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Show Waxing Your Skis BY Matt Alvarez.Timberhaus Sports Many high performance skis are waxed at the factory. This alone emphasizes the importance manufacturers place on waxing. Waxing and filing are the two easiest ways to either improve or maintain ski performance. Generally all ski bases should be waxed: preferably each time the skis are used. Modern ski bases are designed de-signed to be as fast as possible by themselves, but just as important is their characteristic to absorb wax. A base well impregnated with wax is less susceptible to oxidation, andor abrasion from the snow. There are various different methods of waxing. The most common is to rub on wax, then rub it in with a cork or your gloved hand. Another method is to hot wax which requires brushing a melted wax on with a brush. The method of waxing which I recommend is ironing on wax. This allows for better impregnation of the base and is highly recommended for new skis. Primarily because pressure and heat is applied by the iron, the wax bar is placed on the iron allowing the hot wax to drip onto the ski base. After the wax has hardened, it is smoothed out with the iron. However, letting the iron set too long in one place can seriously damage dam-age the base. After the wax is smooth, it is scraped thin with a spring steel or plastic scraper. TOKO System Four Wax Mixtures There are different factors fac-tors to be considered in getting the proper wax mixture for a particular temperature and snow con dition. On the one side we want (he fastest ski possible, but on the other side, we have to make sure that the applied wax will last. Therefore, we have three basic factors to consider: (1) gliding factor (2) abrasion (3) hardness Fast Abrasion With other words, optimal gliding properties are by nature soft, these waxes are subject to fast abrasion which gives rise to frictional forces. Thus it is impossible to make a wax only of compounds com-pounds with optimal gliding properties. A compromise must be made for every condition. The appropriate amount of factors 1, 2, 3 have to be mixed in order to give the best performance. Waxes Characterized The four waxes of the TOKO System Four can be characterized as follows: Yellow gliding and mixing Wax 1 gliding factor very high abrasion factor very "low, hardness factor very low. Red gliding and mix 2 gliding factor high, abrasion ab-rasion factor low, hardness factor low. Green mix wax cold gliding glid-ing factor normal, abrasion factor high, hardness factor normal. Violet hardening wax gliding factor normal, abrasion ab-rasion factor normal, hardness hard-ness factor very high. Thus by using combinations combina-tions of the above mixtures, you can arrive at the best possible mixture for any particular condiiions. |