as in "finish ground before the innards completely cured?" Can't happen. 
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That little " " - does that mean it can happen that they are finish ground before innards completely cured, maybe in a rush to get them out the factory?
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Spyderjon mentioned to me that some skis have very slight concave bases to help them run straight. Convex sounds a little ropey to me...
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Yeah, skis are often slightly concave towards the ends. What Comprex said about this one being finish ground before the innards had completely cured sound pretty feasible to me as the convex line looks like it could be right over part of the innards. Seems ok now I've scraped it - both skis appear exactly the same when checking them with the straight edge so I'm going to try not to worry about it! I guess it was probably only about 0.2mm of PTEX that got scraped off the ridge.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Right then - just ran the tru bar over my Elan Magfire 10s, and there is the same slightly raised peaks on these on the base between heel binding and ski tail. Definitely not as prominent, but a bit odd as I would expect this section to be flat and then going to slightly concave at the tail. In fact, this is what it does apart from these slightly raised peaks.
I had a browse on the Toko site about ski servicing and that suggests that base finish grind done before innards fully cured (as suggested by Comprex). I called up Filarinskis where my skis came from and spoke to the service man just now. And he agrees this is probably as well. What I've done is to scrape the peaks down so they're no longer prominent, brushed, cleaned with a fibre collecting wipe and waxed again.
He also reminded my that first full service is free on all skis bought from them, so at tne of season I can pop them down and he'll go right over them. Free first full service I guess is something else to be factored into the equation when deciding whether to buy skis here or from abroad over the internerd. It's something else that reduces the price differential.
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